Week Twelve

Wow, it has been a while since I have been on here. A lot has happened, both here at camp this past week and over Christmas. I will give you a very brief overview of my Christmas break by saying that I spent much of the break being with family, which was very much needed after being away from them for several months. It was fairly quiet, easy going, did not get to see as many people as I thought I would, but was very content with the peacefulness of this Christmas. My goal this past Christmas was to have my focus solely on Jesus' entrance to this world, and try and be as excited about the coming Messiah as what the shepherds and wisemen would have been. I know that is pretty hard to do, but I felt much more understanding and excited about Christmas this year than I have ever felt before. Most Christmases I am excited because, well, it's Christmas and that means no school and presents, but this year, it was about Jesus bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.

Though I was slightly hesitant to jump back into full speed at camp again, my fears quickly left me when I was ambushed in the airport by several familiar faces. I flew in on Sunday, and missed both a connecting flight to Nanaimo and church. It is a great feeling to miss church. Well, not being absent from church, but to know that there is a community of believers filled with great teaching, service, outreach, worship and fellowship that you just can't wait to get back to. That is definitely how I felt over Christmas. I really enjoy New Life and can't wait to get back there serving and attending. The more and more I think about it, the more I can see that this is the church that I was supposed to be at.

We jumped back into full speed quickly. On Monday we had our first class of this semester, called Theology of Missions taught by Tim Stabell, a professor at Briercrest but also a missionary in the Congo for fourteen years. This class grew on me over the week. It started off a bit slow I found, and I had a hard time finding relevance and significance early in the week, but I realized that it was all just foundation for things that we would learn later on. Missions really is at the core of God's heart, and I loved how this course was designed to help us understand better the heart that God has for this world. Tim was an amazing guy. He quickly gained my respect and he was gentle, bold, inviting and passionate. It was great for me to see a man who was so committed to the Great Commission and really believed it to be true. I am coming away with changed thoughts about missions. We spent this whole week thinking about missions. We went to MissionsFest in Vancouver this weekend and listened to passionate speakers talk about justice and perserverance. After this week, I am coming away incredibly curious as to where God is going to take me. I am desiring to bring justice for those who live under oppression and see the huge need for that. I also see a huge need to communicate the gospel to those who have either never heard it before or to take it into the places where people are afraid to take it, be it a hostile jungle or a dangerous ghetto. I am certainly open to whatever God has in store for me, but I just want it to be big. I want to be an extremely bright and powerful servant of God who is actively bring the kingdom of heaven to earth in big, bold ways. I would appreciate prayer for me know that God would be guiding me and that I would be able to hear what he is speaking to me in terms of direction for next year. University, bible school, missions? All of these are just thoughts right now with no strong leading in any direction. Pray for guidance please. Something cool that happened over the conference was that a friend of mine who I had recently met prayed for me after a session, and one thing that he felt that God was saying to him about me was that I had hands strong enough to bend a bow of iron. I don't really know what this means, but want to know. I found that interesting and am excited to see how that will play out in my life. On Saturday, Justin, James and I went down to East Hastings area in Vancouver, the poorest location in all of Canada. This place was a ghetto, full of drug addicts, alcoholics and homeless people. We found our way into a community building and enjoyed many good conversations with everyone from drug addicts, homeless musicians, and people who were involved in town council. I do feel like I have a big spot in my heart for these incredibly poor and broken people. An interesting fact I learned in the downtown east side is that men, aged 18-25 are the most common people to be kidnapped believe it or not, because people kill them and then sell their organs (not sure where, black market???) for top dollar. Someone can make $100 000 off of a male body. Pretty scary, and as I looked on the community bullitin board, most of the missing posters were of grown men. Times sure are changing.

I am realizing that I am very much a baby in many ways. One of my goals this year was to be able to hear God speak to me. Just like a baby does not know how to walk though and must learn, so I believe that I must learn how to hear God, and it starts with just trying. On Thursday morning, many of the guys woke up early and went down to the dock to listen to God, let him help shape our vision of this year, lift up our own hopes and aspirations of this next semester to him, and just pray together. As we spent time in quiet listening to God, I had a hard time listening. I did not come away hearing anything, but I am not discouraged, more motivated to take time to listen to God. I love these people even more than last semester, which is hard to imagine. I do feel that we have bonded as a greater community over the break.

This week we had a cougar encounter (you'll love this mom). Two girls were walking back from the gym at night and saw a cougar crouching in the woods. They looked at each other (animal to girls) then the girls came back to camp and the cougar followed them the entire way. It was spotted close to the dorms later than night. Kinda freaky, but all the guys grabbed lights and weapons and tried to go hunting, but were not permitted. Maybe we'll get another chance.

Please be praying for God to teach me to listen and to be patient with me while I learn. I don't really know what this semester looks like, I'm intimidated with the school work and don't want to neglect important aspects of my life this semester but have a good balance of everything I do. Pray for continued depth and growth with my brothers and sisters here. Pray that God will prepare us for the Olympics (we are volunteering there for our missions trip). Pray that God would teach us how to pray, since this trips is mostly a prayer trip. I'm learning a lot about faith too, about praying in faith and power of prayer. I will fill you in on this next week. There is a story that is not finished yet.

I need to go to bed, but I hope that you have a good insight to this first week back in "the greenhouse". Thank you for your prayer and support.