All over... till next time!

It's been a strange last few days. The house is now empty. All the TEA team have now gone and we miss them already!

This TEA finished officially at 9pm on Friday night, though we stayed up together much later than that! It was so encouraging to hear how God had been working in TEAm members' lives while they were here, and it would be great if you could pray with us that He will continue growing and using them for His glory as they go back to 'normality' back home.

This last week we were able to put a lot of our evangelism training into practise, going out around the city, sharing Christ and the true Christmas message with many people. If you know anyone from the TEAm, ask them to tell you all about it!!

One of the things we did was print out 2000 tracts with a simple Christmas message on them, and handed them all out around the city. Just now, we've received a Christmas card from 'Chris', who writes:

To all those who hand out flyers on the street,
Hello there,
I was handed a small flyer in Downtown Auckland on Thursday by a young man, which I stuffed in my pocket and have only just taken out and read. I'm not a practising Christian but was moved by the simple message the flyer contained. I just wanted to say thankyou to you all for giving up your time to help spread some genuine help to those lost souls out there.
With much love,
Chris.

It's exciting to think how God can use such a simple and small thing. We pray that each tract will draw someone closer to Him, and that He will use all encounters the TEAm had with people over the last ten weeks to further His Kingdom.

So thank you to all who have followed this TEAm on their adventures here. We will have a few weeks break over Christmas and New Year, then a brand new TEAm starts on January 5! Bring it on!!!

We'll leave you with a video of the TEAm learning a memory verse in the second week of their time here. This verse is a bit like a TEA motto for us:

"Honor Christ and let him be the Lord of your life. Always be ready to give an answer when someone asks you about your hope. Give a kind and respectful answer and keep your conscience clear. This way you will make people ashamed for saying bad things about your good conduct as a follower of Christ."
- 1 Peter 3:15-16

Maybe you can learn the verse too by watching this video! Pray that it will be true in all of our lives.




Till next time...

Round the Mountain, Off the Ledge & Under the Earth!

HELLO FRIENDS! We have returned to the OM home base in Papakura after the TEAm's last week and a half traveling on the road. Six of the TEAm, plus Norm & Christy spent five days and four nights hiking around Mt. Ruapehu, an active volcano on the North Island. The weather was perfect, and several of the huts were full of people. We had some great conversations with our fellow trampers and shared alot of good times. Afterwards, several members of the team took the plunge at Taupo bungy, we shared a delicious 'hangi' meal in Rotorua (along with the surprise of Claire joining the team again), and then a surprise of caving at Nikau Caves on our way back to Papakura.

This past week's focus was "Isn't the Christian Life Supposed to Be Easy?" We talked about the fact that just because you are a Christian, we are not guaranteed a trouble free life. But, we are given the opportunity to praise God and trust Him in the midst of our difficult circumstances and know that He can use even the hard times for His glory. Each team member led devotions one day of the week and shared a struggle in their life and how the Lord is growing them through it. Below, the TEAm members have given a thought from their experiences over the past week and a half.

Janine says... The past week has been great. The tramp was fun and it was another opportunity to see how varied the landscape of NZ is - it was like walking on the moon! In our devotions we all had a go at leading by sharing areas in which we struggle in our Christian walk - it was an encouraging experience for us all. It would be great if you could pray for us on our last week, that we will continue to challenge ourselves and trust God to use us.

Claire says...It was a good time, being away from the TEAm, to build on my "Rivendell" time with God and to explore stuff with Him further. I sure did miss the TEAm, and it was GREAT surprising them in Rotorua, but I know that if I had been with them I wouldn't have processed (or begun to) important stuff for God & give Him praise for that!

Bellanie says...I will share with you what I have learned this week. I was very scared about this tramp. During some of the times of quiet when we are walking, I have a lot of time to think and my mind starts to think of things that make me sad from my life, which makes me feel bad about myself. I learned, step by step, hour by hour, to control my thoughts and let the Holy Spirit work through me. It helped me to pray, praise the Lord, and fill my mind with Godly thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10:5 & Philippians 4:8 are a help to me... I know the Lord is changing me and helping me every day.

Edgar says...I think I learned the most in the last week from the story of Benaiah and of Jonathan in the Bible. These guys did incredible things and from their example I can learn how to 'burn the couch' (step out of my comfort zone). They did stupid things in human eyes, but sometimes this is the way that God shows us He wants us to trust in Him and give Him our lives.

Koen says...I'm very excited every time we go back into the mountains! Every one of us prepared a devotion in which we shared about struggles we face and what God is teaching us about dealing with them. During tramping you can find so much peace because there are no distractions, and you get very close and open up as a group. We've all missed Claire though, and we were very happy to see her again on Friday!

Lisanne says...Last week was Awesome!! The 5 days around the mountain freaked me out! I said, "Oh man, I cannot do it! It's too hard!" But I did and it was great fun. It was still hard of course, but "we can do all things through Him who gives us strength." The traveling is very relaxing for me. Eating, sleeping, more eating, and now we are in our last week - still exciting, but the time goes so fast. I wouldn't want to have missed this for anything in the world.

A.J. says...Last week was awesome! Tongariro NP is really different from what we have seen so far: big rocks at weird places, dry parts with plants every now and then, and mountains covered with grey stones sometimes made me feel like I was walking on the moon. The diversity of the NZ landscapes really shows how creative our God is! If He created the world and us living on it, who or what else could we ever put our trust in?!

Below are some pictures from the past week and a half! Please continue to pray for the TEAm, as they go through week ten, their last week of TEA. Please pray for them as they think about their time on TEA and what God has been doing in them, and as they look to their futures. Thank you!

Start of Round the Mountain Track!

Claire was missed on the hike!!!

Walking through the land of Mordor!

Lord, we praise you for a new & glorious day!!

Up at 5:15 a.m. to see the sunrise!

Walk like an Egyptian!

Plodding along the outskirts of the Rangipo Desert

This place makes us all feel very small

Study Time in Blythe Hut!

One, two, three...bungy!!! Yeehah!














That's right! We survived caving 'down under!'

Travelling north

Hello to you all, its that time again, another update.

We continued our travels with Shirley, back up the East coast of the South Island staying at Kaikoura (doing some more seal watching on the way) and then Picton.

The TEAm near Kaikoura:
The ferry crossing from Picton to Wellington was an opportunity to engage in some non-threatening conversations with people and see if we could get deeper in the conversations. We talked about ways that have worked in the past before the crossing and prayed for opportunities. Koen got talking to some Germans guys in the restaurant, and Janine had a great opportunity to share with a girl from the Netherlands about Jesus and how he is the bridge to life (using skills learnt during the evangelism training), the girl then came and joined us for a game of cards, and spent some time with us, which was cool.

We stayed in Wellington for two nights. While we were in Wellington we had an opportunity to go to Rivendell (no elves were seen!) for our 'bush' time. As you may remember from the last post the weeks task was to look at our lives and see where we need to surrender our lives more completely to God. So this 'bush' time, was an opportunity to do this, we were going to have three hours to spend just with God in our own little area of bush. Now if I'm honest I really didn't know what to expect and thought: 'oh my goodness what am I going to say to him?', 'how am I going to start?' and 'my goodness three hours is a long time-surely I'm going to get bored!' Thank God that I was wrong. It was the most amazing time! I personally felt a wake-up from God and could have spent longer with him in that place of quiet. All the TEAm agreed that the time went really quickly and was an important time, to hand over everything to God. I hope the TEAm would agree that this was an excellent way to end an excellent week of getting deep into Gods glory, and to continue living our lives glorifying him, knowing he is the only way our lives will be complete.

Rivendell, a quiet place to spend 3 hours with God!

After Wellington we joined Norm and Christy in Ohakune, to prepare for the 'Round the mountain' tramp. There were a few nervous faces over dinner as we were preparing for a 5 day challenging tramp, over some amazing landscape (walking around an active volcano) with long days ahead, but there was great excitement too. As well as the physical challenge the task for this week is for each TEAm member to lead a short devotion along the same lines as our theme for this week: 'Isn't the Christian life supposed to be easy?' How do we get through struggles that we face as Christians; living in a secular world, attacks from Satan, facing sickness/death etc - its going to be exciting stuff, and I think our memory verse may help; Romans 12:11,12 Never give up. Eagerly follow the Holy Spirit and serve the Lord. Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in times of trouble and never stop praying.

Unfortunately I (Claire) haven't been able to go tramping due to an injury (Bethany if you're reading this I know how you felt this time last year!). We waved the TEAm off in style and I came back with Shirley to Papakura. I was slightly gutted at first about not going, but I truly believe that God can, will and is using this. Our TEAm has faced times when people have been left behind on Tramps due to injury or health and they have always had amazing opportunities and met people they wouldn't have met if they had been able to go on the tramp, so, I'm waiting expectantly.

Points for prayer

Praise God for the time we each had with him last week looking at where we need to surrender parts of our life to him. Pray that God will give us strength to continually surrender these things over to him

Pray for the TEAm as they are doing the 'Round the mountain' tramp. Pray for good health, safety, strength and opportunities to go deep with people in the huts, sharing the gospel about our Lord.

Pray for safe travels back to Papakura and the reuniting of the TEAm for the last week, may we continue to be focussed on the now and not the farewell.

Thanks for all the prayer support and for taking the time to read this
God bless
Claire (and all the TEAm)