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New Zealand

Leave a Country for a little while..

…and look what happens.

Now whichever anti-Christian group uses this as ammunition on the war on Christmas

…at least communist China and other athiestic countries still like Christmas…

…but at least America isn’t guilty of this explicit abuse of Christmas!

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New Zealand

Home, at Last

A few hours later, we’re home. Our flights all went well until [surprise!] America West had problems coming from Phoenix to Memphis. Evidently, our plane was overweight and because of weather conditions or something like that, could not hold enough fuel to get us all the way from Phoenix to Memphis. So, a refueling stop in Kansas was added. When we landed in Kansas, something happened to the nose gear…and the plane needed repairs. And since the gates were all full of parked planes at nearly 11 pm, they gave us stairs…and we had to walk out onto the tarmac and into the terminal and wait for a half hour for repairs before arriving in Memphis a little after 1:15 this morning.

All things considered, the trip really did go well. We all made it back…no plane crashes or any nasty little tricks like that…and we get to sleep in our own beds. Now if somebody could just do something about the heat out here…

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New Zealand

Wrap Up

It is Tuesday night, and we’re packing up to leave tomorrow morning. The last two days were not our most productive ever. I had something akin to the flu on Sunday and Monday, and missed the morning’s work. Today, it rained very hard, and we got a very few doors knocked between showers, and half of a suburb letterboxed during the rainstorm. That probably wasn’t smart, but we’re on our way home.

See you in a couple of days!

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New Zealand

Happy Saturday!

Group on First Saturday

Group picture from Paratutu our first Saturday here.

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New Zealand

End of the Week

Thursday and Friday were two more days of doorknocking and letterboxing. On Thursday, Angie and I had our study with a lady named Robin. The study went well and there is a return appointment set up with her for the locals to take care of.

Friday was a bit slower of a day. The group I was with had no positive responses, basically. The best conversation that I had all day was with a Jehovah’s Witness who shared some great revelations with me, including, but not limited to:

on the day of Christ’s appearing, He will be invisible. I asked, “So you’re telling me that He won’t appear on the day of His appearing?”

I asked why she uses the JW New World Translation. She explained to me that the god of the present age infiltrated the other translations. So I asked why I shouldn’t believe the same thing happened to hers. She explained that God has (and this is a direct quote) special slaves whom He tells His word to that make sure their translation is accurate. Interesting, since the NWT has not been around for their entire history. Sometime, read what they’ve done with John 8 and Christ’s claim of being “I am” over the years.

Our afternoon Bible study cancelled on us to finish off the day. So, we’re all glad that Saturday is here and we have a day to regroup before going out for our last two days of doorknocking. We’ve put out nearly 20,000 free book offers and 4,000 Gospel Minutes articles now, along with various other studies. Every day when we check the mail we have several of those book offers returned, so it has been neat to watch that work.

For the day off: dinner with our host family and maybe horseback riding or dam dropping.

Categories
New Zealand

Wednesday

Today we spent most of the day letterboxing, as the weather was cold and windy. Fortunately, northern winds are supposed to come and bring us warm air tomorrow. I just felt like Leeper giving you the weather report there. One thing is really neat about the climate down here. The mountain is so tall and stands out so much against the hills around it, that cloud systems actually back up against one side of it, and you can sort of see the weather as it spills over the mountain toward Taranaki.

Nothing much interesting happened today. We letterboxed quite a bit and got several more responses back in the mail. Our total of free book offers is somewhere above 15,000 distributed. We’ve sent out 4,000ish Gospel Minutes and door knocked more than 1,500 doors. So, I’m tired.

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New Zealand

Tuesday

Today was yet another day of door knocking and letterboxing. Here’s some more from Monday:

Talked with an athiest fellow for about 20 minutes who had four children. His main reason for athiesm was suffering of mankind. To his credit, he sends his kids to Sunday School because He wants them to grow up and have a choice when it comes to spirituality.

Was yelled at through a window by a person screaming “Go away! God is dead!”

Talked to an 18 year-old mother who wants to know for sure if there is a God so she can raise her daughter.

Today, we talked to a guy for about an hour who describes himself as still having a small spark of spiritual interest, believing that there is probably a God. He feels distant from him; as he put it, when he prays, it is like talking to Santa Claus. He likes a lot of Christianity’s ideals, but knows how hard they are to implement in life as we know it. He also doesn’t understand how Christians can eat meat, because of the cruelty of how animals are slaughtered. He knows that scripture teaches it, but said, “I just can’t see Jesus eating meat.”

Another fellow wasn’t very interested in Bible study because his family was into translating Bibles. In the mid 1800s, that is.

Well, I think that’s all the fun for now. Tomorrow’s Wednesday–Kevin Moore and family are coming, and we’ve got class to teach.

Categories
New Zealand

Monday

On Monday we door-knocked a new area of town–a part with some government subsidized housing. It was our best success so far. Some Bible studies have been ongoing and are having good results. Rachel and I have a study planned tonight, and Angie and I set one for Thursday and one for Friday. Things are going very well!

Off to another full day of door knocking!

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New Zealand

Camp

Well, it is Sunday evening, about 10:30 pm local time. We got back from camp in Wanganui this afternoon. It was really neat to see the other two teams and see how they were doing. We all had lots of similar stories to tell about rejections at the door and strange people had met…the success stories were fun, too, of course… just not as interesting :)

It is quite different to be at a camp with a very significant portion of the Christians in an entire nation, and still not even come close to the size of Camp Kalos. Friday night we enjoyed getting to know each other and a devotional. Saturday morning was letterboxing Wanganui, which didn’t take too long since we had probably 70 people working. The afternoon was filled with injury-prone rugby games, hikes at the beach with waterfalls running into the ocean, and a trip to town to souveneir shop. We had worship and Bible study together at camp this morning, as well.

This week is five full days of door knocking, our last full week in New Zealand. Rachel and I have a Bible study with a family we met set up for Tuesday evening, and there are two more planned from other teams on Monday. We’ve had a great response to the book offer we’ve been distributing, and things really are going well. We just have to survive the rest of the door slams, now! :) We’ve managed so far…it will be a good and productive week, I’m sure.

Have a great Sunday!

Categories
New Zealand

Thursday’s Door Knocking

Today we talked to two people that were enjoying hangovers, a woman who assumed that we made an assumption, and was very unhappy about that, someone who knows that the world is about to end, and a variety of less entertaining door slams.

We leave tomorrow for camp in Whanganui (sp?). It’s a youth camp for all the churches of Christ in New Zealand, basically. We’ll be there until Sunday. The weekend will be filled with food & fun, of course, but will also have several hours of outreach in the town there, since no teams are stationed there for this trip.

So, this is my last post until Sunday evening, our time. Have a great one!