Last Day in New Zealand!
Animal Farm in New Zealand!
Cruise down the Milford Sound!
Queenstown is BEAUTIFUL!
Marilyn Hickey speaks at City Impact Church in New Zealand!
Seeing Jesus Down Under-New Zealand and Fiji Group Tour – Day 5
Day 5 was the optional excursion to Milford Sound, which the majority of the travelers opted into. The scenery along the 4-hour bus ride was truly breath-taking. They saw craggy snow-capped mountains up close, along with meandering rivers and waterfalls all over the mountains. The guide said if they had come the day before, they would have seen virtually none of the waterfalls, but because of the heavy rains in the last 24 hours alone, the mountains were just gushing the waterfalls out.
This particular group of travelers was split into three buses and one of the buses had a mechanical problem that forced it to stop and wait about 45 minutes while the driver and guide attempted to fix it. Thankfully God doesn’t waste a single thing and it so happened that this bus was also carrying Marilyn. So that 45 minutes were FULL of teaching, mentoring, praying, praise and worship – quite an extraordinary impromptu time they all felt so privileged to enjoy! Marilyn also solicited questions about any topic, and everyone was so blessed by her wisdom in answering each one of them. Her sharp wit and wise answers so enthralled every one of us.
Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand
The travelers arrived at Milford Sound right on time, boarded the ship, and enjoyed a lovely buffet meal, followed by a great cruise down the Sound, which is really a fjord. Our guide explained the difference between a sound and a fjord, but I forgot the explanation. Suffice it to say Milford Sound would have been more accurately named ‘Milford Fjord’. Regardless, the breathtaking scenery delighted us all! We also got to see seals basking on rocks – so precious! We enjoyed a couple of hours of ’oohs’ and ‘aahs’ because of the scenery, then back to the buses for the long ride home – with no bus breakdown.
New Zealand Fiji Group Tour – Day 3
Visiting the Hobbiton – the set from the Lord of the Rings!
Seeing Jesus Down Under-New Zealand and Fiji Group Tour – Days 3 & 4
On day 3 the team had a private breakfast where Sarah shared some nuggets about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s altars. It was such rich teaching – the travelers loved it! She also prayed for ears, and later that day a traveler shared that ever since that prayer, the ringing in her ears had stopped, PTL!
Sarah went on to minister at the City Impact’s North Shore 8:30AM chapel service, and Marilyn taught at the 10:30AM service. Later, a young person who had heard Sarah’s teaching shared that it really caused her to think about the experiences in her own life and what altars she has and hasn’t recognized thus far.
At the 10:30 service, after lively, young, dynamic worship, Marilyn taught on the gospels’ depictions of Jesus and what they meant. The service was simulcast to the Wellington congregation, where the team would be for the evening service. She was extremely well received. All the audience loved her and her message, and she ended the service with calls for salvation, re-dedication, and for healing of tumors and warts. The travelers were buzzing about Marilyn’s message all afternoon!
Later, at the Wellington campus, there was another large capacity crowd with lively worship. It was simulcast to the North campus. Both churches were very alive and intense about their worship, infecting the audience worshipers in a most wonderful way. Marilyn taught on how the Old Testament was segmented into the Pentateuch, History, Wisdom and Prophets. Again, the Lord enlightened and energized the crowd through her thrilling, on-point teaching, and tonight when she called for salvations and re-dedications and Holy Spirit infillings, the altar was filled to overflowing! It was a great service, and the travelers didn’t want to leave that holy ground!
The next day, the team traveled to the airport and took two different flights to Queenstown, a very popular tourist destination in New Zealand. Queenstown gets its name from local gold prospectors of the 19th century who called the town “fit for any Queen”. On the way from the airport to the hotel, they stopped at a small town called Arrowtown and toured their Lakes District Museum. The museum was filled with western items: wagons, tools, etc. that could easily have been viewed in a Colorado museum – those of us from Colorado felt right at home! Queenstown is the coldest place so far for this trip and the travelers from Florida and other southern states were cold. They bought up all the plentiful sheep wool winter scarves, hats, etc. that are ubiquitous there.
New Zealand Fiji Group Tour – Day 2
The beautiful sites of Auckland!
Seeing Jesus Down Under-New Zealand and Fiji Group Tour Days 1 & 2
The Spring 2017 group tour to New Zealand(NZ) and Fiji is underway with 122 travelers ready to See Jesus Down Under!
All are excited to be with Marilyn and with Sarah, who joined the group for the Auckland part of the trip.
When the team arrived in Auckland, they toured the city. Auckland is a sporting and cultural city sprawled on a narrow isthmus between two harbors. There are numerous volcanoes, and every so often you can see evidence of them with the lava rock formations. NZ is a young island, but the native fauna and birds are from a much older time because they migrated from Australia.
The Auckland metropolitan population is a mix of European, Maori, and Polynesian peoples.
In the evening, the travelers enjoyed a welcome dinner where Marilyn and Sarah shared a lovey greeting. The travelers are excited with anticipation of how God would use all the team. There is unity in this group thanks to your prayers. The food is delicious and plentiful, and the native people are very kind and pleasant.
On Day 2, the team headed to Hobbiton, visiting the movie set of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies. The set featuring the Shire from middle-earth, is on 10 acres of a picturesque 1,250-acre sheep farm. It rained heavily but there were also patches of sun, and it was so thrilling to be there. It’s fall heading into winter there, so this weather was typical. FUN FACT: An interesting feature about filming at the Shire was that sometimes two identical sets, one big and one little, had to be made to pull off the hobbits’ smallness against Gandolph’s tallness, since the actors were all essentially the same size.
After that, they toured Rotorua and saw the active geysers, second only to Yellowstone’s. There was also an area where they saw the therapeutic boiling mud. The group then visited places where they carved and weaved traditional items, and they also visited a dark cave-like structure where a nocturnal Kiwi was kept. The group actually saw one darting about! The Kiwi bird is flightless, and is believed to have evolved from the Australian Emu. Because for so long birds were the only inhabitant of NZ, many evolved to be flightless because there were no predators to flee from. Not so in more recent times. With the advance of civilization they are becoming extinct, but massive efforts are being made to counteract this.
This visit culminated into a visit to a cultural performance by the Maori, and late afternoon tea. The travelers returned to the hotel exhausted but so happy that they had experienced so very much in one day!
New Zealand Fiji Group Tour – Day 1
Flying to New Zealand!
