King of Queenstown

Queenstown is so gnarly. We drove up last saturday and when we went in to town saturday night there was a big rugby game going on New Zealand against Australia and the streets and the bars were crowded. We had been living in a christian bubble for the past month and a half so it was pretty crazy. It is such a party town I think there is more bars than anything else there. It was so much fun hanging out there.

On sunday we went into this town called Wanaka and it was awesome, crazy beautiful scenery and a great burger place. We went to a church in Wanaka that was founded by some snowboarders and it was awesome, we met Kelly Clark there, she is an olympic gold medalist in the half pipe, best girl snowboarder in the world I think. We got the chance to talk with her and pray for her it was cool. Then on monday we went to the hill called The Remarkables which is on the mountain range that Mordor was filmed on. So it was super windy on the hill so only a couple chairlifts were open and we had to hike to find powder, but we found some awesome powder and it was cool hiking that much. Then in the afternoon we found this jump that Scott had been on earlier he said it was awesome for backflips so we then decided we were gonna do backflips. A bunch of us were there hiking up and down the hill to get this backflip down. A few times I had the spin down but not enough air so my nose hit the ground and then I bailed but that was the closest I came. Then Scott ended up getting the rotation down a bunch of times but not landing and finally he landed one it was super awesome! I'll get er' next time though don't you worry. Another guy Davie Jones also did it so it was pretty awesome. Then on Tuesday we had lectures, with Angelina she tought all week on how to do an inductive bible study it was good to learn that stuff. Tuesday we went to Snowpark, it was legendary!! Right before we went up on the hill they closed it down for an hour for some pro skiers to do some filming for a movie and there was a helicopter flying around filming them and they were riding up the hill on snowmobiles to get to the top of the jumps it was a huge production and cool to see. It was just such a privilege to be at Snowpark that place is amazing. However disaster struck at Snowpark and one of the girls Jessica landed on the knuckle of a big jump and blew out both her knees. It was bad, but her spirits are still high so she's a trooper! Keep her in your prayers for healing. Wednesday and Thursday was all lectures. Except on Wednesday night we went out to Queenstown to try and do some evangelism and we got in some pretty cool conversations. Friday we went up to a hill called Cardrona and the burton open was going on and they had ripped down the park the week before to make all the jumps triple the size for the contest. We saw one guy pull a double back 1080 it was so amazing. All that being said we had tons of fun playing around in the other parks that were there and it was just a great day. Since the contest was going on there was a lot of free giveaways so I didn't even have to take a break for my sandwich. The best kind of day! It was a great end to a great week in Queenstown and we had Fergberger to finish it off, best burgers in New Zealand.

This week is supposedly gonna be a gnarly week spiritually so pray for it to be super awesome and for energy throughout the week!

Thanks guys,

Love You!

Brendan

X comes before Y

Sometimes we find ourselves asking why we would hike half an hour up the hill for a 5 minute ride down it, or perhaps why we would ride in an area where it is mostly rocks, or how come we always put our gnarly boots on instead of turn down an awesome opportunity? Well the answer of course is because X comes before Y!!!!! It's time to get X-treme!!! This week are heading to the world capital of extreme sports Queenstown. We will be hitting up 3 different mountains while we are there including the infamous Snow-park NZ, in which some scenes of the best snowboard movie ever "That's it That's All" were filmed! http://youtu.be/Z3heqxz43_0 this will be one of the places I'm gonna ride next week. The rest of the week we will be doing lectures and going out in Queenstown to find some opportunity to serve the Lord and having another week of getting closer to God. 

How many snowboarders does it take to screw in a light bulb?

3, one to screw it in, one to film it and one to yell "SICK!!!!"

Anyways... Last week we had this speaker named Adriel Booker and she talked about Identity. She taught us that as christians our identity is in christ and God know longer considers us as sinners but as holy people and the royal priesthood of God. We learned some really good stuff about acceptance and rejection in society and all sorts of cool stuff.

This week we had a speaker named Mandy Hudson, she talked about spiritual warfare and it was pretty gnarly. We just learned about the ongoing battle that is everywhere. We learned that we can stand from a place of victory because of the Holy Spirit in us. Pretty cool stuff!

I'm really excited for this week in Queenstown though. We have had some pretty big warnings against disunity so please be praying for unity within the group so that we can be as effective as possible.

Love you all

Brendan