Declaration

It’s been my first week in New Zealand and it is SO RAD here. First off, I made it safely! Thanks for your prayers! We arrived in Auckland on that Thursday at 4:45am and then went to bed at around 10:30ish. Longest day ever. So we spent two and a half days in Auckland (and one of those days we got to walk around the city for four or five hours, it was awesome) and then drove down to our base in Matamata on Saturday.

On Sunday we went to a 300 foot waterfall and all of us walked halfway up to a lookout, and then most of the team went to the base of the fall where they could swim in the water, but five of us hiked all the way to the top. Oh my goodness. It was so gorgeous. I’m going to be posting some of the pictures on facebook if they’re not posted already, but they’re nowhere near as awesome as the real thing was.

There are fourteen students at the school, seven girls and seven guys. I live in a room with three other girls and all of us are from different countries: Denmark, Switzerland and Canada. But we all get along really well and it’s really fun. But the greatest part is that there is twelve staff for the fourteen students so it’s a super personal experience.

All of the students and some of the staff have shared our life stories, which was an incredibly emotional time. But it has bonded all of us students with each other and that has been so cool. After we shared our stories us students prayed for each other in pairs or were prayed over by a staff member, and it was such a cool and emotional experience that everyone was crying. You know what, it’s just been a really emotional couple of days in general. It’s just awesome. I love it here.

But we also have to wake up at 6:15am almost every morning, and that’s been a struggle. We started classes on Wednesday and this week’s topic is The Character and Nature of God, it’s really cool and I’m looking forward to all of the classes for the next eleven weeks. Another exciting thing about this school is the amount of musical talent here. It’s ridiculous. But it’s really awesome because someone will start a worship song or something and then suddenly everyone around wanders over and soon we’re all praising God. AHHH IT’S SO SWEET!! We also have prayer and intercession almost every morning and it’s really moving, it’s only been five days and I already feel like I’ve grown in my faith.

I miss you guys and you’re in my prayers!