The Zoom Zoom Affect of Living Busy

I would have to say that of all the months since we have arrived here in NZ the month of July has ZOOMED by. A simple breakdown of the month will reveal that two weeks of School, a major 6000 word paper for my leadership class, John and Carolyne taking the month off, prison ministry, a two day retreat, 3 planning and strategic church meetings,
and of course Kelly and Jen and Jason and Chelsey all going back to Canada in the middle of the month lead to some extra party type stuff going on, has kept us very busy!
The class I took was called interpreting the parables with Dr. Craig Blomberg and it was very enjoyable. I was a late addition to the class so it caught me off guard especially since there was a pretty hefty book that needed to be read prior to class beginning and with a written review. But it was great timing as I am preaching through the parables in ICC right now so it greatly enhanced my understanding of the stories of Jesus. (If you want to hear them online you can just go to twango.com and type in kevin nichol and it will take you to my message site) My paper was due in on the 20th but i had to get a weeks extension to finish it so I handed it in today. The focus of my paper was the metaphors that both Jesus and Paul used to describe leaders and leadership. I even had my sister give me a hand with some of the sentence structure and English stuff. Thanks sis! We had some good friends offer me there batch out on the cormandel peninsula so I could have 3 days of solid paper writing. It was just what I needed to get this monster off my back. I am so thankful. Here is a shot of the mountain that the cabin is located on. We are in the middle of making some massive decisions about ICC. Currently it needs some serious work especially financially if we are going to stay open for business. Could use your prayers regarding this as I think some tough decisions are looming ahead if our current plans do not encourage growth both numerically and financially.
John and Carolyne both came back expressing that they had a fantastic time away and are feeling much better. They will be retiring from the church leadership in February O8 and our leadership decided to let do whatever they have a passion for in the fellowship over the next 7-8 months. Our objective is to believe God that they will finish well here and that God will provide wisdom for the next steps in his journey for them.
Well this is getting kinda long so I will shut it down and throw on a few pictures of my month.
God is Good All the Time!

So long, far well, to our Canadain friends...

The Lord did us a HUGE favour by bringing out some really terrific folks to help kick start our Kiwi journey. Kelly and Jen (& Mateo) and Jason and Chelsey have been a wonderful source of encouragement to us these past 6 months. Did I just say 6 months… wow time is going fast!
Over the course of the next two days these friends will be boarding planes and heading back to Canada. The Nichol 5 will all greatly miss them. Their presence here has often lifted our hearts, their encouraging words have blown wind in our sails, their fun loving ways have kept things light hearted, their shoulders have helped in making the load lighter and their prayers and support are ongoing and sweet as honey to us. Like I said, God has shown us favour in allowing us to get started with such a great team of people around us.
Thanks brothers and sisters for being here, connecting with all of us and just generally being FANTASTIC!
I already miss you and the next couple of days of good byes are going to be sad ones. Thanks for the memories and the many blessings you have brought to our New Zealand world. I look forward to reconnecting with you some day in the hopefully near future!
God is Good All the Time.

Well, this week went by so fast. John and Carolyne are off on a much deserved 1 month break. This will work well for both of us. Having them away has forced me to get into the guts of this church, ask a few tough questions, seek a better understanding of how thing run around here. I also got a last minute invitation to attend my second Master Class on Preaching the Parables with Dr. Craig Blomberg. It has been quite informative and such good timing as i am preaching through the parables in the Sunday morning service at ICC. (If you are interested you can follow this link to it) http://www.twango.com/media/kevinnichol.public/kevinnichol.10006 I also took two days and three nights to attend a much needed retreat with a couple of my Canadian buds at Capernwray bible school conference lodge. It was so worth going, we were well feed in every sense of the word and we had great times of conversation centred mostly about how the speaker personally affected us. Today we went to MOTAT (Museum Of Transportation And Technology)with the girls and Chels and Jas. We sure are going to miss all these wonderful Canadians who have been sooooooooo supportive of our ministry here. We thank God often for them and we will miss then greatly when they had back to Canada July 15th. Tomorrow, I will be going to jail. I have been invited by the local prison chaplain to come with some fellows from our church and lead the prison service. I have no idea what to expect and thankfully the two guys I am taking with me have gone several times in the past. I will depend on their wisdom and experience. And finally we spoke with Niki today on Skype. We are all excited that in 3 weeks we will be spending 3 weeks together. We are all keyed up for it.
God and Good All the Time!

When your kids say they're homesick!

When your kids say they are homesick what can you do?

Really there is nothing that can be said or done to make that feeling go away. I think it is just a nicer way of saying that they are grieving. And when someone is grieving you just be there for them, embrace their sorrow, and pray for their comfort. Not much else you can do!

It does help to have talks in between greiving that make it a little easier when those times do come. A good verse is that the Lord is close to the broken hearted to remind us all that this sorrow is not ignored nor is it pampered by the Lord who was greived and sorrowful as well.

But in the end, no amount of sermonizing can stop grieving nor should it try to do so. The inbetween talks and verses from scripture or just wise sayings are meant to simply encourage before, after and during hard times.

Good to know that God is Good all the Time!

The Friendliest of Experiences

It suddenly dawned on me the other day that our hopes and dreams are directly connected to our fears. I wondered if there is a single hope out there in the universe that doesn’t have a fear or a few fears attached to it. Sort of like the two sides of a coin, one side is the hope you hold out for something and the other is the fear that that hope will not work out. Think about it for a second, what is one thing you are hoping for right now? Now, is there a fear attached to it? I would be surprised if there would be a single person out there that would deny the presence of fear hiding somewhere in the shadow of a hope.
My hopes here are of course that all would go well, that our family would thrive even under all the various stresses of moving here. I hope that our finances will be provided for us, our church will grow with new believers, and strong Christians who are moving to the area and need a good church. I hope for health and strength emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually to meet the challenges that each day brings. These are just a few of my hopes in a long and over worked list of hopes. But each one has a "what if" kind of fear that is lurking around the corners of my heart and mind. It seems to try and eat away at my faith and my hopes.
How do we deal with such fears? Move on, pretend they are not there? Sometimes I suppose, but what about prayer? I prayed that God would take all my hopes and dreams and each fear I could think of that was associated with them all and surrendered them to Him! The fears left and the hopes grew stronger. I think prayer has got to be one of the friendliest experiences of a human beings life. Conversations with a God who is your friend and has your best interests in mind. What a great faith we have. Cast all your cares on him for he cares for you.
God is Good All the Time.

sermons online

I went to preach at a friends church this morning and he showed me how to put my sermons online. He recorded mine from today so that I could put it on the website called "Twango". On the side of my blog I now have a link you can follow to this site if you want to hear my sermon or you could just click this link and listen here to the sermon. I will be trying to put more up as the days go by if you are interested in hearing what I am preaching these days. The next step for me is to figure out how to go about recording my sermons at ICC so I can put them on this website. Hopefully I will get that done soon.
God is Good All the Time! OOPS! I guess you need a password to get into my sermon site. type in kevinnichol in the ID slot and then peachy07 in the password slot and you should be able to listen to the sermons. If you get lost just type in nichol in the top search bar and it should take you back to me.

Ministry and Money

I guess one could say that the penny has dropped and now we are fully aware of what it meant to leave Canada with only a small portion of our needed funding. I wish we could just not have to think about money and the raising of it but that is not the reality we live in. This week during a few unguarded moments I was having a bit of a pity party. I can’t remember when we have ever really brought in a decent wage. I have worked my butt off for more than 20 years of ministry and most of that time we have been well underpaid. But I suppose it is part of the world of church and ministry we live in. Making money is not why I do what I do but sometimes ya just gotta wonder. Money makes the world go round and it certainly cost lots of money to minister the word of God. I wonder how those TV guys get away with making millions from their TV preaching programs. There is money out there in the kingdom for that kind of ministry. I suppose I could go on gripping about this whole thing but it wouldn’t help one little bit. I have to ruthlessly trust that God will provide regardless of how I feel in my unguarded moments. I guess that discouragement is on the other side of this feeling if I don’t guard my heart for out of it flows the wellspring of life. There now that just feels a bit better! Sorry if you had to read this I guess I should have put the disclaimer at the beginning of the blog. Caution: Dangerous whining in progress!
God is Good All the Time!

Driving with Boy in Car!

Danae is really working hard at becoming a proficient and safe driver. In fact yesterday she came marching into my office and announced that she was sad and needed some cheering up. She followed this up with, "So dad, take me driving ‘cuase I need something to do that makes me happy." So off we went. We cranked the tunes and I shot a couple of pictures to mark the event. ENJOY!

Preaching in Chinese

Last weekend I was invited by our sister church the Chinese Christian Alliance Church to come and preach in their English and then Cantonese services. I had so much fun. The first service was full of mostly young people with a few adults thrown in and the second service was a real treat. I really enjoyed both services and will take away a couple of great memories from the experience. The first thing I remember as I look back on the experience was the moment in the Cantonese service when they all stood and said the Lords prayer in almost perfect unison. The second would be the fun of preaching through and interpreter (or interrupter as he called himself). It was such a blessing to serve these churches with the gift the Lord has given to me. I hope I get to do that some more. The picture is of me and my “interrupter” Steven.
He was a terrific young guy and we really hit it off.
God is Good All the Time

Shared Thoughts From School

This week has been such a great blessing to me. I am like a dry sponge soaking up everything moist around it. I am so into this class that I start at 9:00 and end at 12:30 and it goes by so fast it seems like a blink. Dr. Mark Strom is our instructor and his easy going approach and story/narrative way of handling the material along with all the insights that are coming from the students makes for such a sweet time. I am sad when it is time to go home and face the awful Auckland traffic. Our topic is timely for me. The class is called Leadership: Ancient and Modern, and the essence of the class is to move today's leadership back to a basic understanding of Paul's view of leadership. That being to move leadership away from the ancient philosopher’s Plato and Aristotle's approach of rank and status. Rank means to understand your place and status means the prestige of the Rank that you held. He believes that the current church "system" is based on this rank and status approach and is nothing like what Paul had in mind for leadership in his writings. In other words it is a very "top-down" driven system. Leadership is based and rank and status, the top down approach that is created to keep things under control at all times. The basic instrument of change for all of this is something he terms "Naming" and also "conversation." Giving people and or things new names or new language in order to have new conversations that are meaningful and lead to new ideas etc.
Anyway, before I bore you with to many more details I just wanted to blog out the fun that I am having at school. I am grateful to the Lord for his provision that allows me get some more education.
God is Good all The Time

Off to School...

I went to school today, I was a bit nervous and for the most part felt a bit intimidated by the whole scholarly road to a new and hopefully better you. The nice thing about it was that there we're several students there who were older than me and quite a few younger. I found myself in the middle which i guess was a small bit of comfort.
The drive from my house to the school took one hour and fifteen minutes. It is almost from one end of the city to another. I sat at one traffic circle for almost 15 minutes. I sat beside a young lady who lives not to far from me so she gave me some "short-cut" directions that I will be taking tomorrow.
I really enjoyed myself today. It was fun to be back in a learning environment. A real live Prof. with real live students and real live papers! I have to write to 2000 word papers and one 10000 word paper. That all should prove to be very interesting indeed.
Well, I go back tomorrow for round two and each day Monday through Friday for the next two weeks. My class is called "Leadership: Ancient and Modern" and so far I have enjoyed the reading and now I get to enjoy the class work. And best of all Cheryl prayed for me as I went out the door this morning that no one would bully me... and it worked. I even learned that bullies are really just cowards! SO THERE!
God is Good All the Time!

When it rains "KD" it pours "KD"

WOW talk about the healing power of Kraft Dinner! Today we recieved another package in the mail from Canada. One complete case of 12 Kraft Dinner individual packages. I've got EMS on standby incase one of the girls goings into shock upon seeing the lasted delivery! Wow when it rains it pours around here!
God is a fan of Kraft Dinner!

The healing power of Kraft Dinner

Facebook has opened up a whole new connection with friends I had not heard from in some cases years. I am finding it a delightful way of just quickly reconnecting over simple things with quick notes that just carry a conversation on for days that in real life face to face stuff would take a few minutes.
MSN has kept me well informed from our friends in china as well as my family back in Canada. This week has been great as I have had some great talks with my brother Cam and then stumbled onto a semi family gathering happening out at Chris and Jamie's place where mom and dad had gone for a visit. I could sit in the comfort of my office chair, and see my cute little niece and nephew and say hi to everyone almost like I was right there. Ain't technology grand!
Just in case you haven’t heard the news yet, Paige broke her wrist during a soccer game. Somehow got mixed up with one of there players and ended up on the ground with a fracture. It was all a bit hazy, the ref didn’t see any infringement etc. but Paige is now sporting a cast. We're all hoping it is a simple fracture that does not require too much cast time so she can get back out there and play the game she loves so much. Poor kid!
Anyway, She decided to stay home today, she was quite down this morning as she tried to emotionally catch up to the whole thing. While sitting in front of a movie a long and much anticipated parcel arrived from one of her good friends in Canada. God's timing on those kinds of things just couldn’t have been better. It brought all kinds of joy and we shared a nice meal of Kraft Dinner together. It really brightened her whole outlook on life. YA GOD!
God is Good All the Time.

Back to School

Well, it is official, after much thought and prayer and discussions with Cheryl, I have decided to take advantage of the Bible School here in Auckland and pursue the rest of my masters degree. So, hopefully if all goes as planned I should be done my degree by the end of 2008. I have to reapply for an adjustment on my visa to do it but I was assured from their office that it is not too difficult and will cost only $60. God blessed the sale of our home back in Peachland and we are able to use some of the money from that to pay for this rather costly venture.
I do need your prayers though as it has been a long long long time since I was a student and even then I was poor at it!
It was a little humiliating to bring all my marks in from my transcripts as most of them are at a C or C- level. The registrar told me that my twenty years of ministry experience should bump it up to the required B to pursue a masters degree with them. I laughed sheepishly! He assured me that because it is a small seminary, I would get as much help as I needed to pull this off and I must admit that did make me feel a bit better. I will be attending as a part time student and my first class starts on May 14 and runs mornings for two weeks. I then have until the end of June to finish the final paper for that class. I am a bit nervous but I am pretty sure this is the time to do this and who knows where this degree will take me in the future.
God is Good All the Time!

The Woodpeckers have got to go...!

My wife send me these this afternoon and they struck me funny bone and brought a wee tear to me one good eye! Enjoy!

Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah's Ark
One : Don't miss the boat.
Two : Remember that we are all in the same boat.
Three : Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.
Four : Stay fit When you're 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
Five : Don't listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
Six : Build your future on high ground.
Seven : For safety's sake, travel in pairs.
Eight : Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
Nine : When you're stressed, float a while.
Ten : Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
Eleven : No matter the storm, when you are with God, there's always a rainbow waiting
HOW TO KNOW WHEN A CATHOLIC IS SPEEDING!


laughter is like medicine!


Hope you're all having a great day!

Move over Mormons!

We meet in the Howick recreation centre for our Sunday morning celebration services. The rec centre happens to be right beside a massive Mormon Church and for years as our other pastor John has walked by he has prayed over this "church" and against its massive deceptions that good folks have been taken in by. Well, yesterday we had a young Canadian couple over for lunch following the service. It was a wonderful reunion as they had been over in Australia for a seminar he had been taking. He told me that while he had been travelling to church last Sunday morning, they had been held up in getting there and that made them quite late for church. As they drove by the Mormon Church they were overwhelmed by its overflowing parking lot and the vehicles that lined the highway and were filling the rec centre parking lot that ICC uses as well. Then the Lord gave him a vision; that our church would overshadow the Mormon Church. He saw in his minds eye that we would one day be bigger than this gathering of Mormons right next door to where our little church meets. He had no idea that one of our young leaders had had the same kind of vision on that same Sunday. Again, I feel a bit like Mary must have felt as she "treasured up all these things in her heart." They are not come true yet but if they are of the Lord then we have much work to do to get this fellowship ready for the harvest that is on its way!
Oh ya, and one more really cool thing… Danae led us in worship yesterday. It was her first time, she lead all by herself, and she did a fantastic job (all biases set aside that is) Her is a photo I snapped of her and her PowerPoint person Mackenzie.


God is Good All the Time!

...and your young men will see visions...

4 days in Raglan, it is like an exotic Peachland. It is a beautiful beach front that goes on forever. It is a town of about 4ooo during winter and swells to 10000 during the tourist season. One big difference is that during the month of November the Orca's come into the bay; 20 in a pod to play and show off in front of the entire town. Everything closes down and everybody heads to the sides of the inlet to see the spectacular sight. I want to see that and I can’t wait for that to happen.
Things here at ICC are progressing nicely. The 4 days away kind of opened my eyes to see the "toll" this venture has taken on us all. Naps in the afternoon, lots of fresh air, cool evening, and playing cards late into the night was excellent for our family to basically regroup from the flurry that has been our lives for the past 3 months. I found myself slightly overwhelmed last week. A feeling I don’t wish to repeat. There is so much going on and I need to keep it all in perspective and in prayer or it starts to get all bunched up in my mind, if that makes sense. Anyway, the rest did us good, it cleared my head and allowed me to think through each of the different scenarios I am currently trying to lead within the church.
The addition of a Filipino pastor named Richard is nearing completion. At this moment he is making some decisions for himself whether he is going to join with us or perhaps with another group. Apparently, he has a couple of other ministries pursuing him right now. So we will just leave this in the Lords hands and trust his gracious leading hand. We will know soon as I believe as his visa is drawing to a close on May 15th. Anyway, one of our young leaders had a spectacular vision that he told me about before we left for Raglan. He said that he had been praying and pondering what the Lord was doing when in his minds eye he suddenly had a vision of 500 people worshiping God at ICC. That was pretty cool and I deeply moved by his description of what he saw. Again the cry is going upwards... God what are you doing here? We are spending the evening in prayer tonight to focus on that very thing. God what are you doing and what is it you want us to do? Please pray with us.
God is Good All the Time.
Down town Raglan New Zealand

Happy Easter Everyone

It is Easter Sunday. I’m sitting here in this house in Auckland listening to the sound of a few cars flying by on Pigeon Mountain Road, this annoying clock shaped like the "Island of Australia" LOUD ticking like a time bomb. It was given to us from a couple of students we billeted from Australia a couple weeks ago. And finally of course there is the ever present humming of the refrigerator motor in the background. I've awakened early today, it is my usual custom to be up early preparing for the Sunday Morning Service. I like to go over my sermon again, tidy up my PowerPoint and spend some time in contemplative reading and prayer. I have this phrase running through my heart and mind this morning. Something I read on a spiritual formation website. It was quoted by an author who was making some excellent comments on prayer. Her words drew me in as she made this statement..."that we will cease to be one who prays and instead begin to become one who is a living prayer." I have always wondered about this concept. In fact for years I have mentioned it here and there in conversations with others about prayer this idea that we can be living pray-ers. That our conversation that is full of grace and seasoned as it were with salt, could in fact be a the spoken fruit of a life devoted to relationship with God. But this quote was less striking to me than the quote she gave from Carl Barth. "Prayer is really our whole life toward God: our longing for Him, our “incurable God-sickness". Our incurable God-sickness. Easter stars us in the face, it practically shouts at us to become love-sick over such an amazing God. What a story, what a love, what a sacrifice, what a mighty, daring plan that can, if we receive it by faith, dare us to draw near to the creator of the universe. In fact, as I contemplate the resurrection today I feel gob-smacked with what seems to me to be my own personal incurable God-sickness! UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE!
God Is Good All The Time

sorry for the delay but hey what can I say!

Well, where to start is the question. It has been pretty busy but and I have not taken the time to blog much of what is going on here. I need to remedy that so this is at least a fresh start at doing that.
I think i will stick with 3 highlights. The first is one that most of you who see my wife's blog will know. Our daughter Paige was Elvis in her school play. We went to it and she basically stole the show! (Unbiased view of course)
Next was our official induction as the new "Lead Pastor" of International Christian Centre. That was a great evening and it really did feel like our new home as we were official welcomed by the Maori Leadership of the Christian & Missionary Alliance in New Zealand. This Maori welcome was the first one ever in the C&MA NZ history. So that was pretty cool.
Finally, and maybe even the most fun for me. A fella in the church named Kevin (who I now call skipper!) took me fishing on the ocean. Here are a few pictures of this great adventure. I had sooooooo much fun! We went snapper fishing. It bends your rod right over and puts up a pretty good fight. It was basically "heave-ho then reel-reel-reel then heave-ho and reel-reel-reel" for the better part of the afternoon. He firgurs we caught about $300 worth of fish. Enjoy the pics...
My first ocean fish ever
Skipper caught the big daddy of the day but mine was a close second!
My Trusty Skipper Kevin Avery






Me & the Skipper caught our limit of 9 snapper each and with a bonus of 4 other fish as well. We also threw back about 6 because they were under 27mm long

A Good Fence Makes For Good Neighbours

While I do agree with this old statement about good neighbours I am writing to testify that this is not always the case. It is possible that to back into a fence and smash it to pieces can also make for good neighbours.
Last week I was heading out to a conference early on Saturday morning. As I was backing out of my tricky driveway I had to do a three point turn to get my van pointed in a forward direction. As I did that I “lightly” bumped my neighbour’s fence and what happened next made my stomach churn.
The sound it made did sound exactly like a gun going off. The wood was so old and so brittle that my little bump sent pieces of shrapnel flying through the air. I didn’t know what to do... should I be late for my meeting or should I wake up my neighbour to let them know what I had done.
I decided on leaving a note on the door step expressing my deep regret over what had happened and that I would be gone all day but in the evening would come and speak with them about it. I told them that repairing the fence was important and that I would pay for it whatever the costs might be.
As I put the note down on the door step a couple of other neighbours who had heard the gun shot came to explore what was happening most of them in their pjs. I finally got to meet a few more of my neighbours. Even though I only had time to let them know that I would be gone for the day and when I got home I would face my well deserved firing squad.
When I returned that night to my total shock the entire old fence had been torn down and in its place a new brighter and better fence was there. My neighbours were thankful that I had knocked down their fence as it gave them a reason to do what they had planned to do for months. They just needed a reason to get going and low and behold I provided them with one.
The moral of the story is, if you want to meet your neighbours and begin a great relationship just knock down the fences that get in the way!
God Is Good All The Time.