Hallo again everyone from new zealand ...loving the photos from carroty wood and very sorry not to have been there. I'm now on the south island and have been staying with mike and rose riddell for the last 5 days - an amazing time of good food - good wine and late night whiskey fuelled theological discussions mostly taking place in their hot tub in the garden underneath the stars of the southern hemisphere .

By the way Ian - mike sends his warmest regards to you and for reasons unknown speaks very highly of you . :-}

But as you say New Zealand is an incredibly spiritual place and i want to throw out another possible discussion topic amongst us ....but new zealand is a good place to commune with god ...make life changing decisons and start to dream dreams again ...life is still a good thing ....... i havent yet met my wife here but theres still another 6 days to go so get praying ...

Last weekend as you were enjoying the luxury of carroty wood i was in a little town called rotorua and i went to have a look at the little anglican church in the town on the saturday afternoon while my friends did their advanced mountain biking course.... The church of Saint Faiths was stunning ....built of wood in the maori part of town in 1800s ...inside it is full of traditonal maori carving on the wood- every pillar and even the ceiling covered in maori carvings ....then there are traditonal stained glass windows of the 4 apostles - all as white europeans -but then it gets interesting -At the front to the right of the main altar there is a little side chapel called the galillee chapel .....it has a huge floor to ceiling window looking out over lake roturua .......sandblastted onto the window is a christ figure ......2 really interesting things about this ....the christ figure is walking on the water of lake roturua but you can only get the proper angle when you kneel at the altar rail ....secondly its a maori christ figure - dressed in traditional maori chieftain costume ....and part of me was intitially quite shocked at thinking of christ as a maori chief and then i got to thinking about what my image of christ is like and realised how ridiulosly cultural it is ..... my presbyterian sunday schoolblond haired blue eyed jesus is wrong ...so then why not a maori jesus ......... how much of what european missionaries did was cultural imperialism ....how much do we still see jesus through our cultural preconceptions and misconceptions

jesus has many faces in many lands .....and ours is not any better or any worse than anyone elses ....Has made me start to think about doing a moot service looking at the faces of jesus around the world and what we can learn from it

Was wondering if anyone else has had those moments when they realise how much of our faith images are cultural rather that factually true and what can we learn from how we protray christ in the city - how do we reach out to those around us without falling into the trap of 19th century missionaries taking their blond haired blue eyed jesus to the uttermost parts of the world

anyway heading off to queenstown and milford sound tommorrow ....but what i'm most excited about is spending some time at dorothy browns cinema in arrowtown on sunday - where the seats are designed to hold red wine and a cheeseboard and the movie is The lion the witch and the wardrobe ...filmed in new zealand but concieved in belfast by my fellow countryman - CS Lewis .....it feels right to see it here

Till next week then =- blessings upon you all

mark