The 9th -11th of September 2016, saw a team from ICPE Mission NZ go to New Plymouth for an outreach with the parishioners at Our Lady Help of Christians (OLHC), as well as have a day’s retreat for the Year 9 girls from Sacred Heart Girls College.
At the college, the team shared with the girls the understanding that they are God’s beloved ones. True love costs and God shows just how much we are loved when He sacrificed His son for us. Personal life stories were shared with the fundamental encouragement that the girls should not find their identity from the people around them. Instead, their truest identity is from the Lord.
At the Church of OLHC, we had the opportunity to meet some young adults and to encourage them to have a relationship with Jesus; we reflected on growing in that relationship as they were encouraged to spend more time with God through reading the scriptures and going for the sacraments.
The Friday evening session at OLHC church was a time of reaching out to the wounded of the church. To acknowledge that as wounded people we hurt others, but all are able to receive the mercy of God. With the call to be instruments of healing to others, the parishioners went through a time of ‘Lazarus ministry’ during which individuals spent some time in silence being bound up followed then by the community calling each one out and unwrapping them. It was indeed a beautiful time of healing.
The following day, we focused more on the mercy of God, who just like the father of the prodigal son, has great compassion for His children. Our God is a just God, and by His justice, we should all go to the cross for our sins. It was not cheap grace that cost God His only Son as we have been bought with a heavy price. And just as our Heavenly Father is merciful, so must we, the Church be merciful. In the encouragement to be the fifth gospel to those around us, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy was shared and discussed among those gathered. Later in the afternoon it was time to empower the parishioners to live mercifully and reach out with the good news in the power of the Spirit. We ended with a time of adoration to empower all those who were in attendance.
We are truly grateful for this opportunity and continue to pray for the people of New Plymouth to rise up and grow deeper in their relationship with God.
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