By June we began feeling that we were to find a “home” to being meetings on Sundays. We feel drawn to a edge of the city, a suburb named Greerton. So our search began for a place to meet, a place to become the first home for Journey Vineyard. We find St. James Union Church right in the heart of the city and asked if they would be willing to rent us their place for a meeting in the afternoon. We waited... a few weeks later we received their reply. They said yes! Every other door we had knocked on had been a no, a lot of them already had second meetings happening and weren’t available. As soon as I walked through the doors of St. James, I had a sense that this was the place. The Lord has planted us exactly where He wants us, in the heart of Greerton.
The next miracle came within 2 weeks. As we are just beginning we have absolutely no equipment and were hoping to be able to use an existing church sanctuary to delay the purchase of sound equipment. This wasn’t possible as we are using St. James Church Hall. So we needed to get our own. We had not told anyone that we now had a place to meet at this stage. I received a Facebook message from the West Auckland Vineyard asking us if we needed sound equipment! They had recently moved into a facility that had a built in system and would not be needing their gear, they asked if we would like it on permanent loan! How incredible is that?! So now we have a building and a fantastic, fully loaded sound system.
Before we had our first official meeting at St. James’ Hall we thought we would gather as a group and serve the people of St. James’ Church by holding a working bee at their building. We cleaned and sorted and gardened and washed the outside of the building. Jobs that we know they would love to do themselves, but because most of their people are quite elderly they were unable to. It was a pleasure to serve such wonderful, faithful, veterans of faith. Below is the crew that helped that first Saturday. Such an honour to be called to plant and journey alongside...
After a few “interesting” attempts to get sound out of the sound gear, and purchasing a projector we began having live services. Our first service was on July 17, 2011. We have now had 3. We are so grateful for God’s encouragement. He knows how much we need it! J On our first Sunday we had a guest in our midst that had felt God tell her to call a friend and go to church where she was going. So she did, and came on our first Sunday. What a blessing to know that God believes in what we’re doing and would encourage us by sending one of his kids to us our first week! I love the heart of God.
There is such a sense of expectancy that God is up to something and we are invited to be a part of it. He has an amazing plan for what He is doing here and has given us a piece; we carry a piece of His Kingdom plan! It’s amazing to think that God is entrusting His Kingdom into the hands of people, you and me. What an honour... what a responsibility... and yet not heavy, as the weight of the responsibility He carries Himself. We hear Him asking us if we are willing to lay our piece down on the table with the other churches in this city and let Him reveal the picture of what He is doing to our community. There is such a strong call to unity in this city, it’s as if a heavenly shofar has been blown, a call to His churches to come together; to lay down the self-sufficiency and disunity, to come together to allow His Kingdom to reign and His glory to fall on our city. Yes Lord! We are willing...
We are working alongside other youth pastors and other Christian leaders in our city to see the power of God revealed through unity. It is such an exciting place to be. So many verse have been coming to mind in these meetings. I was reminded of two recently...
Psalm 133
1Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
2It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Running down on the beard,
The beard of Aaron,
Running down on the edge of his garments.
3It is like the dew of Hermon,
Descending upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing —
Life forevermore.
NKJV
This one stuck out to me the most...
Genesis 11:5-7
5But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. 6"Look!" he said. "The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! 7
NLT
This one struck me because we normally view it so negatively in the light of man’s arrogance, thinking that he could possibly build something that would reach the heavens and make a name for themselves. This was a time shortly after the flood when all people still had one language. In their corruption they plotted with vanity as the goal. But the truth remains, the power of unity, the Lord said that they were united and spoke the same language, nothing they set out to do would be impossible for them! If that was true for their corrupt intentions how true could it be for the church. If we will come together we would realize we all speak the language of the Kingdom of God, if we could lay aside the divisiveness that has kept us apart and work together to bring Him glory, after this, “nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!!” The Lord commands a blessing on people working together in unity and nothing we put our hand to will be withheld. How powerful is that!?!
As Mark continued to work in Auckland 3 days a week, I held down the fort in Tauranga. Even though the travel was an unwelcome hassle each week, even there we see the hand of God as Mark was able to spend the next few months living half the week with his parents and being present with them through one of the darkest seasons of their lives. For that I am grateful.
We were still catching our breath, wondering how we were going to start a church, how do you find the first person... when girls began showing up at our house. Our girls quickly began bringing home friends who were very curious about God. Half of them have little concept of who God is as our culture has pulled itself away from its heritage. We began bringing them to youth group and have continued to see friendships develop and young people discover the love of Jesus for themselves. I am grateful the Lord is again filling our home with teenagers, I already love these kids!
We were so excited that we had some teens to encourage that we were unprepared for how fast the Lord would bring adults. Another Vineyard in the area closed down and we were asked if we would care for their people along with the few that we had connected with. So within 5 weeks of arriving in Tauranga, Journey Vineyard was birthed! We have been meeting regularly in Life Group since March and are excited to see what God is doing in our midst and also in the city.
Wow... I can’t believe it’s been a year since I blogged!! So much has happened I hardly know where to begin...
September 2010 saw us say goodbye to our American home and family at Pathway Vineyard in Lewiston, Maine. That was hard. After only 5 years we felt as though we had been there all our lives. The community, the friendships and sense of being invited into family will be with us forever. It has marked who we are; we will never be the same because of the 5 years of being impacted by such wonderful followers of Jesus. It was one of those times in your life when you know you are exactly where you are meant to be. No man could have led us to such a place; God knew what He had in mind for our preparation for ministry and there is nowhere else we would have rather been. He poured into us so much wisdom and knowledge and ‘on the job training’ among friends who quickly became family. We are humbled that He would pour so much into us so intentionally. The ONLY reason we would leave such a place is knowing that He was asking us to return to our land and pour out here want He poured into us there. We were sent on an assignment to become equipped to plant and pastor a Vineyard Church back here in Tauranga, New Zealand.
So, with a deluge of emotions we left our Maine friends and family and returned to via Fiji, arriving in New Zealand in October.
As soon as we arrived back, Mark’s sister’s (Rhyanne) health took a turn for the worse and she began to experience severe pain from the cancer attacking her body. We spent the next 4 months praying, supporting, loving, praying, praying, praying. We sought God for healing for her, knowing, that unless God did a miracle, the cancer would claim her body, and take her from us. Although in our hearts we know that she is where she was destined to be since before the world began, her leaving so early was almost too much to bear for her friends, her family and her children. On January 20, at 1:00am her body died and her spirit was ushered into the presence of her God. A moment so pregnant with emotions all shouting at once; how could she die? God was supposed to heal her, what happens now? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And at the same time the awareness that we were standing on holy ground, in the presence of God and his angels witnessing a supernatural transaction take place as she left our presence and entered His. She was at peace, her joy fulfilled, she knows why, she has no more questions. We were left standing there needing to walk through a season in time so heartbreaking that only God can heal. Without the anchor of knowing the goodness and trustworthiness of our Father we would be lost and overcome by the emotions that followed. But God. Our God is so faithful, His ways are so much higher than our ways, His thoughts so much higher than ours. He promises to work ALL things together for good for those called according to His purpose. We cannot see how this can be good, but we know that we can trust the One who does.
Her funeral was an incredible celebration of an incredible life. There was so much vibrancy and colour as I had the honour of leading over 500 people on a journey through the life of this most beautiful, talented, gifted, fun, loving woman of God. A few of her family and friends shared different facets of her life, ending with a video from her eldest son and her husband Ian. It was a very powerful time for all who were present.
The following day (January 26, 2011) we moved to Tauranga permanently. Bethany and Rebekah began school about a week later and we had to very quickly find a new normal, returning to the routine of life.
It has been an amazing almost 7 years here in the USA! August 30 will be exactly 7 years - we could never have foreseen what God had prepared for us here. We knew He was asking us to get equipped, trained, prepared to Pastor a church, but we had no idea what that would look like!
Here is a little recap on our journey so far - as I look back over these 7 years...
We left New Zealand August 27, 2003 to embark on a journey in response to feeling challenged in what God had for us. He wants more from each of us than just warming a pew on a Sunday morning and we said "yes" to that challenge. There is so much to do, people to love, people to serve all around us, we knew He had more for us. So... Mark applied for a nursing job in the USA, we felt that we were somehow supposed to be in the North Eastern States, but all doors stayed firmly shut but one; we touched down in Miami on August 30th, 2003.
Mark worked at Baptist Hospital in Kendall, Miami for almost 2 years - no night shift after 13 years of nursing was a welcome blessing! This was a wonderful place for Mark to enter nursing in the US and was a great hospital to work for, making his transition very smooth.
We visited a few local churches and attended one regularly quite close to where we lived, but also knew this was not where we were supposed to be long term. I wrestled regularly with knowing we were there on purpose but not seeing what that was, itching to get started with "something" and yet seeing nothing on the horizon. In September of 2004 I heard the Lord tell me that this had been a year of rest, of enjoying Him, just sitting. If you know me at all you will know that I do not like to just sit! It was a frustrating time, but through it I recognized how tired and bruised I was , even a little jaded about stepping further into this arena of church leadership and that the Lord was wanting us to have some bench time before embarking on more equipping and training.
All that changed in a matter of months....!
October 2004 I decided to take the girls to the Fall Festival at the Miami Vineyard... the girls had so much fun and I met a wonderful couple - Jorge and Marily Respeto... they were the Worship Pastors at the church and were so welcoming and friendly that I knew we needed to visit again on Sunday. As we stepped into the church that following Sunday it was as if the Lord through back the curtains and opened the windows... a refreshing breeze blowed through our spirits and our vision of why we had come was revived and breathed on by the Lord. We knew that moment that this was the tribe He was calling us to be a part of. The heartbeat of the church seemed to be the same as ours... We had found our spiritual family!
Over the next few months we got to know different ones there and began learning the ways of the Vineyard... we discovered there was a Leadership Institute that we could gain the theological training we were looking for. We felt so welcomed embraced and were ready to jump in...
January 2005... my parents were involved in a terrible accident... their Seawind Plane crashed as they were taking off from Lake Taupo in New Zealand. My stepfather was killed, my mum was badly injured and we had to get back to New Zealand fast...
We spent three weeks back helping to settle things for my mum and spending time with the family, knowing that we were called to go back and continue this journey in the USA...
Amidst the grief and turmoil of what had just happened we came back to Miami, happy to have a place at the Vineyard to soak up God's grace and healing. It was almost as soon as we arrived back that we began to feel that tug again to go north. We were very happy at the Vineyard and were looking into studying with VLI there but there was a strong sense that this wasn't where we were supposed to train. We began looking for Vineyards in the North East. Churches that were in a smaller city, with a large regional hospital for Mark to work, a place that had 4 seasons, (we decided that if we were going north we wanted to experience the whole thing... white Christmas and all!). We also wanted the church to have a school for our girls, as these two years in Miami schools had been very hard on them. The church also needed to be running the VLI program. We found a few churches in Maine, Portland and Lewiston - we narrowed it down to Lewiston because of the school and VLI. So... we called... We spoke with Allen Austin and shared what we had felt and that we would like to come up for a visit to see if this was where we were supposed to be.
A few weeks later we visited the Vineyard in Lewiston, Maine... as we were driving around the city we were a little disappointed to find it was not one of those beautiful New England cities that you see on the postcards... as we were pondering and asking God if we had made a mistake, I clearly heard Him say, "do not look with your natural eyes on this place, look with your spirit... I am moving here." Needless to say, that was enough for us! We bought a house that weekend and moved to Lewiston 8 weeks later!
A few weeks before moving Pastor Kevin Fischer from the Miami Vineyard showed us a Cutting Edge Magazine (the church planting magazine of the Vineyard). He had discovered who the pastor of the Lewiston Vineyard was and wanted to encourage us that we were heading to a great place for equipping and mentoring... There was that month, an article in there about the pastor of the Lewiston Vineyard, Phil Strout.
So... all was set... we packed our few belongings and again stepped out into the unknown as we headed to Maine. Confirmations were amazing as we turned our eyes to the north. Just as we needed to close on our house (having left everything in New Zealand we were starting again financially and did not have very much money), an English couple came to me wanting to buy a house in a new development and close in a week! (I was a Realtor in Miami for a little over a year.) We were blessed with the money we needed to close on our house loan!
We arrived in Lewiston to a very dirty, trashed house that had been sitting unlived in for almost a month in 90 F (32C) weather! We had to take about 800 lbs (363kg) of rubbish to the dump out of the house. The people had partied and hard and walked out! There was food left out, and the power had been shut off. It was so filthy we couldn't stay there for a week... we stayed with a wonderful couple not far from our house as we cleaned... both physically and spiritually every part of this house. Even as we walked up the stairs in those early days looking at the rundown, neglected state of this house I felt a prompting that God was saying something in even this... We found out that this was also the local crack house, the couple had divorced and were being forced to sell by the bank due to not paying their mortgage. The phone company made us jump through fraud hoops just to get the phone line on as they'd been defrauded by them a number of times using false names at this address. The police arrived a few weeks after we moved in looking to arrest me, thinking I was the previous person... I informed them that they were gone and once i realized the mix up, told them that they had moved on and we know owned this house... welcome to Maine.... right?!
As i climbed the stairs in the early days of being here I felt the Lord say that even this was a spiritual parallel of what He was wanting to do in this city. No one is beyond His redemption, no one so far removed that He cannot heal and restore, He is wanting to break he cycle of brokenness, poverty & addiction over this city, to release His grace and power to recover, as we have restored this house to it's former glory God is wanting to do the same in the lives of the people of Central Maine!
Our time in Maine has been beyond what we could ever ask or imagine... Ephesians 3:20. We had been placed in the midst of a people passionate about their God, their people, their city and their state! People who are on an assignment - a church that loves, that serves, a welcoming place for all kinds of people, lovers of the broken, poor and marginalized - even at times against the "popular" opinion of other well-meaning churches. These are a people that are willing to go where Jesus went, to love those that Jesus loved, to see His Kingdom come and His will be done today... impacting the redemptive history of the State of Maine.
To have spent 5 years in the midst of this has been an experience that will forever change the trajectory of our lives. We have been equipped in more ways than we ever knew we needed... we have been loved on, invested in, inspired, challenged, trained & equipped - all the while knowing that God was asking us to learn "with one hand on the plough". We were not hear just to receive, but He had work for us to do...
There have been some dark days that we have walked through as God stepped in to prevent imminent destruction of His work here. We pulled together with a team of people that I am honored to have worked with for a season - very different people, from different places, with different giftings that pulled together to get the ship back in shape. To watch, as God turned a dark hour (of deceit and betrayal) into blessing, readiness and favour to move forward has been amazing. We have learned things that will be invaluable to our role in the future in New Zealand. Despite those few dark years as an attempt was made to silence and destroy, our church here has grown almost 300% in the last 5 years as God has poured out His favour on this community of faith.
I will always remember the pray that Pastor Phil prayed before this time.... Lord, bless us to the measure you can trust us and put your finger on anything that impedes that trust. This was not prayed lightly before - and as it is still prayed, it now carries a sober awareness of the reality of what this prayer might cost...everything...
We have been surrounded by veterans of faith, people who have pastored for decades and still burn with the passion to do this... an incredible inspiration, if this work for God's Kingdom is worth anything, it is worth everything! We have felt so intentionally invested in by God - He has put us in the midst of amazing local, national and international leaders. To have had the opportunity to have served people like this has been a blessing and an honour for me personally. To have sat at the feet of great leaders and learned from those "doing the stuff" are things that we will be eternally grateful for.
As we embark on this next leg of our journey back to New Zealand to plant a Vineyard Church, I am mindful of the fact that there is much hard work to be done, there will be many challenges ahead, that the road is not clear, the path not certain... but I do know that our God is faithful! He promises to complete what He has begun. He has a love for all people and for His church and is committed to seeing it grow. We will step out of the boat once again and say yes and just see where He takes us...
I'm a follower of Jesus, married to Mark and I am Mum to my awesome & beautiful girls, Bethany and Rebekah. I have said 'yes' to my God and am living the adventure of following Him. My life is in process and I'm loving my journey of faith...
