Letter 3

Hello Everyone,
I’ve had another intense week in New Zealand. We even had an earthquake on Wednesday night, I didn’t feel it because it was a rolling one and not shaking, but one of our leaders said they saw their chandelier swaying. We spent this week learning about biblical worldview from the director of the base. I learned a lot of practical principles from the Bible and I will be able to build upon a stronger foundation because I have learned about the roots of our faith.
We focused on learning about Animism/New Age, Secular Humanism in comparison to Biblical Christianity. We spent time learning about the history of each and we learned about the different parts of the world where each one of these worldviews is found. In learning about these different worldviews I was reminded again that worldview is foundational to cultural values. I was exposed to different cultural tendencies and found that nations founded upon biblical worldview were generally more successful. This is due to the values that Christianity invokes in culture such as the “Protestant work ethic”, which was revived during the reformation. God told Adam and Eve to work His world and to care for it (Genesis 2), and He gave us His desire for growth (Genesis 9). This helped me to get rid of some of my own enculturation and misconceptions about God’s will.
Secular Humanism values that our world is going to be overpopulated and that everything is going downhill, when in reality God wanted us to fill our earth and subdue it, and there is still plenty of land to use. 
While working on understanding worldview and cultural value I learned from students from Indonesia and India. They both spoke about an unhealthy fear of God being prevalent throughout their cultures. Where as in western culture we have a tendency to not fear God enough. In learning about Biblical Christianity we learned about the importance of understanding God’s ability to work in any vocation and found practical scripture to study for our different lifelong vocations (Proverbs 16:3). I studied some verses that had to do with business (Proverbs 11: 24-25, 16: 3, 21: 20, 22: 16 and 22; Exodus 22: 22-27).
We spent Monday doing service work around the community of Oxford and in anticipation about where our options for outreach would be. After finding out our options I spent the remainder of Monday praying and asking for advice from all of you. On Tuesday we worshipped and prayed asking for God’s blessing on all of our decisions. I received some great advice and know that many people were praying for me as I made my decision to go to T-urkey 2, or the travel team. I am very confident that God will use me in T-urkey and I am excited to continue my preparation for this mission. On Wednesday I went to Porters and spent the day skiing and talking to people, I had a couple of opportunities to witness. On Thursday I spent the day learning about different cultures and then we watched a movie on M-uslim culture, while the groups going to A-frica and S. A-merica watched a different video. Friday we went into Christchurch and did mission work after our morning lecture and worship. I went to a thing called Ricecube and taught English to the Asian people who showed up, we also got to eat some authentic Asian food. It was great. Some people were able to witness and pray with some non-believers at the different events that our school did. Saturday was great, we spent the day skiing at Mt. Hutt and I passed out about thirty invitations to a free dinner that we put on every Saturday night in a nearby town (I also saw the biggest rabbit (Hare) I’ve ever seen in my life it was the size of Prints (my dog) and was running on all fours going really fast, I bet over thirty Mph). I went back to the base on Saturday night and got a bunch of people to go stargazing, so we drove to a high bridge about ten minutes away, it was beautiful and I saw three shooting stars! But the van broke down and it ended up being a 2 ½ hour trip.
“The key to experiencing some of the stuff relating to the love of God is able to respond out of that with reciprocal love.” Aaron Walsh
John 17:20-26
This is just a cool thought that I have been seeing as a reoccurring theme of my school.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and continued support as I learn and tell others about God’s love for them.
In Christ,

Travis