Well, things are happening at New Hope Church of the Nazarene in Whangarei, New Zealand!  Our pastor, Alison Weinstock, has returned to the United States in preparation for her upcoming marriage to Chad Johnson this November.  A few days before Alison left New Zealand our new pastor couple, Rob and Kolene Hintz, arrived in Whangarei.  They were able to spend a day with Alison before she left which helped to make the transition a bit smoother.  Rob and Kolene have quickly settled in as part of our loving church family.  They too are from America although they have called several different places home during their lives (Kolene grew up as a missionary kid in the Philippines and Rob spent part of his growing years in Canada).  For the last eight years they have been serving the Lord in Korea.  We are excited to have them here in Whangarei and they are excited about trying to help our church reach out to the community.
     With Lori and I now living in Whangarei we have been able to be at church functions throughout the week and not just on Sundays which has been great!  We have a prayer meeting on Mondays and a bible study on Wednesdays that is a joy to attend.  I truly believe that God has big plans for how this church is going to reach out to our local community.  We are already seeing a couple of new people coming to the church out of simple interest in the church or from being invited!  The following pictures show our prayer meeting group from a couple of weeks ago and the second picture is of Lori and our new pastor's wife, Kolene.

     Lori and Heidi have also had the chance to sing together at church which everyone enjoyed...well, everyone except Heidi!

     We are also enjoying the backyard play area and the fruit trees in the yard.  

     And, finally, we had fun today at a birthday party and doing some last minute school shopping.  

     May God bless you all as you carry out His mission for you whether that takes you next door, down the street, to work, to school, or around the world!  We thank you all for your continued support and prayers for us!  Steve

     I've got two exciting things to share with you today!  First, I got news today that my salary is increasing!  Teacher pay and salaries have been quite the story in the news here in New Zealand a couple of years ago.  It takes several weeks to establish that you are working, then to establish your pay.  Apparently a couple of years ago, teachers went two or so months without pay as the pay system was being fixed!  I went six weeks here without pay before receiving a paycheck based on a salary for  an untrained teacher.  Today I received notice that my salary will be almost double that and, with a bit of more paperwork, might go up even more!  This was great news!  I spent some time in prayer this morning asking God to work out our finances for us and to provide for us as we trust Him.  :o)  God is good!
     Second, Harrison and I moved a couple of beds and couches into our house today!  I also took pictures since several people had asked us to post pictures on our Facebook page or on here.  So here are some pictures of our new house and the back yard.  We will hopefully be moving in soon when we get a couple more beds.  Thanks to Alison Weinstock, our departing pastor, for a bed, love seat, and some household items!  Thanks also to Donna Williams, our co-pastor, for loaning us another bed!  Again, God is good!

     Well, it's safe to say that God has been working here in New Zealand.  We have been staying in a temporary house that someone has very graciously allowed us to stay in but we have been ready for a place of our own.  We have also been squeezing all six of us into a tiny car that barely can seat five people normally.  Harrison calls it our clown car!  I have been anxious about trying to get a car and a house but once again God has shown me that I need to quit worrying and fretting about things and just trust Him.  Our original plan was for our van to sell in Tennessee and we could use that money to buy a van (or "people mover" as they call them here) here in New Zealand.  However, our van in Tennessee still has not sold, but we were able to buy a van anyway after combining some money we had available in both Tennessee and here.  Now when our van sells we will have some extra money to set aside for an emergency fund if needed as well as any other necessary items.

     We were also able to go look at a house a few days ago that is very close to the church in Whangarei.  We loved the house and filled out an application.  A few hours later the owners called us and told us we could rent the house if we were interested!  So God is working out things for us in great ways.  This house is plenty big enough for us, is only about three minutes from the church, is private and has a nice yard as well!  In the back yard we have an orange tree, a grapefruit tree, a lemon tree, and a feijoa tree.  For those of you in the U.S., feijoa is a fruit that grows here in New Zealand that people rave about.  I haven't tried it yet but people here really love it.  I will post pictures of the house soon.
     Anyway, God is moving and making things happen here.  I am excited about what He is doing and the things He has planned that we don't even know about yet.  We are also excited about being closer to the church so we can be more involved in it.  By the way, Harrison played his saxophone at church on Sunday and everybody loved it!  We had a meal after church for our pastor, Alison, who is returning to the United States in just a few days!  She has been a great blessing for New Hope Church of the Nazarene.

     Wow!  What an awesome God we serve!  We are a family together again!  Lori and the kids arrived about eight or nine days ago and we have been together since.  We had a crazy first couple of days after they arrived with trying to get all of their luggage and us from Auckland to Totara North where we are staying.  With the help of some wonderful people at our church in Whangarei and the District Superintendent here in New Zealand, we got Lori and the kids settled here in Aotearoa (the Maori word for New Zealand).

     It has been great for me having all of us here together again.  It has lifted my spirits and given me a renewed vigor for being here to serve the Lord.  The school I have been at has been quite a challenge.  However, I feel that I have been able to make a positive difference for at least a few students.  The frustrating part of the job though, is that so many students just don't seem to care about anything and several of the people in charge that could make a great difference also don't seem to care.  I'm just glad I have been able to be a positive role model for at least some of these kids.  That having been said, I have been desperately praying about this job and God's will for where he wants me.  It's not been all bad at the school as I have met some wonderful people there.  I have received an enormous amount of help from Ant Rodger, the chemistry teacher there.  He has been a source of inspiration and information for me that has helped to keep me going.  I pray that he and his wife (who also works at the school) will be able to stay strong as they continue to try to make a difference in a difficult school.  They are also expecting their first child in October and I pray that God will bless them in this in ways they could never imagine.
     I have had a prayer about jobs for many years now that goes something like this whenever I apply for a job, "God, if this is where you want me then make this happen...and if is not what you want for me then close the door to it and don't let me mess it up."  I have been applying for other jobs while here and, until last week, nothing had happened with any of them.  Then Dargaville High School called me about a teaching position.  In fact, I hadn't even applied for a job there when the principal called me.  It's a bit of a crazy story.  The weekend that Lori and the kids came in I caught a ride to Auckland on a Friday morning, the day before they were coming in.  The Nazarene pastors of New Zealand were attending a seminar about story telling in Auckland and, since I had nothing else to do, I was invited along to attend.  I thoroughly enjoyed the day with the pastors and their prayers over me concerning our mission here.
     While there I met the Dargaville church pastor, Nigel Carey.  He told me that his wife, Jae, was teaching at Dargaville High School and that they needed a couple of science teachers there.  A few days later his wife sent me a message on Facebook asking if she could give my name and contact info to the principal there and I said sure.  The next day the principal called me, we set up an interview time, and I was offered the job twenty minutes after my lessons and interview were done!  Only God could work out something like this!  I probably won't start there until the end of August as you have to give two months notice when leaving a teaching position here, but I know that God is in this.  After accepting the position the principal even talked to me about the fact that he is a Christian and has been praying for God to send a Christian man to fill this position in the school!
     This is probably already longer than most people will want to ready so I will end here and write more again soon.  Let me leave you with a few more pictures from New Zealand.  May God bless you and yours!

     We had another good church service this morning.  One man brought in an old bible that someone found and gave to him.  The front page says it was printed in 1789 (see picture)!  The church in Whangarei may be small in numbers but is large in faith and love.  The people there have been nothing but friendly and loving toward me in the few weeks that I have been here.  This has made my transition here easier which I really needed.  My first two weeks or so started really bumpy between being homesick, missing my family, and culture shock.  Since then, however, I feel like I am finally starting to settle in to my new life here among the Kiwis of New Zealand.  It will be improving even more by this weekend when Lori and the kids arrive on Saturday morning (that will be early Friday afternoon for my friends and family in America).  I can't wait for them to get here!
     One of the first things I noticed after leaving the airport when I arrived was the fact that I didn't recognize any of the plants and trees.  As a science teacher and a lover of nature this really has bothered me.  People have been telling me the names of many plants but as the names are often in the Maori language it is difficult for me to understand the names and remember them.  I have included a few pictures of some of the plants around the house I am staying in to give you an idea of what I am talking about.

   
     Yesterday I visited Matauri Bay on the east coast of New Zealand  (see pics below).  It is only about a 40 minute drive from where I am staying and has to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen!  It was a Saturday afternoon and I was the only one there at the beach.  This made me think about how people take things for granted.  For example, living in Tennessee often causes people to take the beauty of the rolling hills and mountains for granted.  You don't "ooh" and "ahh" over them because they are always there...they are part of your everyday, normal life.  In the same respect, people here take the ocean views for granted.  Don't get me wrong; many Kiwis love living near the water and appreciate its value.  They just don't stare at it in awe like I do!  I can't wait to take the kids to the beaches as the weather gets warmer so they can swim in the ocean.
     Finally, let me close this entry with saying that I have felt the prayers of many people in many places lifting me up to God and I can't thank you enough for that.  Each day now I feel like I am becoming more and more adjusted to this new life.  God is giving me strength and wisdom at school (it's still challenging, but I feel like I can survive it if God chooses to keep me there).  I also feel like I have been able to begin to build a few relationships with students at school which is nice.  This makes me feel like God is using me there at the school which gives me a sense of purpose that I didn't feel during the first week or two.  I want to publicly thank God for getting me through all of this so far and for His future help with Lori and the kids getting here to join me (YAY!).

Since my previous posting was quite depressing and negative I felt it necessary to write again today to let you know that the many prayers sent up for me have been felt in an amazing way!  Two days ago I felt in almost utter despair and now, just a day and a half later, I feel completely different.  So many people and churches have lifted me and my family up in prayer and I want you all to know that I have felt the power of these answered prayers!  God has given me a renewal in my spirit today that could not have come in any other way but through Him.  Many have said that when satan knows you are allowing yourself to be used by God in a powerful way that he will fight you with everything he's got.  Today satan lost!  I know that he won't be gone forever, but he was gone from me today and I give the praise to God and thank the many people who have been praying for me.  I'll keep this short because I want to share with you part of my devotional from yesterday in "Streams in the Desert".  For those not familiar with it, it is a devotional written in 1925 with excerpts from numerous people's writings.  Yesterday's writing, although added to the book ninety years ago, and written by Louis Albert Banks, seemed like it was there for me.  I think I could have read this any other time and it would not have meant as much to me as it did yesterday...here it is.

     "A man who once wrote about the salvaging of old ships stated that it was not the age of the wood from the vessel alone that improved its quality.  The straining and the twisting of the ship by the sea, the chemical reaction produced by the bilge water, and the differing cargoes also had an effect.
     Several years ago some boards and veneers cut from an oak beam from an eighty-year-old ship were exhibited at a fashionable furniture store on Broadway in New York City.  They attracted attention, because of their elegant coloring and beautiful grain.  Equally striking were some mahogany beams taken from a ship that sailed the seas sixty years ago.  The years of travel had constricted the pores of the wood and deepened its colors, so that they were as magnificent and bright as those on an antique Chinese vase.  The wood has since been used to make a cabinet that sits in a place of honor in the living room of a wealthy New York family.
     There is also a great difference between the quality of elderly people who have lived listless, self-indulgent, and useless lives and the quality of those who have sailed through rough seas, carrying cargo and burdens as servants of God, and as helpers of others.  In the latter group, not only has the stress and strain of life seeped into their lives but the aroma of the sweetness of their cargo has also been absorbed into the very pores of each fiber of their character."