Thank you so much to everyone that made a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child last year. 653 boxes were able to be sent from Wellington and there were 13,840 from New Zealand as a whole! Every box is given to a church pastor to be distributed within their communities, and every box represents a Gospel opportunity, with many children who are discipled as a result. Thank you for the part you played in this incredible blessing!

Two thousand years ago, a group of people gathered in a room, and the bible says they prayed constantly for ten days. At the end of that prayer meeting, the Holy Spirit was poured out, and the church was born!

With all the challenges the church faces today, we are invited to humble ourselves, seek God in prayer, and ask Him to pour our His Spirit afresh on the church.

Kicking off on the 14th May we are joining with other churches from all around New Zealand to pray in the lead up to Pentecost Sunday. We want to be people devoted to God in prayer. We want to be a church where our story cannot be explained without the powerful ministry of the Holy Spirit through people. This is an intensive period where we will set aside time to draw near to God through daily prayer, praying with our bodies through fasting and praying together as a community.

Throughout this period there will be daily prayer gatherings happening around the Peninsula and we want to encourage you to take a stretch step during this 10 days of prayer. If you’ve never prayed out loud with others, why not come along to one or two of our prayer gatherings during that time and make that your goal. If you love to pray with others, why not aim to pray with others every day during those 10 days. Or maybe a stretch for you will be somewhere in between. Whatever it is, let’s cry out together “Come Holy Spirit”.

We’d also like you to consider joining in with a corporate day of fasting on Monday 18th May. That could involve only drinking water for that whole day, or it could be missing one meal. Or if you’re not able to fast from food, is there something else you could give up for that day? What would be a stretch for you? There is something powerful when God’s people fast and pray together for God to move.

All the details of times and venues for the prayer gatherings are in the newsletter email this week!

5.30pm Wednesday evenings at the Strathmore Community Centre / Te Tūhunga Rau. We provide a free dinner each week, but the next few weeks we are likely to be short on help with the food preparation. If you would like to help with this please get in touch with Andrea andreamteng@gmail.com. Big thank you to all our helpers.