Little Acorns

My first official post from New Zealand!

Where to start? The flights went well. I couldn't imagine a better 13 hour plane ride than the one I had to Auckland. Air New Zealand gets an A from me for their in-flight entertainment, food and service. Flight of the Conchords is incredibly funny. I thought I should brush up on my New Zealand media content before I came.

I planned to meet up with “Colin” at Christchurch, where we'd have the flight and a bus ride to Capernwray together. Sure enough, while waiting for my flight, a guy comes over and asks me if I'm going to Capernwray and that was that. Turns out, Colin (Friesen) went to Bodensehof with Heather and Rebekah last year(!) so it was cool to get some connections right away. He also lives in Abbotsford, so there was a whole other connection there. He's serving as an intern here.

Christchurch was a really nice, “charming” city, much like a vintage Vancouver.

The bus ride to Geraldine was really nice. It was a smooth 2.5 hour ride through land that was a cross between BC (snow-topped mountains, greenery is similar), Hawaii (palm trees) and England (rolling hills). It was a really nice, cool, crisp sunny day until we stepped off the bus. Then it poured like anything. We waited for a couple minute then Dale, the director of The Crossing (The name of the Capernwray here) came to pick us up. Along with him were a couple of my co-students. Robert from Alaska, Jonas from Germany, Amber from Saskatchewan and Joel from Alaska. Also in the van were Dale's two children, Isabelle (8-years old) and Justuce (5-year old boy).

By the time we arrived the rain had stopped again and we got settled into our rooms and met the fellow classmates. So here's the deal: I have 15 classmates! The “cottage” we're staying in was once used as a Bed & Breakfast, and was handed over to Capernwray for free. I have 2 roomates, I'm on a single bed, so no top-bunk, and Mike (also from Alaska) has a single bed and Joel (from Saskatchewan) has the bottom bunk in a bunk-bed. So far so good.

Everyone is really amazing. Most are really outgoing and super talented at everything and they were quick to include Colin and I in on what they were up to. It took maybe just over an hour to feel comfortable. We had lunch and then a group of us walked into the town of Geraldine via the river. We thought we'd be able to walk alongside the river all the way to town, but it turned out we had to cross it (river was usually less than a foot deep) several times. By the time we were half way through, everyone had their shoes off and we were walking barefoot over the rocks and the river. My feet were in pain by the time we were into town.

We are becoming hobbits.

The locals in Geraldine are all really nice. As we walked up into town with our organic walking sticks we got many comments about where we were trekking off to, or what we were planning to conquer. They all had Lord of the Rings on their minds too, methinks.

After the trek into town and back, we had dinner, and a session where we got to know more about how Capernwray started. Some memorable quotes from the short video we watched:

“In every seed there is a story waiting to be told.”

“You wouldn't think it were possible, but I have several pine trees in my pocket.” *whips out a pine cone*

“Be small enough that God can be big enough.”

“It doesn't have to be possible. It just has to be right.”

• Major Ian W. Thomas, Capernwray founder

Ah rubbish, I think I need to sleep now! I haven't slept in a bed since Saturday night, and it's now Tuesday night and I even dozed off (completely, actually) for a minute or two (?) during our first session. (Blame it on the jet lag.)