Nelson (NZ) February 2015 "Hope fulfilled"
01/02/15 22:05
We went to New Zealand for our honeymoon holiday. If someone had told me a year ago that one day I would be visiting New Zealand I would not have believed them but now here we are. On arrival I made a mistake in not getting a local SIM card for my phone so we had to rely on finding wifi at the places we were staying in order to keep in touch with what was going on and planning for the next day. I won't be making that mistake again. Out on the road we had to rely on the maps in our guide book which were fine for journeys between towns but not local trips. I had been tasked with finding a church for us to go to each Sunday and the internet provided me with enough suggestions. The problem I was about to discover was my memory was perhaps not as good as it needed to be.
This particular Sunday we were in a town called Nelson at the top of South Island. The church I had chosen was called Hope and according to the map I was looking at it was located just outside the town of that name however I had not bothered to look at the scale so I was a bit uncertain how far we had to drive to get there. We set off a bit late, as usual, and immediately lost the wifi signal on the phone and with it Google Maps. My memory said follow the main road out of Nelson, there is a main road on the right and it is the next turning. That is true but that turning is 11 km down the main road whilst I thought it would be no more than five. You can imagine how my stress levels started to rise as time went on and there was no right hand turn on that road. I had all but given up hope when we spotted the words "Hope Community Church" on a yellow sign pointing down a right hand turn.
We were more than fifteen minutes late when I finally stopped the car in their car park. However as we walked into the church we were warmly greeted by one of their welcome team who seemed hardly surprise to see us and said "follow me". Inside the hall there were over 100 people singing the worship song the band were playing. I looked around for empty seats but I could see none. Our guide led us down the aisle between the rows of seats and we headed towards the stage. I was stunned because there at the end of the second row from the stage were two empty seats just waiting for us to be fill them! Wow, that was lucky or maybe not because if you
have read my June 2014 story, "Welcome Home", then you may have already spotted the significance of there being two empty seats at the end of the second row. That day was the first time I had been to church for over forty years and we were found two seats at the end of the second row from the stage. This was history repeating itself.
This particular Sunday we were in a town called Nelson at the top of South Island. The church I had chosen was called Hope and according to the map I was looking at it was located just outside the town of that name however I had not bothered to look at the scale so I was a bit uncertain how far we had to drive to get there. We set off a bit late, as usual, and immediately lost the wifi signal on the phone and with it Google Maps. My memory said follow the main road out of Nelson, there is a main road on the right and it is the next turning. That is true but that turning is 11 km down the main road whilst I thought it would be no more than five. You can imagine how my stress levels started to rise as time went on and there was no right hand turn on that road. I had all but given up hope when we spotted the words "Hope Community Church" on a yellow sign pointing down a right hand turn.
We were more than fifteen minutes late when I finally stopped the car in their car park. However as we walked into the church we were warmly greeted by one of their welcome team who seemed hardly surprise to see us and said "follow me". Inside the hall there were over 100 people singing the worship song the band were playing. I looked around for empty seats but I could see none. Our guide led us down the aisle between the rows of seats and we headed towards the stage. I was stunned because there at the end of the second row from the stage were two empty seats just waiting for us to be fill them! Wow, that was lucky or maybe not because if you
have read my June 2014 story, "Welcome Home", then you may have already spotted the significance of there being two empty seats at the end of the second row. That day was the first time I had been to church for over forty years and we were found two seats at the end of the second row from the stage. This was history repeating itself.