Week Ten

Its hard to see that the end of this semester is quickly coming. Three months come and gone so quickly! The weeks are going by faster and faster as the year progresses. This week was no exception. We had our church ministry class with David Ernst and as my friend Nate said, it is the professor that makes a class, and David definitely made this class. It was a cool class because we talked about a lot of things in the church that I had never even thought about before, like the purpose of the church, the process of choosing and the role of leadership, denomonations and other grey areas that are pretty controversial. The thing that I really liked about this class is that he relied on class participation and conversation to teach us the course. It was really great. Several things that I really got out of this course was:

-Grace. The most important thing that the church has to offer others is grace. That is the only thing that sets Christians apart from other religions and the church, the place where grace needs to be in excess is often the place where grace is no where to be found.

-Grey areas, such as women in church leadership, which we studied, God probably cares more about how we treat those who hold different views than us, than our position on a certain issue. After all, if we have not love, we are nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

-Another thing that I knew already but was really emphasized again was the we are the church. This came out more and more in every lesson that we learned, that the church is the people.

On Thursday night, most of Kaleo attended "Light Up Ladysmith" which was the kickoff of winter pretty much in a town called Ladysmith. There was INCREDIBLE fireworks and a great winter parade, which me and six others actually joined. We walked in a sang Christmas carols arm in arm for about 20 minutes. People loved it. It was slightly ironic that we were singing song welcoming Jesus' coming as we were walking behind the "Ladysmith Shriners Club". A lot of this week I was, and still am working on a paper about women in leadership in the church. It is interesting because before I had absolutely no opinion about this matter and didn't really think anything about it. But since I had to write a paper on it, I did a whole bunch of research and developed my own ideas and opinion based on how I interpret scripture and what non-topical sources say about this issue. It is so fun! I love developing my own thoughts on controversial issues. I want to do this assignment for many other issues out there that I do not really hold an opinion to. This week there was some pretty intense flooding in the city of Duncan, so we got a chance to go and fill sandbags for the flooding. It was a lot of fun and we were all working in the rain, and we actually got out of class a bit early because of it. At the end of the week, Friday, around 8 of us went and hiked Mt. Tzouhalen, a mountain on the edge of Duncan. It was a beautiful sunny day and felt so good to get out after a week of class. I realized the love that I have for God's creation. I want to experience it all the time! We were up so high it was incredible. This weekend I was working in the dishpit for the men's retreat that was here at Camp Qwanoes. This meant that I didn't get a chance to go to youth group on Friday night, but I was serving at camp in the meantime. Believe it or not, it was pretty fun working with a bunch of friends in dishpit. I loved seeing around 100 men come together to worship and learn together in a camp environment. It was kinda weird, like they were campers and everything, but it encouraged me to see older men who clearly love the Lord. On Sunday, I managed to get out of dishpit in order to go to church. Man was it incredible! It was the greatest service I had been to since I've been here. I really felt like I was worshiping God and praising only Him. The worship team was the youth team and consisted of a tap dancer, a dance team, and a drum team, like the little drummer boys. It was an excellent kick off to advent and we talked about hope. I realize how much hope that we as Christians have. Later that night, I went to the homeless ministry in Duncan. Justin and I walked down the traintracks to see James, and we found two others who were having a bonfire. We joined them and heard some incredible stories from a man named Roy. He had actually beaten up someone so bad that he killed him. After spending three years in jail, he knew Jesus as the creator and lord and he really knew Jesus' teachings. He learned to turn the other cheek when people would beat him up. He told us that he knew that he was walking away from Jesus and wanted help giving up his life of sin. Such an amazing man who earnestly wanted to walk with Jesus. We prayed with him and the lady he was with named Jackie. She was halarious! Very drunk, but halarious. I love this homeless ministry. Today, we wrote our Church ministry exam and as soon as that was done, me and four others went rock climbing in Naniamo. This was soo good to get back climbing again. I had been itching to get out and go and we had a blast all bouldering together. I have been feeling badly because I haven't really been doing my devotions like I had hoped too. I haven't woken up early in a while and I miss that. I am sometimes worried that I am not getting all that I could be out of this year because of my lack of committment to getting up and spending time with God.

Things have gotten incredibly busy here, and I don't want to put a higher priority on studying God, than walking with Him.

I am starting to get excited for Christmas! As much as I don't want to leave this place, and the people here, I can't wait to spend Christmas with the family and be in Orangeville again. Please pray for Kaleo this week as we will be going to Vancouver for four days for a youth conference. It will be a lot of fun, but I want to learn a lot too, and not feel much pressure to do homework. Pray too that as we get ready to go home for Christmas, we would all be ready to go and that home would be a good place for all of us to go home to. Some people here are not as fortunate as I am to have a healthy family to go home to. Prepare our hearts to leave this place for a while. Please pray that this week would be a time of real consolidation for me. A time to realize all that I've experienced this semester and let that motivate me even further. Most importantly, please pray that my love for Jesus and my dependence on Him would grow exponentially every day.

Hard to believe that this is the second last week.

See you all soon.