Day Two: Building Momentum

Hello from Queenstown.
Most of the day yesterday was spent on the looong but beautiful drive down the middle of the South Island from Oxford to Queenstown.
The atmosphere of the city reminds me a lot of Banff, though less rugged. It's a big tourist and backpacking hotspot. The spirit over the city is lust and materialism.
We camped about 15 km out of town last night by a small lake nestled in the mountains. We've had lots of opportunity for team bonding already. What with being squished together in small, leaky, pegless tents, missing essential parts for our campstove and improvising our meals over a free grill in the park and mostly just laughing a lot about everything.
This morning we attended a small Anglican church and made some really sweet connections over tea and coffee afterwards. Nicki met a guy who is an assistant manager at some sort of traveler's lodge here in town and he is going to try and hook us up with free rooms for our next few nights in exchange for a few hours of work. We're not sure yet if this will work out or not but it could be a huge answer to prayer as we would save over $200 and would be in a great place for meeting travelers and sharing our lives with them.
I was reading in Nehemiah this morning about when he was rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and how when they faced opposition from the surrounding nations they refused to be discouraged but rather "those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked.
Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the guards with me took off our clothes; each had his weapon, even when he went for water."
I believe that is what God has for Team Sherpa over the next several days. This is a time to build up the breaches in the wall and prepare for the war ahead of us. Being mindful all the while that although Queenstown may not be as overtly pagan as India or Nepal it is still a dark place in need of God's light and we need to take up our armour each day and be prepared to fight.