Saturday, May 28, 2011
Bula Bula!
As of a couple of hours ago, it has officially been 1 week since we arrived in Suva and it has been an adventure of a week. Ministry at USP has been going extremely well and after finishing the first week I was very encouraged and excited to continue.
I updated last time right before heading back to USP for their weekly meeting of Student Life (which is what Crusade is called at USP). Everyone says that the meeting starts at 6, but we soon realized that this was not really the case. Fijians often operate on “Fijian Time” (just like Zambians operate on “Zambian Time”). Often we will plan to meet students at a certain time on campus, and they will arrive an hour or so late, and it’s not really a big deal or rude at all to them. I encountered similar trends in Zambia so I have experienced this before, but it has taken a little getting used since it is not at all like this in the USA. The weekly meeting didn’t really end up starting until much closer to 7. But despite the late start, it was a very encouraging night. There were around 80 people in attendance. The meeting started with some worship songs, and that was what really got my spirits up. I was moved by how pure their worship was and how lucky I was to be a part of it with them. Later, one of the Miami Crusade Staff, Joe Kleibscheidel, spoke about God and his Eternality. We also played some fun Fijian games that everybody to really into. At the end of the night there was some food and drinks that we enjoyed while getting to know some of the students who are regularly involved with Student Life. The Fijian students were very friendly and eager to get to know us. I can’t wait for this week’s meeting!
Saturday we had the day off and one of the Stinters, Rob, took a few of us to Wailoku (I think that’s how it’s spelled) for an adventure! 2 Fijians also joined us as we hiked on land, then arrived at a stream that we got into and started hiking up (against the current!). Along the way we came to a waterfall that was probably 15 feet high or so. Many of us climbed around the side and then jumped/dove from the top into a deep pool of water at the bottom. A couple of us even climbed up to a higher point up the rocks along the side of the water fall to jump from. It was soooo scary but a ton of fun! We then continued on upstream until we came to another waterfall that was probably between 40 -50 feet high with a deep pool at the bottom to jump into. This was an absolutely horrifying height to jump from but most of the people, including me, mustered up the courage to make the jump! I will admit I was up there for about 25 minutes before I finally jumped. Once again it was so much fun and I hope to get to do it again. The best part of this whole adventure was that it only cost us $2.30 Fijian, which was the cost of the bus ride their and back!
Today we went to church. The team had the option of going to 3 different churches with different members of the Stint team. A few of us chose to go with Dave, Jenny, and Kori to a Baptist church. Several USP students go there. It was a nice service, especially the worship. Most of the songs we recognized and they were very passionate. The service lasted 2 hours, which was a little longer than I am used to, but it was good overall. I think we will be checking out different churches each week.
Tonight will be the first time we meet in our impact groups, which are co-ed small groups. We will be sharing our life stories with the rest of our group over the next few weeks. This week will also be the first time we meet for Bible study. We are studying Philippians over the entire trip. This first week we have been studying the entire book and its context, which has been a challenge for me, but I can see that doing in depth study will be very beneficial. I’m excited to improve my bible study skills through this project.
That's all for now, I'll update by next Sunday.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Bula Bula!
For all of you non-Fijians, "bula" means hello and is pretty much the most common greeting I've heard here in Fiji.
So let me start by updating you all on what went on before we left the States. I drove with my mom and sister to Indy from Cleveland last Wednesday. I met the rest of my team at the Crowne Plaza hotel near the airport, where we stayed until we flew out Friday morning. At briefing we had several training sessions to prepare us for the 6 weeks we would spend in Fiji. The three main themes were Love the Lord, Love your team, and Love the World. The training about loving the Lord was very impacting and really gave me some vision of how I wanted to see my personal relationship with God grow through reading the bible and prayer. We also took personality tests to learn about ourselves as well as how to love people better with different personalities than us. I learned that I fall under the category of "Melancholy" (kind of depressing label right?) which doesn't mean I am sad all the time, but that I place a very high value on Order, which is definitely true of me. We also learned about the Fijian culture and how to deal with any culture stress that might occur while we are here.
So Friday came and at 4:00am we left the hotel for the airport. We flew for about 2 hours to Houston, then 8.5 hours to Honolulu (where we had a 12 hour layover...not a bad place to be stuck for 12 hours...we went to the beach!), and then 6.5 to Nadi (pronounced non-dee) where we caught a bus that took us to Suva in 4 hours. Basically we were all exhausted by the time we got here, but we forced ourselves to stay up until at least 8pm to help with jet lag. I'm pretty much over jet lag now, I can stay up til 10 or 11 and wake up around 7 or 8.
We are in Suva, Fiji for the majority of this trip. To help me describe what Suva is like, you need to basically forget EVERYTHING you have ever thought about Fiji. Suva is a port city, so there is no beach. Also it rains just about every day, at random times and with no warning. Sometimes they are brief showers, other times they seem to be off and on all day. We have had several hours of sunny weather though. The city is pretty busy, with taxis and people walking everywhere. There are also quite a few tall buildings in the city. I don't really have a good grasp of the layout yet, but I'm slowly learning. The city is also kind of (for lack of a better word) dirty. It reminds me a lot of Lusaka, although the city is right on the ocean and does have some quite beautiful views of the mountains. Internet is also hard to come by, so I am at an internet cafe right now, paying for internet just like last year.
The people in Fiji are super friendly and always are greeting us as we walk around the city or on campus at the University of the South Pacific. Our time on campus this week has already seen tons of fruit for our labor! After only 2 days of sharing our team saw 38 people place their faith in Christ! On the second day of sharing our faiths on campus I went with my new friend Marcus. We met a guy named Sakaria and we sat to talk with him about the Gospel. We shared how God loves us and has a plan for our lives that we can experience through a relationship with him, but since we are sinful we are separated from God because he is perfect and Holy, but since God loves us he sent Jesus to earth and He lived a perfect life that did not deserve death, but he chose to die in our place to pay the penalty for our sin, which does deserve separation from God. I have never shared the gospel and had someone understand it as well as Sakaria did, and then have him say that he knew he did not have Jesus in his life. We asked him if he would like to do that right then with us, and he did so we prayed with him and he asked Jesus to be his savior. We then made plans to meet up again with him on Friday of this week to continue to discuss what it means to have a relationship with God. We also saw 2 friends place their faith in Christ in a similar fashion later that day. It was a very exciting day of ministry at USP and definitely energized me to keep pushing hard this week, even when I was tired or maybe no in the mood to be on campus.
So that is basically what has been going on in Fiji...some other side notes: I absolutely love my team, many of them are from Miami also, but there are several who aren't and I have enjoyed getting to know them all. I also have been enjoying pretty much everything I've eaten, which has often been seafood. I have also been running just about each day with different friends on the project which has been a sweet way to have good conversations and stay in shape! I also got to reunite with the STINT team that is here for the entire year, which has been really cool because 4 of them helped out with Student Venture in Oxford, OH with me, 1 of the guys, Dave, was my bible study leader and discipler during my sophomore year, and the last guy, Rob, is just hilarious and I've missed seeing at Miami.
I am looking forward to keeping you updated as I continue to live out this adventure in Fiji. It seems like I should be able to update this blog every week at the least. I hope you all are doing well in the States, definitely feel free to send me e-mails or facebook messages with what is going on with you!
