Mission 193 – New Zealand
We spent two weeks in New Zealand in June 2008 as a stop-over on our way back from Australia, where Frida had been studying for one semester as part of her university studies. We started our trip visiting friends in Christchurch, then headed down south to Queenstown for a few days, before flying up to the North Island. While in Queenstown, we decided to drive out to Glenorchy, famous for the scenic landscape (and for being a place where parts of Lord of the Rings was filmed). With the snow-peaked mountains in the background, the green pastures before us and the sun shining we decided it would be an apt place to get out of the car and pray for the nation of New Zealand and read some prophetic verses.
A couple of days before New Zealand we visited a Maori village near the town of Rotorua. Although it’s a tourist attraction, thanks to the fact that the residents cook their food in the steam coming out of the ground, it is still a genuine village where people live. On our tour around the village we learnt that a resident had recently died and a funeral was taking place. We also found out that because of the funeral the local Maori chief was present, and both of us instantly felt that he was the person we would like to present the Bibles to. We hung around the village for a couple of hours waiting for the funeral to finish before approaching a group of men standing outside the Maori meeting house and asked if it might be possible to speak to the chief. We were told he was very busy and it wouldn’t be possible. Nevertheless we still hung around for a while longer and spoke with some other people we bumped into, before concluding that obviously we were not going to present the Bibles to the chief and started heading out of the village. Just as we were leaving a guy ran up behind us and asked if we were the people who had been looking for the chief, telling us he was now free and we should go and speak to him.
The chief was delighted to hear of what we were doing and, after rushing off to get the keys to the protestant church in the village and showing us in, gladly received the Bibles and the letter we presented. Standing in front of the altar he then prayed, first in English and then in Maori, thanking God for the Bibles and blessing the rest of our trip. We bid each other farewell by touching our noses together in the traditional Maori way!
