Kia Ora!

Figured it was time for me to write home... Give y'all a bit of an update. Officially I've been in New Zealand for nearly two weeks. It has been super good but challenging as I felt a bit behind, still sort of do but as the school is starting to gear up what I'll be doing is becoming more clear. We had two speakers who actually spoke together on my DTS last year. Josh Cole and Marty Emmett. They spoke on leadership heaps and just developing character and becoming the best leader you can be. We also had some ministry/ affirming time as a team. Super sweet. This last weekend we had staff retreat to get to know each other better.  So the backpacker and climbers staff drove to the West Coast to the small town of Moana. We stayed in a house, watched Titanic, walked to the lake, saw a real steam train which was one of my highlights. Fun times. I also got to drive one of the base vans on the left side for about 2 hours, heaps of it close to the edge as we had to drive through mountains and the like. Scary but fun. Got to chat wil Jill (one of the two climbers staff) for that drive. She's from Vancouver and is the coolest. We had a sweet conversation about life and what is like staffing as she's worked at YWAM Perth for the last couple of years. The staff are really awesome and we've been bonding well. This week we've been going through a lot of the nitty gritty stuff of staff so things like small groups, one on ones, schedules, speakers, our jobs for the lecture phase and the like. We are also sharing testimonies throughout the week. Other than that the students are coming in about ten day and it's been really sweet being back. Yep that's all I think. Miss y'all. Love y'all heaps too.
Jo