Wellington week 1.5

We have had quite a bit of excitement in a short amount of time! Our weekend started after seeing 7 guys start a relationship with Christ through the tune-in survey follow-ups and doing initiative evangelism! One pair of our guys, Greg and Ronnie, were able to see 3 guys come to Christ in about 1 ½ hours on Friday - Raunar, Gaurav and Viren. Here is the story; they started sharing with a Guarav from India who they said was a pretty big dude. They were going through the Gospel when he called his friend Raunar over to hear it too! So both of the guys (who were both Hindus) heard the Gospel and then prayed to receive Christ. Greg and Ronnie set a time to meet and follow-up with them and left to talk to some more people. They went back and the guys that had just received Christ had just got done sharing the Gospel booklet with their Buddhist friend Viren who was now by himself. They went over to talk to him and walked through it with him and he accepted Christ as well! Please be praying for them and the other guys that have come to Christ that they would continue to grow in their knowledge of the Lord and get involved in Student Life.

Our team is focusing a lot on follow-ups this summer. Pretty much anyone we talk to we try to get another appointment with them to share more about the Gospel, answer questions or to walk them through some of the basics of a relationship with Christ. We want to make sure that we are building into people so that they can walk with God for a lifetime and multiply their lives into other students. It has been a little messy as we are figuring out how to help 24 people communicate with students al over the city. The way communication works here is that everyone texts for communication because phone calls are so expensive. As a result, we text everyone prior to our meeting on one of our three phones to make sure they remember the appointments.

For any of you folks who were on the New Zealand trip last year, I have been able to connect with a few of our friends from last year. Johnny, Oli and even Reuben. Reuben came down from Auckland for a brief bit to visit his parents and I was able to take him out for some dessert and hang with him for a little. Johnny is working at The Street City Church and is still minorly involved in Student Life. Oli is very involved and we have been able to see him quite a bit. Sadly those are the only folks from last year that are involved in Student life still. That is why we are placing such a high value on follow-up!

Over the weekend we were able to enjoy some of the great sites in Wellington. A group took the Wellington Cable Car up to the botanical gardens and a few of us hiked up to Mount Victoria that overlooks pretty much the entire city of Wellington. On a clear day you can see almost all the way to the south island. On our way down we found a rope swing on a tree by an overlook of the city [which we found out you can clearly see from ACROSS the city because it is in a clearing in the woods]. The landscape here in New Zealand is unlike anywhere I have been in the world. It really isn’t hard to be looking out at God’s creation while just being in awe of what He created.

As a side note, I have decided to put captions for pictures at the bottom of each post so that you know what each picture is of since blogger doesn’t allow you to post captions.

dave

picture 1 – Pipitea, one of the three Victoria University campuses we focus on
picture 2 – Jenny on top of Mt.Vic with Wellington downtown in background
picture 3 – Lindsay playin on the rope swing
picture 4 – you can almost picture a hobbit leaping out onto the path can’t you?
picture 5 – a flattering picture of me and Reuben