An Article I Just Read

So, I just had a little time before my class starts, and I like to read through the articles on msn.com, and there was one about God and money. So, I decided to read it. Apparently this week's Time magazine has an article about God and money.

It talks a lot about Joel Osteen, you may have heard of him. I have never really ahd anything against him, but also have never really read or heard anything from him before. It seems as if he is an advocate for the "prosperity gospel." Yep, that is right God wants us to be rich mentality. I now have a lesser opinion of him. The Bible never says God wants us to be rich. But, according the the article, 61% of Christians beleive that God wants them to be rich. Where does this come from?

Well, it may come from the fact that Mr. Osteen never finished college or went to seminary. So, he may not have as good of an understanding of scripture as others who have gone to college and seminary. I am not saying that those that don't go to seminary cannot become good pastors through the hand of God, but I beleive that since we have good institutions in this country to provide deep theological learning and understanding, why not use them.

One of those Life Things

Just over a month ago I found out that my mother was going to have her kidney taken out. It was certainly a shock, because I didn't know anything was wrong. What happened is that the doctors did an MRI/CAT scan on her, because she was having some pain, and they saw a lump in her kidney. Well, the options were to cut her open and:
1. take a biopsy and see what it is and if it were to be bad then go back in a take it out.
2. take out the half of the kidney that the lump was in.
3. take the whole kidney out.
Well, after talking to a few doctors my parents learned that the best and easiest was to just take the whole thing out. So they did. That put my mother out of commission for a month - yes school started in there.

I got to sub for her math classes. I did that for 2 weeks, and I can say that teaching math is hard. I like the flow and time allotted in my physics class.

Well, they found out that the lump was cancer, but it was fully contained in the kidney and therefore everything is OK. It was a little scary for a little bit of time. All the doctors said it wasn't a big deal, and it was routine, but still a little scary.

Thanks for all the prayers.

Links to what we did

I also wanted to provide links to the things we did and places we stayed (where available) in both Australia and New Zealand. OK, I am just providing the ones I thought were worth mentioning that I still had at easy access.

Australia - Brisbane Area
http://www.carinyabandb.com.au/ - B&B in Brisbane
http://www.kooroomba.com.au - lavender Farm
http://www.crocodilehunter.com/ - The Australia Zoo

New Zealand - North Island
http://www.ezirentcarhire.co.nz - Car Rental agency
http://www.hobbitontours.com/ - Hobbiton
http://www.waimangu.com/ - Geothermal Park
https://www.iserve.co.nz/users/spider01/theloftnz.com/htdocs/index.htm - B&B at Lake Taupo - VERY NICE room and people
http://www.sharella.co.nz/ - cheap, not bad, in day may be nice because it is across from Botanical Garden

South Island
http://www.thecamelot.co.nz/ - Right downtown, no parking included (have to pay to park)
http://www.jadecourt.co.nz/ - Surprisingly nice. LITTLE TOWN. Good stop over between Christchurch and the glaciers
http://www.franzjosefglacier.co.nz/ - Glacier Tours - BLAST!!!!!
http://www.okurubeach.co.nz/ - Little B&B, kind-of hard to find, but nice people
http://www.willowbrook.net.nz/ - VERY NICE B&B. Outside of Queenstown about 20 minutes.
http://www.thestation.co.nz/default.asp - Milford Sound Day Tour - May decide to drive instead, but it is 4 hours each way from Queenstown so it was nice to relax in bus instead, but other people with you that are not necessarily as great.
http://www.nzhomestay.co.nz/pages/Canterbury/HO_79.html - Nice B&B between Queenstown and Christchurch. It is called Tekapo House so if html doesn't work then just do a search for it.


Overall we liked the B&B's more than the hotels, but you of course pay a little more for that (most of the time). The gondola rides in Queenstown and Christchurch were well worth it.

Overall Australia & New Zealand

I have uploaded a lot of pictures with brief descriptions today. They are in reverse order if you start at the top (Sorry, I didn't think of that first). This trip was great. It started off in Australia, getting to see one of my best friends getting married to a wonderful woman. The wedding was nice, and Beverly and I were very happy that we could make it. The weather was great (well a little rain wasn't always occuring at the right time for our liking). The area was gorgeous, and Beverly and I would love to return sooner rather than later.

One thing we did learn is that 12 days in all of New Zealand is not nearly enough time to really enjoy it. If and when we go back I think we will either have to spend a lot more time there to see both islands, or take two trips one to each island exclusively. I would advise everyone to go there at least once in their lives. Both islands have a lot to offer.

I can say that we will return someday. God definitely went all out in beauty when he created New Zealand. Thank you God!

Almost at the End

While at Lake Tapeko there is a church there that is known as the most photographed church in New Zealand. So, we took a picture of it. It is still in use, and it was quite a nice little church overlooking a beautiful lake and mountain setting.














Here we are at the lake as well. After this we headed off back to Christchurch to head back homeward.

The Tallest Mountain in New Zealand

Now, I wanted to see Mt. Cook. I was told that it was a great place to hike, and a great place to just see. So, we set off to see it. Well, as you can see in the distance towards Mt. Cook it was cloudy the day we went there. Not only was it cloudy once we got there, it was raining. We still hiked a little, and had a good time trying to change out of wet and muddy clothes in a car that was packed pretty full with suitcases without getting wetness and mud everywhere.

This picture is of a lake we drove along on our way to Mt. Cook. The colors were nice, and so were the clouds (at least from a distance).

The Sound (Fiord)

The next day we went on a day tour to Milford Sound. It was a nice drive out on a big tour bus. We stopped a few times to hike around before we got to the Sound. One of the places we stopped was Mirror Lake. Click on this picture (It is big so it may take a while to load) and look at the sign for the lake.

















Another place we stopped was a frost covered field. Beverly took this great close-up of some of that frost.











And here we are at the end of the day at Milford Sound. It was cold that day as well, and so we are all covered up.

A Drive to Queenstown

On our drive to Queenstown (our southern most distance we drove) we stopped a few times along the way and hiked some. Here is a pool we stopped at on one of those hikes.

That night at the B&B we stayed at I took the camera outside and pointed it at the sky and took a timelaps photo. Here was the result.



Kind of in the middle you can see the southern cross.

The Cold Highlight for Me

A couple days later we got to hike on a glacier. This was loads of fun. I mean look at it! It was amazing. It was cold at times, but this is considered a warm glacier. This is because its base exists around warm climate (70's and 80's even). It is moving so fast that it is able to reach this point without melting. They say it moves soemthing like 2m a year right now. That may not sound like much but most glaciers move something like 1m every 1000 years. So, a big difference. bevelry was a little worried at times, but she only slipped once, and didn't hurt herself. Here she is in a crevace we had to go through:
It was fun for many reasons, one being that the guide doesn't really know where he is going. Well, he knew about where he wanted to end up and get back to, but the path changes everyday. So, we got to one point and he said, "hmm, maybe we should ahve gone left back there." It was a full day of adventure!

Crossing Between Islands and a Night Site

On this day we traveled on a ferry between the two islands. I slept most of the way (I don't like boats), and Beverly took a lot of pictures so that I could see what I missed. Here was one of her favorites, and she tells me that this was what you saw most of the trip. You can actually see coast line during the entire trip, just sometimes it is the north island, sometimes the south, and sometimes both. DID YOU KNOW - New Zealand has most coastline than all of the US.

Once we were on the other side we picked up a new car and headed towards Christchurch. That night we took a trip up the side of a mountain and saw this beautiful sunset.

A Geothermal Experience

Our next stop that same day was to a geothermal park called Waimangu Volcanic Valley. There is a lot of geothermal activity in New Zealand and I wanted to go to one of the many parks that are there to see some of it. This is a picture of what is called "Frying Pan Lake." It resembles the shape of a frying pan, and yes that is gas coming off of it. It is not regular steam though. Yes, it is apparently hot, but it is also sulfer gas. So it really smelled there too. You can even see sulfer gas coming out of the mountian on the right side of the picutre. This is the worlds largest hot water spring (in surface area)




This is us at Inferno Lake. A VERY blue water lake that rises and falls on the order of 16m in a matter of about 2 weeks. You can see the upper level in the picutre indicated by the white line. The blue is just SO deep that is was very cool. It has this color due to the make up of the chemicals in the water reflecting and refracting the light in such a way that the color blue it is is the color that makes it to your eye (or the camera in this case). This is the worlds largest Crypto Geyser.

The Road Trip Begins

We rented a car and our plan was to get to the Wellington at the south of the North Island in 2 days, and that was going to be quite a feat. Our first stop along the way was to Hobbitton. Yep, we got to see where they filmed part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was really cool, and being able to wander around and see what they did to create J.R.R. Tolkien's world was fantastic.











There is only one hobbit hole that you can actually just get inside and that was Biblo's. Here is a picture of us jsut inisde the door.

Into New Zealand

So, after a great time in Australia we ventured into New Zealand. We started off in Aukland. Here is a picture from one of many parks in the city. You can see the Aukland Tower in the distance.









We also got to go to a zoo here and saw a Kiwi. They are nocturnal birds so they are very elusive creatures.

Out in the Rain Forest

Our next day we went on a day tour and got to hike through part of a national park. It was quite nice. As you can see there are trees that are covered in vines that have surrounded the trees from top to bottom, and the actual tree is still alive and you can see it through the dense vines.

The Australia Zoo

This is Beverly and "The Bus" (that's the Wombat) at The Australia Zoo (Yes, where Steve Irwin was from).
The zoo was amazing. I have never seen animals that seem to have enough space to move around freely, and they are expanding. As you can see they take a lot of the animals out for walks regularly so that they can get outside their areas. We saw dingos, wombats and birds all out seeing the area around the zoo.