The weekend unfolds

Friday night

After the welcome by the host people we had dinner, cleaned up, unpacked our cars and set up our matrices inside the whare to hear from Eruera Kawe about his journey and call to missions as a young maori boy from Tauranga who left the shores of Aotearoa over 12 years ago. His story of how God has taken him to many places of the world was encouraging as each time God lead him to believe in faith and be obedient to His voice.

Many of us, if not all of us are believing God big time to provide money to go to Hawaii in 2 months time and hearing from him and the challenge to rise up gave us great courage.

Eruera is the base director at our Island Breeze ministry in Hawaii and is our Hawaii coordinator. He has been living there in Hawaii for 6 years. "When Eruera spoke on Friday night, I realized for me, what this is all about, its about believing God, walking in faith and being humble" said one of the participants.

Eruera and his wife, Liz, went back to Hawaii the next night after visiting with family in Tauranga for a couple of weeks.

Saturday 

Guest speaker: We were very blessed to have with us as our guest speaker, Steve Apirana. Steve shared with us his journey from his childhood to adulthood, the struggles, the challenges he faced growing up that questioned his identity.

As always, Steve never failed to be entertaining. His humor and natural style of communicating was perfect and related to us well as laughter filled the wharenui as we sat to listen. We were awe struck at the skill of Steve's musicianship and ability to integrate with the audience, maintaining his story, injecting his humor without missing a beat. He was awesome.

                                                                 

"it seemed as though God washed over us with songs, music, laughter, and the sense that He loves us they way He created us"

Two things that God spoke to Steve in his journey of identity was that 'I love you' and that 'you are beautiful' so with that affirmation from God, we can sing back to Him the words of a well known song 'something beautiful, something good, all my confusion, He understood. All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful out of my life'

Workshop:

Maurakau was our workshop on Saturday. Chris Wiremu, Pepe Nahu and Mani came down from Auckland to run this workshop focusing on hand-eye coordination and foot work using rakau (stick) and relating that to our relationship with God.

                                       

"today as I was doing maurakau, I got the revelation of being alert, on guard and aware at all times. It was amazing and totally related to our walk with God"

"As I look around, I think, this is it! people are being discipled in an absolute relevant way"

Kids programme:

The kids had a variety of things to do as they split into different age groups to do games, lessons and participating in maurakau things. Tauranga house of prayer took the kids on Sunday.

                                         

Saturday night concert:

On Saturday night we had a concert and opened it up to the community. Steve Apirana was the main feature along side Tama who is the top beat boxer in Auckland. It was an awesome night as Steve sung and shared humor while Tama left crowd amazed by his beat boxing.

                                                    

Sunday:

We had brunch that morning and a final session with Steve before finishing off with our poroaki.

It has been a rich weekend and we see relationships go to another level with each other and our journey with the Lord.

Thanks: Thank you to Nga Potiki for allowing us to use Tahuwhakatiki marae, Steve Apirana, Chris & the boyz, Robynne & Dno and the team from Whaia, THOP for looking after the kids, all the workers and participants! Ngaa mihi nui ki a koutou katoa!

Next gathering, 24th -26th May we return to Kawhia! Our guest speaker is Frank Naea. Chris Wiremu also returns to continue with maurakau as well as Jason Hotere who is with Team Xtreme.

 

                                                                       

                       "CJ, where are you bro?"             "Just not too sure about that"        "1 potato, 2 potato, 3 potato 4"

 

Prayer needs

• Finances: Please pray for Gods provision for us! This is the big one where we believe, trust and have faith in Him to provide.

  • Kawhia are having a fundraiser night in Auckland May 19th.

  please contact us should you wish to make a financial contribution info@islandbreeze.org.nz

   

• Next gathering:

  • Pray that we learn all that God has for us for that weekend as Frank Naea speaks.

   

• Flights:

  • Pray that we all get on good flights and that availability is there for all of us

   

Until next time.

Ma te Runga rawa koutou hei manaaki!

 

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