100th Post

Posted by: Kate on Thursday, April 28th, 2011, 1:21 pm • Comments

It’s our 100th blog post on noahandkate.com, nearly two and half years after our journey toward NZ began in January 2009! Here are a few updates:

This week we’ve hosted three guys representing Australian Environmental Solutions. (A Kiwi, a guy originally from Wales, and a guy from Tasmania). They are in town, trying to offer their inventive water management strategies to local officials here. Great guys!

Tutoring with my Nepali student is going great. I now teach him 3 days a week. He is applying for residency in the next few months and will have to take an English test. I really don’t know if he will pass… I don’t know how proficient he needs to be to pass.

Aftershocks continue as per usual. Guests often ask us how they should respond to these quakes. But we always explain that usually you can tell within a few seconds how strong it will get based on how it comes in… so we do nothing but pause/listen/wait it out. If it’s big and life-threatening, you’ll know and should dive next to a couch or bed, and cover yourself with the mattress or pillows. Or get outside in an open space. But that’s rare. Our house is safe. They can’t believe we “ignore” all the aftershocks and don’t react in panic.

This week we enjoyed two gatherings with some new American friends and had Mexican food each night! Luxury! One night we met up with a group of missionaries from the states (Kingdom Reality). They were based in Connecticut but recently felt led to base their ministry out of Christchurch. Then last night we met up with a family from Arizona/Colorado. Our friends in Denver, the Orr’s, told us about them. We enjoyed more Mexican food and played with their three boys! They work for the ministry, Navigators, here at a local university. We enjoy being connected to others in the city. We have always felt that God desires UNITY among his people and we feel part of our call here is to “cross-pollinate”… connecting people to people, ministry to ministry. We must work together!

Two weekend’s ago we enjoyed a short trip to Waikanae on the north island. We gathered with two dozen others and built relationships + discussed different concepts centered on the idea of simple/de-centralized/organic ways of church. Noah and I then enjoyed one extra day in windy Wellington, the nation’s capital. (Flying in was stunning!)

On Good Friday we enjoyed celebrating the Seder Passover meal with some friends. It’s our new Easter tradition! On Saturday we met with the McNeill’s to prayer walk, along with other believers in the city.

Later today we are meeting up with some university students and local Christians to all share what God has been up to and what He has been speaking to each of us. We anticipate working with the university demographic this year. Our regular gatherings with university students are going well as we continue to seek God on the direction He has for the group.

We had some help reinstalling a new hot water cylinder this week. We bought a new one, but thankfully insurance will reimburse us! We were helped by two YWAM guys who tore open the roof! We don’t have hot water yet, as we still need help from an electrician and then a plumber (lines need flushing from silt!) We continue to “enjoy” our bucket showers.

(3 days later, we officially have a working shower! Such a luxury it seems! But now our toilets are both broken. We called for emergency repairs today. They have been iffy since the quake and finally “died”.)

Our corner shops were demolished today! Very sad. Photos below (right after quake and then from today).

In other news, we miss you all back in America and hope you are having a lovely spring. Thank you for your continued support and love. We don’t know when our next trip to the States will be. We were both back for USA summer and I returned briefly for a funeral in November. We don’t have anything scheduled this year for upcoming trips, but we tell ourselves if we see a super-low fare we might just snatch it up and fly out. (They are extremely rare, but we’ll keep a look out. We miss you a lot and miss Chipotle heaps!) But we’d have to feel good about leaving here for that to happen. Haven’t felt we should leave anytime soon, but I know we will reach a point where we’ll need a little break.