Rights? What Rights?

So hopefully you’ve had a chance to read Seth’s post about our day on Thursday, which included our wonderful traditional Maori welcome. Well, since then we haven’t done anything quite that exciting in real life, although watching The Dark Knight Rises was certainly a louder and more epic foray into the world of fiction. I’m still going to give you a bit of a rundown though, for completeness’ sake, and maybe you’ll find it interesting.

On Friday we got up as usual, but rather than doing our life story sharing time like we have all week, we instead had more of a normal lecture. First we heard from a man named Mike (he’s an important guy, but I don’t remember his last name) about the history of Marine Reach Ministries since it began in 1990, and current situation of the ministry. I found out that Marine Reach goes far beyond the Pacific, being the marine branch of YWAM all over the world. In the past, Marine Reach has conducted DTS’s on board ships operated by the ministry. Right now, the ministry doesn’t have a ship with Tauranga as its home port because they were led by God to give their ship the M/V Pacific Link to YWAM Australia in Townsville, Australia to focus on ministry to Papua New Guinea. Currently, they are refocused on training disciples at their land base (that’s where we are), and are raising money and looking for a new ship. If you want to know more about Marine Reach in general, go to here.

After that we heard from our DTS Coordinator and founder of Marine Reach, David Cowie, for the rest of the morning. First, he told us about the Ruel Foundation, an organization which he started to help impoverished children with physical deformities (like cleft lip/palate, club foot, etc.) get the surgeries and care that they need to live normally. It all started when he found a boy named Ruel who desperately needed care for a double cleft lip and palate and helped him get surgery to fix it. In the process of helping Ruel, he found many more children that had the same problem, and was determined to help all of these forgotten children. It was really amazing to see what David did – he saw a huge unmet need and didn’t hesitate to tackle it head on, and as a result God has worked through him and his foundation to drastically change the lives of so many children. It makes you think that maybe with God’s help we really can change the problems we see around us.

After telling us about the Ruel Foundation, David went on to present an extremely challenging lecture, one which could be addressed to any Christian, because it is wholly based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 8:18-22, 10:37-39, 16:24-26, 19:27-30.

When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” -- Matthew 8:18-22

Now, in case you don’t want to look up the other passages, the basic idea is Jesus telling his followers that they are going to have to give up their rights when they follow him – pretty much all their rights. Here is the list of rights that David explained that Christians might have to yield:

• Good accommodation
• Food we like (he passed around Lamb’s Tongue – a New Zealand delicacy that tastes like a cross between spam and tuna...mmm)
• Privacy
• Making Decisions
• Wealth and Possessions
• Justice – did Jesus receive justice??
• Equality
• Reputation
• Mature Leadership
• Freedom
• Marriage
• Friends we want
• Family
• Time
• Life

So just think about that – Jesus didn’t guarantee us any of these things, and he himself didn’t get most of them. Most of these are rights we take for granted as North Americans (we need to include the Canadians here), but if we really listen to Jesus words, we might not get them. That’s kinds of crazy to consider, coming from the really privileged background that I have.

Anyway, after lecture we had Friday afternoon and evening free to do whatever we wanted. That meant that a lot of people played games (ultimate Frisbee always among them), some people went into town to go shopping, and in the evening a group also went to the Tauranga House of Prayer (THOP). I, however, was incredibly excited about putting up my new hammock in the avocado trees in the backyard and reading The Hobbit for an hour or two. After some ultimate, I also ran down to the valley and got some pretty good pictures of the sunset. 

Later in the evening, I also got a hold of the keyboard in the lecture room and played for a good while. I hadn’t played for a few weeks, so I had quite a good time, and was very happy that I had scanned several pieces of music onto my computer before I left home for just such an occasion. Fortunately, I don’t have to give up piano for 5 months!

On Saturday, we just hung around in the morning then headed off to town to see The Dark Knight Rises. New Zealand movie theaters are amazingly even more expensive than US theaters (most things cost more here), so after forking over NZ$16 each (around US$13), we enjoyed two and a half hours of wonderful epicness (though not quite as wonderful as the previous movie). Then, after exploring downtown Tauranga for a bit, we came back for dinner.

Later that night we got to break off with the other students from our specific DTS stream (justice) and have some hang out time. It turns out that we are going to have an awesome group of 12 students and 3 staff, and we can already tell it’s going to be all kinds of fun. We had dessert, then ended up playing a game that I’ve played before called fishbowl, but with some added aspects. It’s essentially a fusion of catchphrase, charades, and some other things. For those of you who have played fishbowl, this version had two extra rounds: one where you have to act out the word with only your hands (the rest of you is hidden behind something, like a sofa), and another where you can only use facial expressions. Needless to say, it’s hilarious.

Finally, this Sunday morning we got up and went to church. Seth and I went to the Mosaic Church, which turned out to be really great. My initial impression is that it’s a bit like my two churches The Vine and Vintage21 combined, which is awesome. The worship style and the pastor’s teaching style seem more like Vintage, while the overall location and atmosphere are really informal, kind of like the Vine. The pastor is a young guy that speaks really quickly and passionately, and is great at telling stories from the Bible in a way that we can relate to. He actually got up at the beginning of his sermon and told us that he had something planned, but he thought God wanted him to do something else, but he didn't have an alternative plan. He just had a few passages of scripture in mind, so he said, but he had no trouble building an entire off-the-cuff sermon on grace off of those passages. Both of us are really excited to go back on future Sundays.

After church, we went to a mall to have lunch then came back to the base. It turned out to be a nasty rainy day, so of course the first idea was to watch a movie. And what is the first movie that you would think to watch in New Zealand? That’s right – The Lord of the Rings. And so we moved all the lounge couches into the lecture room and piles in to watch the extended Fellowship of the Ring, which Seth and I could just about quote in its entirety. Later, we had excellent Mexican food for dinner (again!).

Well, that’s probably more details than you ever wanted to know, but then again no one is forcing you to read this. But that was our first weekend here, and we had quite a good time. Tomorrow, it’s back to lecture and watching God do some more of his incredible work.

Nighty-night,

Dan