Friday, January 07, 2005

Water and Wine

Happy New Year! We did want to be the first to welcome you to 2005 seen as we were some of the first around the world to reach the New Year but, as you can see, it's now 7 days later so that didn't happen.
Our excuse is that we've actually been quite busy! Christmas was lovely (though we did miss family, friends and our usual traditions) and we had two large dinners including various hot and cold meats, vegetables, salads. Dessert was strawberries and pavlova - Christmas pudding doesn't seem to be the same here unless you're originally from the UK and make it yourself! We had lunch with the vicar and his family and then went into Christchurch to spend the evening with the Carley family - Andy, Hillary, Alison & Jonathan - who moved out from the South of England about 6 years ago. We had lots of fun and suitably embarrassed ourselves on 'Singstar Party' the PS2 game which is a little like karaoke but when you sing into the microphone the programme matches your voice to how the song should go and then gives you points for each line. Neil and I went head-to-head on 'Video killed the radio star' but there were also team rounds where you passed the microphone between the team members. Naturally, the girls won - we seemed to be more familiar with the range of songs from Little Richard to the Scissor Sisters.
The 'water' in the title really refers to the weather which has been pretty much abysmal. I've almost forgotten what blue sky is. However, the sun did come out on Boxing Day and so we went to the beach with some other friends from church (they moved over from Huddersfield 8 years ago - bit of a nightmare because their container of everything they owned fell off the ship in Sydney and it took the insurance company 18 months to sort it out!).
We were entertained by a couple from Doncaster who have been here 30 years but still have their broad Yorkshire accents - very comforting! We also went to visit Rosemary (Angel Gabriel in the pageant, so spent alot of time with Neil getting words wrong!) and Geoff (who's originally from Swansea), who have a three acre plot on which they keep llamas, sheep, pea hens, doves and five dogs. The llamas are funny because they love getting wet so when the irrigation system comes on in the evening they dance over the top of the hoses to cool down!

The rest of the week up to New Year was spent getting ready for Summer Wine - a Christian camp held in Geraldine about 150km away. We were responsible for the 11-13 year olds and had quite a lot of planning and preparation of games & teaching stuff to do. We took Jenni & Miriam with us from Rangiora so they could be small group leaders and it was great to get to know them better over the week. The kids were fantastic and we had an awesome time. We had lots of fun with the teams (they named themselves 'The Incredibles' and 'The Smurfs' and came up with brilliant chants!) and they reallly got stuck in to newspaper fashion challenges, caterpillar races, banana split making competitions - in fact quite a lot involving food! The best bit by far was the way God came and revealed Himself more to the kids - it was a real privilege to be a part of that.

Here we come back to the 'water' because on the third day the sun did come out and loads of youth & leaders headed to the Orari Gorge. There was quite a convoy of cars which was good because we're not sure we would have crossed the fords in our car had it not been for the other similar vehicles in front that managed to get through safely. Usually, in summer, the streams have dried up so it isn't an issue but because of the unseasonal amount of rain this year it was slightly more challenging. I held my breath and Neil kept saying 'It'll be fine, we just need to keep moving and not stop in the middle'. Well, we made it there and back fine though the car now looks brown rather than green! At least the weather has not been as bad as on the lower North island where campsites have been flooded out and roads and railway lines washed away.

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