James at Otama Bay

view of lovely long white-sandy beach at Whangamata

Cathedral cove 

the beautiful Cathedral Cove in the Coromandel 

nearly at the Coromandel - soon after picking James up from Auckland airport 

On the way to the Coromandel with James 

Parnell, Auckland (about an hour after picking my brother James up from the airport) 

a quiet bay on the island 

tired faces after a lot of up-hill peddling! 

one of the many beaches on Waiheke island 

great spot for some winetasting! 

view of vineyard

Rob & Sarah at Vineyard 

stop off on-route at a beautiful Vineyard for some wine-tasting

Rob & Sarah on their hired bikes in Waiheke 

auckland in the distance

City of Auckland whilst on our way to Waiheke island 

Auckland in the sun, prior to a FANTASTIC day out with Rob & Sarah on a boat trip out to Waiheke Island. 

I sadly missed my cousin, Jonathan's wedding back home in London 

 

Coffee with Mieke & Laura in Wellington (prior to Matt Watson's engagement party) 

expeditions to the end of the earth

hey all,

Just to let you know I'm back 'home' in Hamilton, safe and sound after a fantastic two weeks on the road with 9 days on the nz South Island.

In brief, I managed to take 2 weeks out from a busy period at Gateway and drove down to the South Island - taking the ferry in Wellington with Mieke (who was off teaching with school hols). We spent the first night in Christchurch with distant rels, then we drove on down to Queenstown where we picked up our English friends Rob & Sarah who had flown across from Hamilton.

The next week was taken up with a mix of snowboarding & ski-ing (3 days in all - with a perfect mix of fresh snow & glorious sun-shine though being end of the ski-season, runs were limited), sightseeing, walking and relaxing. Spent a night in Queenstown, 3 nights in Wanaka, couple of nights by a quiet lake - Lake Hayes, then Mieke & I headed home via west coast taking in some stunning scenery with plenty of stops to see some glaciers & cool rock formations.

Weather was outstanding & scenery out of this world.

Highlights of the trip were:-
. finally getting hang of snowboarding after a few failed attempts in the past! (had a lesson which helped a lot)
. drive to the most beautiful spot on the Dart river coincidentally called Paradise (used heavily in filming of LORs)
. incredible meal at newly opened restaurant in a winery near Queenstown (where we got to do some winetasting)
. watched the rather heavy film 'Downfall' on last months of Hitler's life at a delightful cinema in Wanaka .... small homely feel .. full of living room sofas, with home cooked food in the interval (and they wait till everyone's finished their food before the film restarts!)
. random trip to a puzzle museum where we spend most of 90 minutes stuck in an outdoor maze slowly going mad

Then after the trip I spent the next 3-4 days hanging round like a bad smell in Wellington - helping Mieke with some school planning & catching up with folk like the Watsons.

All in all a totally quality time out - something which I'll treasure for the rest of my life (and I will look forward to visiting the south island again one day soon ...... anyone wanna join me????)

Since then ... its straight back into things in Hamilton at Gateway. Getting my teeth stuck into a community action project, bit of a mini-mission, with a week of events for our church to get (hopefully!) heavily involved in, around mid november. I'm really excited about it. Bit like a mini 'soul-in-the-city' idea which happened in London last year. A number of things are on the cards ... such as doing some work within a local school (painting a mural, converting a garage into a room, doing some general painting type work), a men's night shelter (painting jobs, building a new room, building some lockers) together with some activities during the afternoon for kids, and a cafe in the evenings. Alongside we'll be running a week of 24-7 prayer (something which hasn't been tried here in Gateway before).

So it's all a bit daunting for me at the moment - taking on a project of such a scale & 'no doubt' will test my lack of organisation skills but exciting all the same.

The reason behind the whole thing in my mind - being to test the water & see how this goes with a view to establishing some larger long term projects in the future and perhaps working alongside other churches in Hamilton. My heart for it came from a DVD I saw at Hillsongs conf earlier this year of a similar (but much larger scale) school refurb project coordinated by a church in Adelaide. Part of my thinking is that as well as it being an excellent opportunity to serve the community and try & be a blessing, it is also an excellent learning opportunity for us as a church to learn something about who our community are, to actually get outside the church building & begin to relate to the outside world (something which western churches in my book can be pretty poor at).
I think we need to relearn how to effectively evangelise in a post-mod culture whilst still being authentic. Though none of what we're planning here is new ... I'm really hoping that many people across the board at church will capture something of the vision and get off their butts to be involved.

sorry for the rant!

that's about all for now.
got my bro James coming out in a couple of weeks time ... so looking forward to that.

how are you all doing?
be good to hear from some of you soon,

please keep the emails coming & much love to you all
Mat

Island Bay - 5 mins walk from where Matt Watson's parents live

the very beautiful nissan lucina ... and the view is island bay - wellington!

hey all - the next batch of photos are taken from my recent trip to the South Island.

(They are in reverse order so probably best viewed by going to the bottom and scrolling upwards)

If you like these, you may want to check out our travelling companions - Rob and Sarah's blog - who's photographs & musings of the trip paint a much better picture than mine:-

http://www.travellingdouglas.blogspot.com/

me and mieke

me again