Serenada Country Lodge Rangiora

... it is owned by Todd Blackadder (a former All Blacks' captain and current coach of Canterbury Crusaders). This is the first time I have stayed at a house owned by a former All Black!

On Wednesday, Jonathan took the day off work and after dropping Nathan off at school (complete with his Singapore Airlines’ A380 model aeroplane!) we headed out to Hanmer Springs – one of the most popular natural spring resorts in New Zealand.

We managed to brave the ...

We are about to leave for Thailand, and I am so excited. We each have assigned roles on our outreach team. I am co-leading our intercession times with Phil, and I am in charge of doing our team journal and blog. So, I have created another sub-section on my blog for the outreach phase. If you would like to continue following our team throughout our outreach phase, look on the tool bar on the left of the blog page that says "Erincastillo's travel ...

... and ate some snacks. Since I have had the flu all week and haven't packed yet or done a lot of other things, I didn't stay long and just began getting stuff done. It is going to be a long day and a half trying to get everything done, and I still have a fever.

... Oxford laid hands on us and prayed for us. One leader/board member prayed over each person individually, so we were all given encouraging words specific to us while we were being prayed over. Also, we were prayed over as a group and a school and were given words of encouragement and verses corporately as well. Then, we ended with a little more worship. This time of being commissioned into the world was really encouraging and empowering!

Today, was the last day of Lordship week with Mark Parker, and it was a worship day. We worshiped from 9 am to about 8 pm. Yesterday, he taught on the Tabernacle of the Old Testament and how it was just a shadow of the things to come; a pattern of heavenly realities. God built the Temple as a place to dwell among His people, so it is all about the presence of God and entering into His presence.

Mark taught on what each component of ...

... Invercargill was dead when we went through, it being Easter Sunday and all!! Drove through the apparent Sausage capital of New Zealand, Tuatapere, we weren't all that impressed!! We arrived in our destination of Te Anau, and decided to stay for 3 nights so we could see both Doubtful and Milford Sounds. First stop was Doubtful Sound, 10 times the size of Milford and even on a dreich day it was still amazing and a real highlight of our trip! To get there we ...

... what is a pretty large town! We arrived at Pancake Rock mid-afternoon and took the walk around to see the blowholes, sadly we missed the high tides which is the best time to view these. We moved on towards "Westport", stopping next for a walk around the seal colony. This seal colony was on the rocks quite a long way below the walkway and view points, so although there were seals, it wasn't possible to see them close up like it would have been at Kaikoura. We did ...

... Dolphins who swam around the boat. Also managed to see an Albatross on the water and fur seals basking on rocks. A memorable day! Rude awakening this morning, hotel fire alarm activated at 0600hrs. Amusing to see all the hotel guests out in the car park in various states of undress (including us)!!! You may remember this is the second fire alarm activation during our trip, lucky us!! Back indoors for 0630hrs, no time to go back to bed as we had to get ready for trip. We took ...

... Nelson. Driving along through the vineyards I was just taking in the scenery when I noticed something strange in the sky. We pulled over at the side of the road and both sat gazing at what looked like a flash of rainbow bolting through the sky. Another marvel we have never seen before; New Zealand seems to be full of these! We arrived in Nelson and after doing some food shopping and stocking up on bug spray as we were warned about the sandflies throughout the South ...

... bus ride to town was way too expensive!) So, our day at the airport went something like this: Paul immediately found a food kiosk that sold meat pies. I think he had been drooling over the thought of them for weeks! So we sat down for a quick pie and coffee. Next we went to made our way to the visitor information area. We were really impressed with the volumes of information and services available at the information desk. There were brochures and ...