July 9-15th:
Welcome to the down under!!! This was my first time in the southern hemisphere. I've been close when I was in Ghana, but never made it down under.We arrived in New Zealand on Monday July 9th to a very different temperature change! In contrast to the 95+ humid weather in Taiwan where we sweat through multiple shirts a day, we switched to a high of 53 and the air being below freezing when we woke up in the morning. Due to the quick climate change, many of us got sick with pretty bad colds. It was a challenge to continue to help serve the workshops when we would feel horrible with our headaches, slight fevers, headcolds, and terrible coughs. But we wanted to serve and love on these children! Even though it was winter, New Zealand is incredibly beautiful! We joined with Bridges Church, Pastor Murray and his wife Michelle Smith, to help them put on a GLO (Giving Life Opportunities) workshops for Cambridge neighbor kids age 6-13 years old. We were also able to work with Ray and Maxine Nelson; some good friends of the Kawases from having gone to the same church as them for many years. The Nelsons just moved to be missionaries to New Zealand about one year ago.
section. Guess we got used to
not being able to read the signs!
and still cold!
Although the children in the GLO camp looked very western with blonde hair and blue eyes, they were still a mission field as many of them are from broken homes. In NZ the average marriage has about 4-5 partners. Our team quickly learned how to relate to and manage the children. It was frustrating at times, but we learned patience and the heart of the Father for these children. Teaching dance from 9am to 4pm is hard work trying to maintain children's attention! We taught them ballet, hip hop, martial arts, and improvisation. Another obstacle we ran into was the language. Even though we speak English and they speak English, there were several times we couldn't understand each other and had to ask "What?" several times. They also have several Mauri, the native language, phrases that we didn't understand. But the longer that we heard them, the more 'Kiwi' we became. At the end of the week the kids would come and just hug us, sit in our laps, and rough house with us, loving every minute they could get our attention. It was cool to see that our goal of being Jesus with skin on to these children, affected them causing them to be drawn to us. After a week of morning and afternoon workshops, Friday evening the students performed for their parents. There was also 4 other modules in addition to our 4 dance modules so they were able to show off their singing, piano, drama, and guitar to their parents.
course to burn some of their energy
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