South Pacific Christian Fellowship (New Zealand)

We have been in New Zealand for a couple of weeks now, but we're still camping out in our rental house with a few borrowed items. We received an update from the movers that our container made it to Auckland, NZ. However, they said it would take 7 to 14 days to be taken off the ship, passed through customs, and delivered to our house. So we are hoping that it arrives some time this week.

Yes, we've done this before, but as you can imagine, with every big international move it takes some time to adjust.

Housing

We have not lived in Auckland for 8years. Auckland is a large, dynamic, and ever-changing city. So in the years that we've been gone, it has seen tremendous change. The amount of houses being built is incredible, yet the officials say that it is not enough for the expected growth. There is also a shortage in the number of rental houses, so this makes it tough to find a house.

Prior to arriving, we had our wonderful friend Fleur searching out houses for us. She went to several rental open homes, but there were long lines of people at each house. Fleur was nervous and thought it might be a long shot to even find a house in the area. But just a few days before we arrived, the Lord provided us with a very nice, small 3-bedroom house at a reasonable rental rate -- at least for Auckland standards: $600 per week. We are so grateful to be in the house, and we're looking forward to settling in to it.

Ministry

There is a lot to be done and never a fear of not having enough to do. New ministry opportunities are already starting to form, and our house isn't even set up yet.

Our main focus right now is catching up with our church planting couples and having great face-to-face conversations. A good indicator of how they are actually doing is to see how their families are functioning in this new culture. We not only want them to be successful in ministry, but we also want their families to do well.

Secondly, we are reconnecting with many people and meeting others for the first time. There are already some possible leadership development opportunities.

Please pray for us to be diligent in our own spiritual health. Ask that God will keep away any discouragement as we work with other leaders.

Church Planter Assessment

SPCF USA has another Church Planters Assessment taking place this month. There are 3 couples and 1 individual being assessed. These people are looking at going to Australia to work in partnership with SPCF and Australian Christian Mission (ACM).

We're also excited that for the first time, we will have a Kiwi, Michael Hanson, Associate Minister at Shore Community Church, travelling to this assessment to be an assessor. Having Michael on board gives us an essential "culture component" to the assessment. We are also hoping to establish an assessment process here in New Zealand at some point in the near future. So having Michael there is critical to this as well.

Please pray for John Woodward and Dick Crabtree as they pull this assessment together and for Michael as he travels to Omaha.

We recently met some of our neighbors. Naturally, they asked what brought us to Auckland. In answering this, we received immediate feedback from each of them. The first neighbor said he is not religious, but is happy for us to be here.

"Anything that contributes to helping humanity is good," he told us. He then told me that helping the environment is in his heart and where he invests his time.

The second neighbor said that while he is religious, he thought the Bible is too hard to understand.

"If we could just get rid of the Bible, religion would be better,” he said.

Additional Prayer Requests:

• Pray for us as we adjust to living in Auckland again.
• Pray for the current SPCF team members and their new church plants: the Trusty & Trump families with Papamoa, the Palmer family who have just moved north of Auckland.

~ Randy & Miki Brooks, SPCF website