City Lights 2006

City Lights is a four-day project sending teams of Christians out to do community work around Auckland, New Zealand.

I got assigned to a team renovating a safe-house for ex-teenage prostitutes.

The first day was a bit of a nightmare, as after church last night, I’d got absolutely no sleep, and had had to get 3 early buses into YWAM without knowing what I would spend the day doing with complete strangers. Oh, and it turned out I spent it labouring - heaving overgrown bushes out of the earth.

Here we all are gelling as a team on our first day.

Don’t sand so, don’t sand so, don’t sand so close to me.

Clean comedian Cameron Blair presenting the project video.

Trent vacuuming where I would subsequently paint.

The garden. (There were many more people than me that did this!) It was by turns hot, and drenching.

It must be said, that first day also summed up just what was so great about this project. Every day I got up, heard a brilliant speaker (Mick Duncan), met a heap of friends, helped people, and then went to bed again at the end.

And it just doesn’t get any better than that.

(2011 project here)