group blog

www.nzsummerproject.blogspot.com

p.s. one of my posts didn't post, so i just RE-posted it...it is below the picture post. it's called: "it's amazing how you can speak right to my heart..." check it out! :)

pictures!

Hey Guys,

Real quick, God is doing incredible things here. Keep our last week in your prayers. I will be sure to update soon. Hope you enjoy the pictures. I miss you and love you.
I can't even tell you how incredible God is. I loooove Him so much!

Love,
Lindsay

P.S. check out the team blog:

This is the awesome zoo crew. What a fun and COLD day :)
What an incredible view. God is so majestic.

Beautiful lighthouse.
This is just after my most embarrassing moment...I'll tell you about that soon...
This is Kim and Katie and we had an incredible time on our mid-project retreat together.
We have to clib like 900 stairs to our campus. We feel like dying half way up, hence the sad faces.
People play guitar all the time on the sidewalks. They are incredible. This guy is exactly like Bob Dylan.
LOOK! a seal in it's natural habitat! We didn't even know it was there at first.
HEAD LOCKS at the jazz band one night :)

The whole group on our travel weekend! I sure am going to miss them...

This is Tara and my funny close-up picture :) I love this girl!
This is what I get to run by each day. The harbor at sunset is breathtaking. God is such an incredible creator.

We got the chance to go to the zoo this weekend...I got to feed a GIRAFFE! what an amazing experience :) Their zoo is pretty exciting! While it was raining, and we were some of the only ones there, it was still a total blast!

It's amazing how YOU can speak right to my heart...<3

Gosh you guys, honestly, this trip has blown my expectations out of the water. I was expecting to come here and share the Gospel with all of the people I run into and really just help create a ministry. I wanted to come an form a deeper relationship with God and break some of the bonds that have been holding me back in my walk with the Lord...While I feel like I have been doing all of those things, I feel like I'm not just sharing the Gospel, I'm giving people the opportunity to get a quick snapshot into my heart, and hopefully into the heart of Jesus Himself. We're not just helping to create a ministry, we are navigating and piolating the entire process on my campus. When I said that I hoped I would be able to form a deeper relationship with God, I would have never expected that I would truly get to learn of His heart and actually feel Him grip my life. He has broken the bonds I had hoped He would and He has been helping me wrestle with struggles I wasn't even aware of having. I thought I was on good terms with Jesus before I left--I was trying my hardest to be obedient, I was reading Christian novels, and I was just trying to walk through my life the way I hoped He would have intended me to. But since being here, I have learned so much from the people here...more than I ever knew I needed to learn. I have fallen head-over-heels in love with the creator of the Universe, and it's the greatest feeling in the world because I know that while I've fallen, He will NEVER let me fall...He will only continue to pursue me and romance me. Some friends told me that I would fall in love while in New Zealand...and I have...a greater love than I could have ever imagined. PRAISE GOD!

This week was incredible. I have met some amazing people of peace on the campus I have been placed at and I have had the opportunity to speak truth into their lives and help them understand what it means to have a relationship with God. I said a couple of posts ago that it is spirutaally dead here, and I truly believe that it's true, BUT there are so many people here who are warriors too, for God's Kingdom. There are people here fighting through the lack of spirituality, and I have such respect for them! I can't wait to tell you the specifics of each heart that I feel like the Lord has let me see into, but just rest in knowing that they are absolutely, without a doubt awesome people and I love them.

To those of you who know that I have an artistic side, God has really been pointing me towards art and yesterday I stumbled across an incredibly cheap art store and it was TOTALLY 100% of the Lord that I went there. I believe that He is going to use that either to know my heart more or to reach the hearts of others...GET EXCITED! :) haha

Time has flown since being here. I miss everyone a lot, but I haven't had time to think about being sad! I have just been rejoicing in the Lord. I hope you are all growing and changing and discovering yourselves. If you have accepted Christ as your savior, then the Lord is delighting in you wherever you are in your walk with Him and if we continually seek Christ, we will continutally be renewed for our wrongdoings. [Colossians 3:10]

I'm not sure what I'm leaving out, honestly, but God is so good, and the relatinoships that I've formed on this trip are ones I know will last a lifetime. <3 God bless all of you...I'll be home before you know it!

time flies.

It's crazy to me that I have been here for almost a month!! Time is literally flying these days. I was feeling super discouraged by a lot of the students and their lack of interest in spirituality last week, but it was the day before my last post that I asked the Lord to break my heart for what breaks His, and it wasn't until then that I really saw the brokenness here in New Zealand. He truly showed me what breaks His heart last week, but the next day, I had so many incredible conversations with people. I had 5 people ask if we could meet up again for coffee to talk about who God is and everything. My heart just about popped out of my chest! The people here are precious, that's for sure, but I just want them to be able to experience a love that is unfailing, eternal, and all-forgiving. It's sweet being here and just getting to see what it feels like to be a true missionary. Let me tell you, it's draining, and it's never the same. It seems like everyday we're doing something different, which is incredible. It's been great and challenging at the same time to talk to all of the same people everyday on campus. But to be totally honest, I love it. I have been able to create some amazing relationships with these 3 girls from Malasia named Kavitha, Laksha, and Lasina. They are super sweet girls...some of the nicest people I've met so far :) I met this guy name Asti too...he has been really fun to talk to as well, because he is just coming to know who the Lord is. This girls Kate is a religious studies major in Uni here, and she is supper intersted to hear about Christianity...she actually just asked me if we could meet up to talk more about things.

I am just learning about love. It has been an ongoing lesson since the very end of the school year. But basically I have just been trying to love people as much as my heart will let me. I have been making sure that I am not loving from an empty cup too--I have been having time each and everyday with Jesus which has been absolutely amazing. I really don't know what to tell you guys other than the fact that loving people comes so much easier if you learn to accept love from the Lord first.

What else? I know! I have been getting so close to the women especially on this trip! I love them all. It's so easy to connect to women who go through the same stuff as all of us and who don't hesitate to give encouragement. We went on our mid-project retreat this weekend which was a total blast!! We went to Island Bay and got to see these seals, and we had a picnic and walked probably close to 10 miles! Then we got back and we went out to a nice nice dinner and I had a pumpkin soup and a snapper fish with vegetables...it was INCREDIBLE! That's one thing I'm going to miss when I go home, is the food! And the people that play the guitar or piano or drums on the street...they're awesome. SO cool. Each day they amaze me and make my day :) Anyways, it is 12:17 AM here and I'm so tired. It's been an exhausting last couple of days with our big hike! I will update again real soon and hopefully put up some pictures so you can see what I'm up to.

I love you all and God bless each of your hearts <3

music speaking to my heart.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zFOCvuii96w
while i'm on a christian summer project, John is AMAZING still...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_0PzZZY0ByQ
LOVE THIS SONG. God is incredible.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GchXGaxLXpg&feature=related
Lord, I want to yearn for you...

love you guys! <3

Keep On Truckn'

Hey guys!

It has been such an incredible week. Again, the Lord is doing so much in my heart, that I can't even begin to explain to you all that He's done. Let me first tell you that I KNOW I'm exactly where I need to be. Walking in God's will gives me that assurance, and I am super excited that He brought me here to New Zealand. I'm learning that walking through life in the Holy Spirit is walking in moment-by-moment surrender to myself. I have learned that God being glorified and God being enjoyed are not not not two separate categories. I have learned that I am nothing--I mess up and I struggle and I fail and I am broken and I am needy, but despite all of my imperfections, God STILL loves me. I don't have to do anything to earn His love, it is never-ending and totally fulfilling. I am prideful and I let that stand in the way of God's reaching all of my heart. But I think that to some extent, pride is the root to all sin. Some people think that money is, but why do we want money? For our PRIDE. So we can appear to others like we have it all together...to have a big house, and nice sunglasses, and the perfect sweater, and those really expensive shoes to "make the outfit." We are so consumed with ourselves, but if we took our eyes off of ourselves and focused solely on the Lord, we would be so much more generous and humble and joy would be so much easier to find.

Back to what I've been doing here. Today my heart was officially broken for the people here in Wellington. It's like, atheism is so prevalent here. No one was raised in church and many have absolutely no idea who Jesus Christ is! It wasn't until my tenth conversation today that it hit me. I am going out to share my heart with these people, and some may accept Christ as their saviors and some may not, but it's not about how many people I see converted. It's about the relationships that I'm being able to build and the seeds that I'm planting in their hearts. It's not my job to grow these people into Christ, that's God's job...I just get to invest in their lives and hopefully spark a curiosity about spirituality that they hadn't previously thought about. I've been learning that being a missionary does not mean that things go perfectly all the time, and to be honest, that's the way that I love it. It's nice to wonder what we're going to be doing one day, but know that whatever is done, is all for the Glory of the Big man upstairs. I can't imagine another time in my life when I felt so at peace. and an awesome quote to live by is:

"P. E. A. C. E.
it does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble
or hard work. it means to be in
the midst of those things and still
b e c a l m i n y o u r h e a r t.
<3"

Live with peace in your heart, but not self-sustaining peace; peace withing through the Holy Spirit. I want to just throw out there to you guys too, that many of you reading this may not know God, and let me just say, that it is the most incredible love. Maybe you had a bad relationship with your last boyfriend or girlfriend--God comforts. Maybe your family is messed up--your parents fight or they're divorced or they abuse you--God has His hand on your heart. Maybe you feel like you just aren't pretty enough, you put on make-up, you work out to have the best body, and you buy the nicest clothes, but there's always someone skinnier or prettier or cooler--Find your identity not in the ways of the world, but in Christ Himself. I would love to talk to you about it, not because I want to convert you or push my beliefs on you, but because I LOVE YOU. Yes, you. I love you because Christ has called me to love you.

Yeah, so anyways, I'm bad with tangents :) But seriously, God is so good and even in this country of spiritual death, God's light shines even brighter. I have made some awesome friends--on my team and with the Kiwis!! They are so chill--I can't even express to you how laid back these people are! It's insane. They are so precious to me though. Their lifestyle is great--they walk down the streets at their own pace, they love their time, and their lives. They are always at least 5 minutes late to everything, and they love to listen. They love people, and their accents ROCK! They have these phrases that they use that are sweet as.

Sweet as: cool! awesome!
jandals: sandals
I'm keen: I'm game!
cheers!: thanks!
have a good day!

And there are many more of their slang things that I love, but you'll just have to hear me use them when I get home :) So I guess in a wrap-up, this trip has been more than I could have ever imagined. And while I have those days that I'm just feeling discouraged, it is so comforting to know that God is on my side, and that you all have my back. So thanks, and God Bless you all--you're in my prayers...

More update and PICTURES! :)

So yesterday I told you a little bit about what else has been going on here, but I didn't get to go into detail really about what the Lord is doing in my heart. I have been learning what is true of Him and His character and just seeking His heart more and more with a passion to know Him. I know that He will never leave me, He will never hurt me, He will never break my heart or limit my dreams. He will never turn His back or stop listening or remove my compassion or love for others. He WILL love me and care for me as His child, and while I continue to pursue Him, I will learn more and more of what's true of Him, and He will continue to work in my heart and move me, mold me, change me, shape me, and challenge me. I will not let go of His hand, not ever, and He will never let go of my heart <3 learn more about their ways of life and their culture and their programs. We learned that it is a small caompus that is often disconnected from the rest of Wellington, so we are going to take that opportunity to get them plugged into something of truth. I have been having such a great time just building relationships here. Yesterday we were at a campus called Victoria, and I was with Allie (my discipler/leader/awesome friend) and we got to talking to these 2 girls and they were both interested in meeting up again later! So i think next monday we are going to meet up with them and talk about what they believe spirutally because neither of them know who Jesus is and both of them want to learn more! So that is super exciting :)

What else do I have to share with you? OH! I am on the encouragement team for our project, which is a good job for me. The theme for this trip is "flexibility is our friend" because it seems like we're kinda having to just go with the flow and keep an open mind to what we're doing here. So our team was getting a little frustrated when our schedule was falling through so last night me and the 2 other girls on the encouragement team made stress balls with balloons and flour for our entire team and gave them a card with the verse that says "This 'foolish' plan of God is far wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God's weakness is far stronger than the greatest of human strength." -1 Corinthians 1:25 I found that verse and thought it was PERFECT for the time.

I love it here, and I love running in the city. It is beautiful to run by the harbor with the boats and hills and valleys and buildings and lights. I can't wait to update you more about what the Lord is doing in this beautiful country, but get excited.

I love love love you all!

The beautiful country of New Zealand...

Wow, it has been a while huh? I am soo so so sorry for not posting sooner. I first, would like to just say thank you to everyone who does comment or read this and begins to pray for this trip, because to be 100% honest with you, this country needs prayer. I have learned today on my first day at Victoria campus in Wellington, that it is a very spiritually dark place here. Don't get me wrong, the people here are sweet as (sweet as what you might ask? we actually don't know, but it's a saying they use here meaning, "man that's sweet!" they just say "sweet as" to leave you to fill in the blank--"sweet as sugar" hahaha), but their beliefs are all over the place. Many don't believe in God at all...

I have met so many sweethearts. We went to this Christian conference about an hour away from here for their national meeting, and it was sooo cool. We met people from the North and South island, the Soloman Islands, Fiji, and the USA who were all gathered to Praise God. At the conference, God rocked my heart. He just revealed things to me that I need to work on, and it was great. I have been really seeking the Lord to overcome my "Giants" or what holds me back, and those bonds are being broken each and everyday.

After the conference, we came to Wellington, where we will be staying for the rest of our trip. We went on a super fun scavanger hunt the other day, and church yesterday, and I am getting to know the city a bit more :) I will update more tomorrow, but my internet time is running out!!

Prayer Requests:
-That the hearts of the Kiwi people would really be opened.
-That our team would be willing to take bold steps of faith to reach the students.
-For team unity.
-For miracles to be revealed.
-For focus to remain on the Lord and only on the Lord.
-For LOVE to just pour from our hearts and actions and gestures...

i love you all!!!
God Bless!

First Days in L.A.

Hey Everyone!

I arrived in L.A. yesterday at 12:10, and I got to meet my team last night. Let me just say that this trip is already incredible. The 22 other people are just amazing people with the hearts of servants. We are all preparing right now in the Embassy Sweets hotel in LA for our overseas trip to New Zealand on Thursday! Right now, God is just really teaching me to be obedient. I feel like so many times I put off my personal time with the Lord, and I am already learning to be excited about diving into the word and experiencing His greatness each and everyday.

So yeah! My flight went smoothly, I arrived, and got some food with a couple other team members, and then a large group of us were able to explore around LA a bit, and we ventured to the ocean! Which was this guy Matt's very first time ever being in the ocean :) It was really exciting.

Well, I don't have too too much to tell you guys, but I just thougt I would let you know I'm here and I'm safe. I miss you all already, but know that God is doing amazing things already with our team.

God Bless! And PRAISE THE LORD! [Ephesians 1:12]
--Linds

Just as a side-note everyone you can view our group blog at www.nzsummerproject.blogspot.com
Actually, Please do! Mitch is doing a great job :)