The Tip of the Iceberg

Wow- it’s incredible that three weeks have gone by since I last posted on here!! They have flown by, yet have been so packed full of goodness. :) Let’s see…where to begin….

Well, much of what has made these last three weeks particularly sweet has been the fellowship that God has given me here. So I will start with that.

I have gotten plugged into an awesome group on campus called the Navigators. Navs is an international organization, and I met and become friends with some people involved with it in the states just this past summer during a discipleship program that I did in Branson, Missouri. I had never heard of Navs before and found out through the friendships the Lord allowed me to have this summer with people involved in it just how sweet and solid of an organization it is. If I had not had this previous encounter with it, I probably would not have ventured over to the UC Navs (University of Canterbury Navigators) table during Club Day. Pretty “cool” (Laura, you know what I mean) how the Lord is in the ongoing business of connecting one thing to another; using one experience to impact and direct another. All I can say is: He is amazingly good at what He does!!

After a few purely social events to kick off the semester, we got together at the beginning of the month to go over the vision of Navigators worldwide, and more specifically, the vision for Navigators as a body at the University of Canterbury. We’re going to be looking at 1 Thessalonians this semester, and we split up into the small groups we're going to be in. There were about 50 people altogether, and we were split up into 6 groups, so we had about 8 or 9 people per group. There were 8 or 9 of us from America, and the leaders had put us all in the same group…

At first, I think most of us were a bit disappointed to realize that we were not going to be in a group with many Kiwis, but then after the leaders, (both of whom ARE Kiwis), shared with us the intention behind having us all together, we began to settle into the goodness of the decision. The rest of our time together that night consisted of each of us sharing a bit of our story. After this, there was a sense of amazement over how the Lord had crazily orchestrated our being together and an excitement for what He is going to do through our time invested with one another!!

Man oh man, to be a part of the beautiful revolution!! That is, the revolution Jesus started of drawing people to the Father through living amongst them. And now we can do the same because of the gift of His Spirit living in us!? There is no greater privilege.

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. 1 Thessalonians 2:8

I left that night insanely stoked and amazed, but not in the least bit surprised. I have accepted that God will forever be blowing my mind with His goodness. The longer I live, the more He does this.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is indeed a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:28-29

Since that night, relationships within the group have certainly been growing. One of the highlights of my time here came last week when I got together with a new friend of mine, Hannah. Hannah is beautiful and the light of Christ radiates from her. She and I got together for an hour or so on campus between lectures and had a conversation so rich in goodness that I just had to laugh throughout it over the Lord’s orchestration of having our paths cross at this exact time in each of our lives. God used her that afternoon to bring clarity to me over something that I had been struggling with, and the best part is that she was simply just sharing her heart and her life, not having any idea that the words she was speaking were ministering to me!

I told Hannah right then and there that the Lord was speaking through her to me, but even if I had not, it would not have changed the fact that He was. I absolutely believe that when we’re seeking Jesus and dwelling in Him, there are, even in just a single day, a countless number of instances that He uses us to positively impact the world, and that many of these instances are ones that we may not be at all aware of.

“I am the Vine; you are the branches. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the Vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. If you remain in Me and I in you, you WILL bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” Jesus john 15:4-5

Two weekends ago I went on the first Tramping Club (tramping=hiking!) trip of the semester. Because it was the first of the year, and because it was not a hard tramp, over 100 people in the club signed up to go! On Saturday morning we all showed up on campus outside of the Student Centre to head to Arthur’s Pass, an hour and a half trip from Christchurch.

When we got to Arthur's Pass, we were given the opportunity to choose one of three different tramps that would all lead to where we were going to set up camp for the night. The first option was to follow the main trail. I thought, “Hmm…probably cool, but it’d be fun to be more hard core.” :) The second option was to walk straight through the river, (stream, really), for most of the way. “That could be fun for sure,” I thought, and waited to hear what the third option was going to be. The third option was to do the ‘extreme’ tramp. This consisted of heading straight up the mountain, following no set trail whatsoever and bush-whacking the whole way through. “Extreme!!! Yeah!!!! I'm down!!”

Alright, so I was eager to do this one!! Thankfully however, I had just become friends with Monica, a real cool girl who has been tramping for much longer than I have, and Monica cared enough about my well-being to strongly advise me to choose the stream tramp instead of the extreme. She basically implied that if I didn’t have dying high up on my agenda for the day, I would not choose the extreme tramp. I didn’t, so I heeded this advice. :)

It took about three hours to do the tramp via the stream and we arrived to our destination, Hallelujah Flats, a couple of hours before dinner- delicious gumbo type stuff and rice! I could tell that we were in a beautiful spot, but it was pretty overcast and I was looking forward to being able to see everything more clearly in the morning. I had a long and really good night's sleep and woke up glad to be in the great outdoors.

We started to make our way back to the stream after eating some breakfast and packing up, and sure enough, these extraordinary mountains were right there in front of us that had been no where near as visible the day before.



The tramp back down was great. We practiced river-crossing before heading back into Christchurch, and it was quite the adrenaline rush! My group enjoyed it so much that we all decided to do it a second time. Of course, it wasn't as scary the second time because we had done it once before. Confidence is gained with experience and trust built. We held on tight to each other, screamed a bit, and laughed more. It was a good time. :)

I was so excited to find that the van I rode back in to Christchurch had legit windows in the backseats!!! I don’t think I had ever seen this before. What I have normally found is that if the windows can even open at all, it is usually only about an inch wide. (Which is basically pointless if you ask me. Ha!) I thought it necessary to take full advantage of this sweet attribute, so for a good bit of the ride, I stuck as much of myself as I could out the side of the van. It was wonderful. A bee stung me at one point and as I jerked back inside, I considered not doing it again, but then thought: “Just because I got hurt, am I going to choose to stop enjoying this great experience out of fear of getting hurt again?” I answered no, and stuck my head back out into the glorious sunshine, wind rushing against my face as we drove along New Zealand’s country roads at about 90 km/hour.

I was sitting next to Monica in this windowed-out van, and she asked what I had thought of the trip. I told her that I had thought it to be ridiculously beautiful, to which she responded, “Oh man, if you think this is beautiful, just wait. This is only the tip of the iceberg.” Those kinds of statements often give me chills, as I am reminded that there is still so much more to come in life than what I have experienced. Not to mention heaven!!!

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived… what God has prepared for those who love Him." 1 Corinthians 2:9

And the anticipation builds.


Last weekend, we had a Navigators social weekend about an hour outside of Christchurch at a place called Lake Lyndon. The Lake was completely surrounded by mountains, and a single lodge sat right off the furthest point of the lake. This is where we stayed Friday and Saturday night. The weekend was super low key and wonderfully relaxing. Saturday after having breakfast we headed out for Cave Stream, about fifteen minutes away from the lake, to go caving!! I was told the water was going to be absolutely freezing, and that it could easily be chest high at points. This was a bit intimidating, and I wasn’t set on going. Thankfully, my faithful friend Olivia, (the beautiful one I'm with in the picture above), had been the weekend before and convinced me to go. I am so glad she did, because it was a blast!! It was a new experience for me, and I loved it. Gotta love positive peer pressure. The water was cold, but I was told by those who had caved there before that it was not nearly as cold as it usually is. Also, it turned out that there were very few times when the water even came past my hips. So the water temperature and level were to our benefit, making for a very enjoyable first caving experience.


After caving, we found a sweet hill that was just crying out to us to come and take photos on it.
So we did.



After jumping, we headed back toward the lake and stopped at Castle Hill for about an hour. If you’ve read earlier postings I’ve made on here, you might have read that I had been to Castle Hill before. In fact, it was one of the first places I went in New Zealand, because it was part of my program’s three day orientation. This time might as well have been my first time for how beautiful I found it to be.

I love how the same place never has to become boring, no matter how many times it is visited. I believe this to be because no experience has inherent value. The value of an experience rather, is very much determined by our attitudes and the position of hearts. These two things, more than anything else, will decide the degree to which we enjoy and appreciate what we experience. The company we’re keeping, our health, the weather…yes, these things certainly play a part in our experience of something. But still-we filter these things through our attitude, and depending on what our attitude is, allow them to have great impact, or little impact on the quality of our experience.

Oh! Speaking of doing something you’ve done before but experiencing it entirely differently- again, if you’ve read previous postings, you might have read that I met a beautiful girl named Nicole in the L.A. airport and had a really encouraging conversation with her before boarding the plane to Auckland. She, too, was on her way to Christchurch to study at the University of Canterbury for the semester, just through a different program. After parting ways at the airport, I was excited to have met this new friend and sister in Christ, and was looking forward to hanging out with her once we were both in Christchurch.

The first few weeks went by, and our paths didn’t cross. Then a couple of weeks ago when I was just leaving campus on my bike to head back home, I rode past her running with a group of people. She saw me too, but we were both moving quickly, and in opposite directions, so we didn’t stop to catch up. I was glad to have seen her, but still very much wanted to actually hang out. I didn’t know her last name and didn’t have her number, so I had no way of contacting her. I would just have to hope that our paths would cross again.

We have our Nav small group nights on Tuesdays, and I had to miss last week's because I had an event to go to that had been scheduled way beforehand with my program. The next day I hung out for a good part of the day with my friend Dani, and I asked her how things had gone the night before. (She's a fellow American, and we're in the same small group). She told me things had gone really well, and that two new girls had joined the group. When she told me their names were Nicole and Kristen, I thought to myself, “I bet it’s the same Nicole. It would just be so like God to go and do that.” ;) So sure enough, I show up that weekend, (last weekend), to head out for Lake Lyndon, and there she is!! How glorious. The delight God has in bringing His people together is simply glorious.


To further emphasize the beautiful truth of this, it is worth telling where Nicole’s friend, Kristen, who was also coming to Lake Lyndon for the weekend, is from. First of all, I have found it really rare to have people respond with both a state and city when asked where they are from. In fact, sometimes they don’t even say a state, they might just say the country, or maybe a region of the country. For instance, I usually just say, "I’m from the east coast of the states,” and then if questioned further I’ll say Virginia. If anyone does include the name of the city in their response to where they’re from, it is almost always only because it is a rather big one that people are likely to have heard of. Anyway, all that to say…after being so glad to see Nicole and catching up with her for a bit, I was eager to meet her friend Kristen and ask where she was from. “I’m from Branson, Missouri!” she said with a huge smile on her face. I laughed out loud. Of all the places in the world that she could have been from, it was really quite humorous that she would be from Branson, seeing as how I spent almost all of this past summer there. God knits the intricacies of our lives together, and uses them all for His glory!! I don’t think I will ever get over the wonder of the interconnectedness of things, and honestly, I have no desire to.

So, to tie everything back to the reason I just told this story…it is true that Nicole and I had met before, but meeting again last weekend was entirely different from meeting the first time, because our hearts were in a different place from where they had been when we had first met!

God has blessed the two of us with a particularly sweet friendship with one another, and we are confident that He made every nation of people, that we should inhabit the whole earth. And He has determined the times set for us and the exact places where we should live. He has done this so that we will seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He isn’t far from any of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:26-28


The Lord is doing an awesome work amongst us here, and it is more than exciting to get to be a part of it. The Kingdom is coming here on earth, as it is in heaven, and man oh man, it's pretty incredible.