Church Serving Week

 Hey everyone! I hope you're having a good Tuesday, even though I'm already enjoying my Wednesday :) So some news. Got back from my church serving week, had tons of fun but also got to bond well with my outreach team. So the low-down on the week:
Monday: We got to help out a church, Spryden Baptist Church picking up rubbish around their property and got to chat with the main custodian about what the church does in the community and boy do they host a lot of events! Everyday was booked full, I believe he said they have something like 100 small groups in their church that meet every week. We also met the I.T. guy, Donald who I found out worked at Camp Arnes for I think 2 summers. So if any of you know him, that's really cool... after (we were only there for 2 hours maybe) we went to Lyttelton and drove on some fun roads that were really narrow and high up, but the view of the harbor was awesome! After we went to Sumner Beach where we ate our lunch and fought seagulls. That evening we went to our host's house, where we stayed till Thursday morning (Jon and Mauri's house, Jon is the Basic Leadership School leader at base). We made dinner and hung out as a team and then went to bed...
Tuesday: Was going to go to a man's house to help him clean, but he ended up being quite sick so we went instead to Eastside Earthquake Support Angels base, called the Palace. We ended up cleaning and prepping the space for the new flooring that was going to be put in, last Saturday. After we went back to Jon and Mauri's for dinner and than we got to hang out and watch some great tv shows with them, like the Mentalist and Castle which funny enough were on Canadian stations (CTV). It was kind of weird though, haven't really watched movies or tv in awhile....
Wednesday: This day we went to an older man's apartment to help him clean his place up to make it livable, sort of. He lived in this tiny apartment for 5 years and I know he never cleaned it once, a book hoarder, slightly schizophrenic and a kitchen with mold even on the drying rack for his dishes, it seemed a little overwhelming. But it was awesome! We got to clean his very small kitchen which by the end, we could actually see what was under the mold and tons of dirt. We got to hoover (vacuum) most of his apartment as the vacuum wasn't in the best shape, but man, after we cleaned most of his apartment it was a miracle. It was so awesome to be able to help and bless this man in this really practical way. So cool. After we went to the mall and hung out and debriefed a bit, and than had dinner and hung out with our hosts :).
Thursday: Had a time of prophecy for Mauri's friend after brekkie and then we headed to Noah and Kate's house where we would be staying the night. Noah and Kate are contacts with the base and do a lot of connecting in Christchurch. Once there we got to help out Kate organizing their garage and sorting things for the rubbish bin, charity and garage sale. For dinner our team went out for pizza at a famous pizza place in NZ called Winnie Bagos.It was an awesome relaxing evening chilling with my team and getting to know them better.
Friday: So this was probably one of my favourite days. Our team got to hang out with Noah, doing yard work around their yard. Raking, trimming the hedges and just helping them out with stuff they need to do in order to clean the yard from the big earthquakes. We filled a trailer full of leaves and bushes and great biodegradable stuff and we 5 of us including Noah (not including Stephanie because she was at a meeting) and we got to the dump of Christchurch. It was a good time :) Returning to the cleanness of their home we let them go out on a date... and we got to babysit their daughter Sparrow (6 months old). When they came back from their romantic evening out we got to pray with and over them before heading back to the base at around 10.
Saturday (our day off): Got to sleep in!!! My team had brunch of really yummy chocolate chip pancakes (I even got gluten free ones!!) outside on a picnic table which my leader Stephanie had wonderfully laid out as a tea party. And for the afternoon we went to Rangiora to "shop" and thrift. A fun relaxing day getting to know our team better!
And so that was my church serving week... tons of learning and tons of fun!