in love

Great weekend.  I'm really starting to LOVE these people (i.e. my team).  Friday night we went into Christchurch for "outreach."  After a couple hours of shopping, eating dinner, and enjoying the city we met in "the square" for some outreach time.  I was really nervous about this.  No one wants "Jesus freaks" coming up to them and prying.  Well, thats NOT what this time was.  We broke into groups of 3 and went where we felt led.  Carston, Alison, and I ended up spending our entire 2 hours talking to 3 local 15 year old boys.  They were "out" for the night (probably against thier parents will).  We just sat and hung out with them.  No life changing conversations...just us learning about thier culture and thier lives and them wanting to know about ours.  I loved it.  Evangelism is NOT about converting people.  It's about LOVING people, relating to people, and living our lives hoping people will see something different about us.  No, we didn't bring up Jesus to Louie, Cade, and Sam but maybe just the fact that we were interested in thier lives may somewhere down the road point them to Him.  I'm excited for our Friday nights in Christchurch. 

About 20 of us went to a place called Hanmer Springs for the day.  We experience the "hot" springs and took a little hike up to a "look out."  The drive there and little town of Hanmer was beautiful!  What's new?  Ha, every weekend we go somewhere the beauty amazes me.  

LOVING this...