DTS Week One

New Zealand is a beautiful place!!! Our boat is docked at a port in the city of Tauranga..which is on the east coast of the North island of New Zealand. We will be docked here for 11 more weeks before sailing to The Great Barrier Island, then to Auckland for a few days, and then a five day sail to Fiji for outreach! I am not sure what type of things we will be doing on our outreach, but we will be there for 7 or 8 weeks. The next 11 weeks there will be various speakers coming to teach on topics like The Father Heart of God, Hearing God's Voice, Communicating Your Faith, Broken for His Purpose, Identity In Christ, and several others. This week we had a couple different speakers come for a day. Jesse Misa spoke on Embracing Change...he refered to this program as heart surgery, not school. Linda Cowie told some amazing stories about her journey with God including one where she was starting a school in Greece. The building that they acquired to have the school in was on the beach. But they had very little money to fund the school, or feed the kids. After some time things were a bit desperate but they managed to get by and feed the staff and kids. One morning the students and staff were gathered together to pray before school started when someone yelled for everybody to look out the window. There were thousands on fish washing up on shore. They spent the day gathering the fish, teaching the kids how to clean them and were able to eat for some time. Linda is a lovely woman of God and so facinating. She and her husband, David Cowie, began Marine Reach about 16 years ago. The next day David Cowie came to speak to us about the cost of following Jesus. In an attempt to prove a point he whipped out a can of lamb's tounge to share with us. I had to pass this time!! Theresa Micalina also spoke to us that morning about finding your identity in Christ. Anyway, not only is this a beautiful place, but God is at work here. I know that He is going to teach me so very much in the coming weeks!! Love you all!!! More to come soon!