One thing about living on the other side of the world to a large number of friends and family members is that you tend to live in two parrallel universes which never intersect. This is why we so enjoy receiving NZ visitors in France. But until this weekend we had never had anyone from France visit us in New Zealand.
François is a young friend from Nantes, an engineering student who, instead of fulfilling his foreign work placement requirement somewhere sensible like England, he came all the way to NZ where he ended up working in a pulp and paper mill in the exotic (ahem!) little town of Tokoroa. If you read French you can find out here about his NZ adventure.
It was an ideal weekend as we had a dinner to get together with old friends, and gave a presentation in church on Sunday morning, part of which was an interview with François about his life in Nantes and what it’s like being a full-on Christian in such a secular educational environment. François is very active in Agape Campus - a student Christian movement in Nantes. It was great hearing his impressions of our homeland - seeing it through French eyes.
When you’re travelling there are so many things that can go wrong. In fact I had just been reflecting on the fact that our travel so far on this trip has been surprisingly uneventful and straightforward, when something happened. Sure enough - I didn’t really think we were going to get back to France without something exciting happening.
As we were travelling at 100kph along the motorway north of Auckland in our white diesel van on loan from OM New Zealand (yes, that great OM tradition of getting about in ageing but faithful vans has even made it to the bottom of the world!), when a big bang, a loud warning siren and a lot of smoke alerted us to the fact that something was not quite right. To make it even more exciting, the brakes failed, and my wife told me afterward that my face went even whiter than the van (which needs a good clean, actually - the van, not my face). At that speed bringing the van to a stop was a tricky manoeuvre, but a couple of hundred meters later I was able to safely pull off the road, as it turned out, right beside an emergency phone.
Little tip if you ever happen to break down on a New Zealand motorway: look for an emergency phone rather than using your cell phone. If you call from one of these, the motorway authority will have you towed free of charge to the nearest garage (something about keeping the motorway secure).
As it turned out, the nearest garage was in a town where we happen to have some good friends who were away overseas - such good friends that we actually know the door code to get into their appartment! We were able to camp there while the van was being fixed (broken fan belt and blown out radiator). It was a bit of a pain being delayed for two nights, but we made good use of the time.
It could have been so much worse. I know that just because God is looking after us it doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen. But in this particular instance we were pretty impressed by his care for us, in the way that a potentially disastrous situation turned into a reason for thanksgiving (the prayers of a faithfully praying mother-in-law also probably had something to do with it!)
[posted with ecto]
We are safely back in Hamilton for the final two weeks of our New Zealand trip. Too much movement and not enough Internet over the last couple of weeks for regular posts, but overall the last 3 weeks in Auckland, Whangarei & Hamilton have left us marvelling at how many amazing people we know, and what a privilege it is to spend time tripping around the country visiting them all! We’ve spoken in three different churches - each very different from the other.
The first has the intriguingly descriptive title of His International Mission, a dynamic AG church in which we were the only white faces in a big group of brown. 
Great to see the passion for God and for mission amongst our Polynesian brothers and sistas. The second was Pakuranga Christian Fellowship, a church with a long contact with OM, and had the great bonus of being the church of our friends Greg & Joanne who were helping lead churches in the north of France for many years. As a kiwi family with four children, they were our “inspiration” - when we met them, we thought well if they can do it, maybe we could too! They’re still very active in ministry, currently church-planting amongst international students in south Auckland.
The third was West Hamilton Anglican, which we wrote about in another post on reinterpreting traditions. Our friends here have done such a marvellous job of facilitating our stay in New Zealand. As a teenager I left an Anglican church in which if you wanted to learn about Jesus you had to really dig deep, and it’s like I’ve gone full circle as our Hamilton church family is also an Anglican church, but one in which the gospel is preached loud and 
clear.
It was a relief to finish the message on Sunday morning, after 5 straight weeks of preaching, and now we begin to set our sights on the long trip home. Can’t believe it’s gone so quickly.
A drop of colour may change things,
My imagination may give me wings,
But with you Jesus I will fly away ,
In your hands I lay
Because you are strong and good,
Cry I could,
But you will cheer me up ,
I will drink in your cup,
Feed in your bowl
Because I have one goal,
To serve you only.
Laura Bourn (10)
We’re on the road again, now in Auckland visiting friends, family and various church groups. Our planned Sunday morning meeting was moved to Sunday evening, and when we realised we had a free morning with friends, we decided to stay at home and be church rather than go to church. Had a lovely time just discussing a few passages of Scripture that have been meaningful for us recently, and praying together.
We decided to leave it open so that the children could participate or not, depending on what they were happiest with. This is one of the issues that comes up with the whole house-church idea - what do you do with the children? In this case, the younger ones just played quietly, and the older ones sat and listened, just joining in for the prayer.
Not having Sunday School might seem like heresy in some quarters, but I think it’s only a problem if we believe that Sunday mornings are the only time that children get any spiritual input. If that is happening just as a regular part of family life, when we gather together as believers we can be quite relaxed about how much the children are involved. As long as they know they are welcome, that their participation is welcomed to the level they feel comfortable with, they benefit. Simply observing the natural way that their parents share their life of faith with friends is of value. Some of the adult discussion may be over their heads, but some of it will take root and perhaps be discussed at a later stage around the family meal table. It was lovely having the children join us, rather than being “sent out” as is normally the case.
Had a great weekend in Lower Hutt, and some interesting discussions including a chat on the subject of tolerance with a friend of a friend. We got there by a fairly circuitous route, touching on the war on terror, world peace and the role of religion in armed conflicts. But what got us onto tolerance was those statues of Buddha that were vandalised by the Taleban in Afghanistan. Intolerance was seen as the vice behind this act, and present in all the major world religions. “If the religions would just teach tolerance, the world would be a better place” was the basic idea.
This got me thinking. Sooner or later something or someone will step onto the world scene to fill the present vacuum of leadership. The chaos we see today (the war on terror, Iran, AIDS, Israel/Palestine, global warming etc.) will continue to escalate until some agency, be it a man, a consortium, or even a government, arrives on the scene proposing some concrete solutions. It is only a matter of time before these situations become so desperate that the world will be willing to accept peace at almost any price, and it is in precisely this context that this agency (let’s call it a “Man of Peace”) will come with a clear and seemingly effective strategy to unite national and international powers to to resolve once and for all the problems that plague the world.
But these solutions will come with a price tag, and it is here that the current love affair that we have with this notion of tolerance will come to a brutal end. Continue reading ‘Peace at the price of tolerance’
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