Week 2

Hello friends.

Lets recap this week shall we? On monday here at the base, the students were welcomed by a traditional powhiri ceremony by the Maori natives and residents of the Local YWAM community. The ceremony starts with us, the students, outside the campus and the residents inside. A Maori warrior is sent out to issue a challenge and to find out our intention for being at their land. He then extends a peace offering in the form of a leaf, and if we accept the offering, we pick up the leaf and follow the warrior into the campus. We take our seats on opposite sides of the grounds and the tribe leader stands up and welcomes us to the land and then they sing a song. We respond with our reason for being there, and sing song also. Then we are met by another speech and song, which we respond with a speech and song. Then we are greeted by each individual on the base by shaking hands or hugging, and touching noses, exchanging the breath of life that was passed from God to Adam through his nostrils, and passes down by generation to generation. Then, we enjoy morning tea and biscuits to seal the deal, and we are officially no longer visitors to the land, but natives and when another group comes to be welcomed, we will now sit on the native side during the powhiri. It was very cool that we got to take part in such a cool tradition.

Our speaker for the week was Matt Dawson, the son of the international president of YWAM, John Dawson. He is married in his mid twenties, and has a cute 18 month old daughter. He talked on the topic of evangelism. Now normally you would expect a 5 point list of how to approach someone and share your faith, without really caring about a person, but just trying to get the "Jesus Points". But this is exactly what we were trying to break free from during the week. We focused on the importance of just being genuine and real. People today want authenticity and can easily tell when you are being fake. The danger is to share a faith that actually doesnt mean anything to you, a faith that you cannot really say what it has done for you. So i would say the main focus of the week was discovering exactly what our relationship with God meant to us...and sadly in the process lots of us discover that we dont even really know for ourselves. Obviously this is a very simple version of what we learned but I can give you all the full version when i get back!!!

On Friday us boys went with Mark Parker, our base director and his sons to an All-man meat-lovers fest at the church in the city. The ladies were having a week long conference called "sistas" so the men got to have their own fun with boxing, laser tag, and pizza.

Other than that the only interesting thing has been rugby. It is the rugby world cup right now in France. I dont even know if anybody in the states knows of this because rugby is so over looked there, but here it is life. The New Zealand All-blacks is the National team here, and they tear it up. Im not going to even try to defend football or any other sport. Rugby is a man's sport hands down. It is insane. Lots of the players are covered in each others blood by the end of the game. The games play here at midnight so it makes for a fun night of hanging out. By the way, team USA is horrible. They lost to Wales. Lame.

Anyways. I miss you guys. I hope all is well back home.

<3