10-12

Hey everyone! Sorry about not updating you sooner! I’ll just update you shortly on what’s been going on. We are just finishing up our last week of lecture phase tomorrow, Tuesday the 13, and then on Wednesday we are going to be leaving for Bali. We fly out at midnight so we’ll get there early in the morning and have a full day of work…maybe.
But before I get into all of that, I’ll tell you what we’ve been doing with our time. A couple of weekends ago Andy and I were able to take the weekend away, just the two of us. We went to Waihi Beach, which is just a 45 minute drive north of where we are here in Tauranga, and spent the day there. They just have the most beautiful beach and it just goes on forever uninterrupted. But at the end of the beach there is this kind of hill type thing and once you hike over that you come to your own little bay, so that’s what we did and it was very beautiful, muddy, but good fun. So that weekend was relaxing, but this last weekend we moved the ship(M/V Pacific Link) across the bay to another dock where we get more publicity and put on tours, which is much like what we’re going to be doing for the second half of our outreach phase. So we had to clean the ship on Saturday and then on Sunday we had to put on tours for the open public of Tauranga, which wasn’t actually too bad at all, just made for a long day. And now we don’t have much time to relax before we head out to Bali!
Well, back to Bali. I don’t know if any of you have heard of the earth quakes that have been taking place in Indonesia, but don’t be worried about us, Bali actually hasn’t been hit by it so we won’t be dealing with any relief aid. We aren’t exactly sure what we are going to be doing over there so I’m just going to tell you what I know. We are planning on staying at a YWAM base there in Bali, not sure of the cities name, but we are going to be helping out there and then wherever the Lord leads us that day. We’ve been put in charge of certain ministries for our trip, I am in charge of the children ministry along with a fellow classmate (Angel from Alaska) and Andy is in charge of the prison ministry with another student (Jon from Indiana). The other ministries include hospital and evangelism, so we’ve got a really broad spectrum that we can be ready for. So that’s about all that I know, the leader of our school is also coming with us to Bali and he has been many times before so he has many contacts, so I’m not worried that we will be wandering into anything we’re not ready for. As for the other outreach team to Papua New Guinea, they have just now been getting contacts this last week, so they are really going in there blind and just listening to the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to move.
We will be in Bali for about 3 ½ and then we will be meeting up with the ship tour in a town around Auckland. This tour is calling out all the young Kiwis to come into missions, we are here to make kids aware of who we are and aware of what’s going on in the world and how they can help. We want to raise up a nation of Christians who are willing to give their lives to help others who are in need. We will be with the tour for about 4 weeks and we’ll end up back in Tauranga where we will then drive down to Tapu(?) for our graduation. But hopefully we’ll be able to update you again closer to that time.
Well the updates are now going to be few and far between, we won’t have internet connection in Bali as easily as over here or on the ships tour. We will be able to find internet cafes but they might be a bit hard to come by, we’re not sure as of this point. But we are going to try our best!
We appreciate all of your support and prayers!
Heidi & Andy