Michigan Mission Team Visit - part 1

Family Church's First USA Mission Team 

A team of 9 people from Lakeside Bible Chapel and Dunning Park Bible Chapel traveled to be with our church in La Calera for 9 days. It was a great time of fellowship and serving the Lord together. 

The main purpose of the visit was for the team to help our church hold a vacation kids' program. The children in our town were on vacation from school for three weeks. So it was an ideal time to feed them a hot lunch, give a Bible lesson and shower them with love. Most of the adults in our congregation work full-time, so it would have been difficult to pull off without the outside help! 

(we went with a world cup theme!)

On one of the outreach days local barbers gave the kids free haircuts!

 

Here are some of our local people who helped in a myriad of ways too:

 

 

The team participated in all our church meetings, we all enjoyed the bilingual worship and prayer times together.

 

 

 

We had a special day with our local youth and the team treated them to lunch in a nearby town at a nice mall!

 

With the young adults we had a game night.

 

 Colombians and Venezuelans show their love through food - so there was lots of it and a good variety of specialties from both cultures. The team stayed in homes of the church people and so each group experienced different breakfasts, often with arepas and tropical fruit. (There were also breakfast soups and tamales on some of the menus!)

 

For the longer drives between Bogota and La Calera we hired a bus with driver to get us around. 

 

And for the shorter drives we used any available cars (ours was in the shop most of the trip!) or the local public buses.

 

 

 

 

Before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to our new friends!

 

 

Part of a 3 post series summarizing Family Church's first Mission Team from the USA:

• Part 2: Meaningful visits made to the homes of the outreach families

• Part 3: Work sprucing up a nearby Basketball court

NZ Visits

Sadly we forgot to snap pictures with everyone we met! Here are some of the lovely Kiwis we met along our travels.... in no particular order. Some people I've known since childhood and others we met for the very first time! Thank YOU to everyone we chatted with, had a meal together, asked about Colombia or worshiped together... we are leaving New Zealand encouraged and ready to dive back into ministry in La Calera!

We loved the time spent (not enough!) with our church at the Mount... here's a pic from Wednesday prayer time. 💚

New Zealand Beauty

Everywhere you look in this small country gives rise to praise the Lord for His wonderful creation! As we traveled to visit friends and family around NZ we were able to see some iconic places... what a treat! We feel spoiled by God! 💙 Enjoy some of our favorite spots:

Pilot Bay at Mount Maunganui

Fergusson Park, one of our most favorite local spots to get close to the water

Papamoa Beach at sunset looking towards the Mount

Gisborne port and Kaiti Hill - my old home town

Waikanae beach in Gisborne

Mount Ruapehu (middle of North Island)

Sheep and cattle all over the countryside

Foxton beach on the west coast of the North Island

Wellington bay

Estuary in Tauranga - 9km track took us 2 hours to walk

Lake Taupo

NZ has the best meat pies... this is a typical fast food lunch, enjoying it at Lake Tekapo (South Island from here on down)

But we loved Lake Pukaki more than the famous Lake Tekapo

The Earnslaw on Lake Wakatipu (an old steam boat that now gives tourists a ride across the lake to what used to be a sheep station)

View of Lake Wakatipu from atop Queenstown Hill: it was a 5km hike  up

Papatowai Beach in the Catlins

Bush walk somewhere in the Catlins

Cathedral Cave from inside

 

Cathedral Cave from outside

Petrified forest at Curio Bay (lots of petrified logs and tree trunks strewn around in the rock) 

Southland is famous for its Blue Cod

We saw one Yellow-Eyed Penguin come in from the sea at Curio Bay

I never tire of seeing the sheep

Purakaunui Falls

Nugget Point (straight out from there you'll hit either the tip of South America or Antarctica)

The view of Waihola lake from our friends back door

Moeraki boulders