Be Strong and Courageous: This is what my weekend looked like

We took our youth group down to the M/V Pacific Link (www.marinereach.com) for the weekend to let them experience living on the ship, as well as learn about Marine Reach and YWAM. Our boys were on dinner clean-up - this is them washing dishes. I'd like to point out my diligent brother Josiah (16). The boys did get the job done, but when they saw the camera, they decided to ham it up. That's Sam in gray (16), Eze in red (16), and Evan in stripes (17).
We picked everyone up around 4pm on Friday afternoon and drove an hour south from Waihi to Tauranga. We had dinner on the ship and then listened to several presentations about the ship. The youth met Esther Aalbers, a young Dutch nurse who's one of the medical coordinators with the ministry. She showed them the clinic on board ship as well as some NASTY dental and primary health care photos. They were all encouraged to come on a mission trip with the ship, as youth are routinely taught how to sterilize dental instruments, assist dentists, work with children, and some even learn to take blood pressures! It gives them something to do, and allows them to see beyond their little world. And besides that, it blesses the nations!

Saturday morning we hung out for a while, went and had a picnic at a nearby marina, and then came back to the ship to watch a movie. I'm sorry but I am just not too interested in robots overtaking the planet (Transformers). Blah....
In the photo above is: Evan (17), Josiah (16), Matt, Oceana in the middle, Eze (16) is "asleep", Micah is in green (17), Hannah (14) is behind her, and Keryn (14 next week) is beyond her.

Oceana with Micah, Hannah, Keryn, and Abby (13 in brown).

We finally have a decent youth group photo with both Matt and I in it. Too bad I'm 34 weeks pregnant. We were missing a few kids, but I'm quite happy we managed to get this photo. like a cross between a palm tree and a Christmas tree. Odd looking huh? They're all that sparse too.... with just a few branches every foot or two.
And yes, the weather is that nice!
Because of the nature of the day, Matt took Josiah in the smaller car, and I drove the rest of the trip home. We drove straight to Eze & Keryn's where I left "The Fleetwood Girls" (Abby, Hannah, Micah - best friends with E&K), as well as Eze, Keryn, and Sam (E&K's cousin). Then dropped off Evan, switched cars with his mom (gotta have a people-mover to move a youth group!) and drove to the Fleetwoods to pick up the girl's younger brother Abe, younger sister Bethany, and their best friend Jerusha (Eze and Keryn's sister). If you think I'm making up the family connections here, you're wrong - but it's outrageous isn't it?
We then drove straight back to the beach (10 minutes) and went to the church, picked up Nasrina and Rebecca and went to our house next.
These five make up our T*weens youth group (Be-T*ween childhood and adolescence). For nearly 4 months now, we've been learning about the Fruit of the Spirit from Gal 5:22-23. Every week we studied a spiritual fruit, and made a quilt square of a natural fruit. It took us a long time because of our DTS and the Joshua fiasco (which caused us to shut down youth group for a few weeks). We finally managed to finish yesterday. Here's the finished product!