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I've been really busy lately. Doing what you may ask? Well, working and seeing friends, but I've also been working hard at gaining back some lost personal space. I've really been enjoying not being around people a whole lot. It's been nice to go for a walk alone, go out for coffee to read alone and do just about anything, alone. I am definitely looking forward to seeing everyone again, but, while I have this opportunity, I'm taking advantage of it!

I also recently got the privilege to meet up with Luke(alberta) for coffee one night while he was down in my area visiting family. That was really nice, it was fun to talk about things that only we would care about. Things from school, etc, that kind of thing.

I also just got back from a friends concert, Simon Hoskyn, which was really good, I went with Jake and Marg and we had a de-lightful time.

That about does it for my update, I don't really have alot I feel like saying, so before I move on to more trivial matters, I'll give you a quote I like to think about regarding contemplative prayer.

“This method of prayer is a movement beyond conversation with Christ to communion with Him.”
-Thomas Keating


Lately I've been looking at some of the stats for my webpage, and I've been noticing that when I include a famous persons name in the midst of an entry, I get people searching for that and stumbling across my page. So, in order to fully exploit that, I composed the following short story using top search keywords compiled from various search engines. I hope you enjoy this, and if you don't, well, it's boosting my traffic soooo...

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After a long day at the Golden Globe Awards, Britney Spears sat on the couch, turned on the T.V. and flipped past the NFL game, a WWE match, briefly settled on the Miss Universe competition but then sighed, shut of the T.V. and said to Paris Hilton, "You want to play some Nintendo Wii?" "What?" Paris Hilton asked, "Sorry, I was listening to Beyonce Knowles belt out a tune on my Apple Ipod."

"Whatever," Britney flippantly remarked, "you and your Christmas music. You'd probably rather play XBox or PS2 anyways."

"Well let's do something, like throw around the baseball, play a round of golf, try out for the NBA, anything!" Paris cried, "I'm so bored I'd even watch a YouTube video of Tupac and Eminem teaching Lindsey Lohan how to play "Pokemon Poker"!"

Britney laughed, "I'm not quite that desperate yet, why don't you go on your Apple computer and see if Clay Aiken is online on MySpace, he always has good ideas!"

Paris Hilton squinted at the laptop that Hilary Duff gave her. "Something is not right," she declared, "My spyware detector is blocking all sites except, NeoPets, Wikipedia and a Barbie fansite. How could this happen? I only ever use this computer to look up prom hairstyles that are endorsed by Jessica Simpson!"

Frustrated, Britney put down her wine accessories and came over to have a look. "I know what the problem is, when you let Harry Potter borrow your laptop over Halloween and Easter, he installed LimeWire and KaZaA so he could download all his favourite Shakira songs."

Paris Hilton sighed, checked the time on her Nokia N80 and suggested, "You know, why don't we just invite Jennifer Lopez over and write ourselves the best darn High School Musical since SpongeBob SquarePants!"

Britney Spears jumped up, dropped her PSP and said, "You know, that's even better than Oprah Winfrey's suggestion! Let's go!"

And so they did.

The End

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Sleepless in...

The weekend is over. It was good, some fun was had, but it's gone now. Now it's back to work for me. I thought I'd throw up a few pictures of my trip to Seattle on Saturday with a few friends, we went to a Death Cab for Cutie concert. It was a pretty good show, I didn't know it was a stadium show, I'd never been to one that big before, as much as I did enjoy it, I think I much prefer smaller shows and little venues where you can hear them clearly and see them even better. Regardless it was a nice little roadtrip. We were right beside the space needle and the Experience Music Project building, so that was pretty neat, they have some nifty buildings in downtown Seattle I must say.

Well for lack of anything else to say, this is it.

Painters have more fun

It's been a while. I thought I should at least post something, anything, so I don't lose my devoted audience!

Well it's been a nice change for me. Currently I'm working full time, painting up a storm, and that's about it. Sometimes I see people in the evenings, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I do things, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I drive, sometimes I don't. That kind of freedom and whimsy is something I'm really enjoying while I'm here. I've really enjoyed just hanging out with myself, going to read or whatever. It's been really great to have a vehicle again, I'm definitely liking that!

Let's see, what're some highlights so far... Well I had a great day with Jake and Marg, we went to watch his brother race in the Canadian Championships, an 8k race in the snow. Definitely not something I think I'll be doing, the winner did it in like 26 minutes, it takes me 26 minutes to do 1/2 a kilometer, let alone 8! Then we hung around Vancouver for a while, went to Chapters, and that night went to a play called Caribou Magi, it was a really good play, all in all, a pretty excellent day.

I also had an amazing movie night with Adam, we watched two old movies that were so bad they were pretty good. Not too many people like watching those old B-movies, so it's good to have someone to do that with.

This weekend I'm going to a Death Cab for Cutie concert in Seattle with another friend, that should be most excellent as well.

So really, now that I saw those things, it sounds like I've been pretty busy, but it's been relaxing. I've found it kind of relaxing getting back to work, it's a good feeling getting back to work, doing something productive with your hands. That said, I'm sure I won't mind a 6 month break from painting in January!

I've really enjoyed being back, and the solitude and rest I've been able to find in God since. Never have I felt so connected to my creator and the supernatural in my daily life as right now. It's totally unique to me, I find that instead of striving for godliness, righteousness, spirituality, gifts, character, whatever it is that we try to attain, I am starting to understand that I just am. As I begin to accept who I am in Christ, the promises He's made, the person He said I am, I just am. I can rest in Him and he lets me be who I truly am.

It's easy to feel close to God when you are surrounded by 30 or so other like minded people who are all relentless in their search for intimacy with their Creator, but it's been an interesting and encouraging season for me here at home, as I go about my daily routine, doing sometimes something, sometimes nothing, and the whole while feeling perhaps the closest to God I've ever felt. Even in my good and bad times, the reality of Him is so much more apparent. I don't understand it, and I don't expect to feel this way forever as I understand there are always highs and lows in every relationship, sometimes it flows very naturally, other times it seems like much more work getting to know someone.

It's kind of hard to describe what this time is like, I haven't even really thought about it until now, when I decided to write something out, it's been good for me to just reflect on what God has been doing in my life, then and even now. He has a way of constantly encouraging that I truly admire.

Well I'm not sure I have more to write at the moment. I'll try to post a few more times, but come on, give me a break, this is my holiday for goodness sake.

Of tax liens and trust funds...

Finally, after about a week of resting and procrastination, I decided to sit down and write about the Real Estate Expo.

So we got to New York, went straight to Sharayah's Church where the guys were staying over night, then dropped the girls stuff off at her house. Then we went to New York, to the Jacob Javitz Center where the Learning Annex was hosting the New York Real Estate Expo. We got there a little late due to lack of time and some traffic issues, including a not so successful U-Turn on one of the busiest streets downtown, but it all worked out, we had our training session which was interesting, but at least for me, not that helpful. We were split up into our different areas of service, I was in Product, which meant I moved boxes of the speakers product to different classrooms and to the product tables in the main room. It was a pretty simple job, pick this up, move it over there.

It was definately nicer than some other people jobs, like the girls who did sales and had to deal with cranky people, credit cards and answering questions they barely knew about product they just got. So compared to some of the girls, I had a cushy, low-pressure job. Which was fine with me.

The next day when we actually started working, it took us 2 hours to drive 30 miles because traffic was bad, we got there at almost 11 am and worked till 10-10:30 pm. So it was a late night, we got home and had dinner at almost 12 am. Then the next day we were up at 4:30 am so we could get there to start at 6:30 am, that day we worked till 10:30ish as well, so it was a really long day for all of us.

Besides the other guys working product with me, I didn't get to see anybody that often, so it was always really exciting when we got to deliver boxes to a table where people we knew were working, that made it fun.

Overall, it was a very interesting experience. I've been to many christian conferences where they have speakers and people worship God and get all excited about Him, but this was like the complete opposite. This conference was all about getting rich quick. It was so, over-the-top selfish, it was really a strange feeling, to see 15,000 jumping up and down, giving each other hugs, hooting and hollering, all for the sake of self and riches.

At one point, during Marshall Sylvers(a hypnotist) session, I felt the overwhelming grief of the Holy Spirit as Sylver presented a counterfeit move of the the Spirit and talked about the power of self and doing whatever it takes to be rich, successful or whatever. It was all about manipulation and control of self and others, it was really so, so sad.

There were some half-decent speakers, most of them were so humanistic it was hard to get alot out of what they spoke, but some were at elast fun to watch, like Tony Robbins, he got everybody so pumped up, it was funny to watch 15,000 peole run around and hug each other. I also learned a few good tips on real estate and investing, although I'm not sure how much of it translates to Canada and the laws and regulations we have, oh well.

As much as it was humanistic and all about self, I did get some really great things out of it. For example, it was awesome just to be there and serve, the managers could really tell that we were there to work, it was a blessing to the people around us. I learned about the weakness of man, how these people were so desperate for wealth, success and fame, that they would put their trust in man and in themselves. In a kind of weird way, it was almost exciting as I saw the hunger of these people for something true, I knew that God offered so much more, that He could fulfill them way beyond their expectations. It was also good going to learn how to put on a seminar as I believe we are going to be doing that next semester, you learn some good tips that will help streamline your own event after watching things at this one, so it was actually really good going. The best part of it is, even if I didn't learn anything, if I had nothing positive to say, we knew that that was where God wanted us, that He arranged for us to be there, so it was awesome to just be able to be obedient and do what he wanted. That's what it's all about anyways, whether or not we see any fruit at the moment, who knows what seeds were planted in people, who knows what he was preparing us for. Maybe someday some of us students will be speaking at a conference at the very same building and we were just there to begin to prepare the place for that event. Who knows, with God it's limitless.

There's no place like home

Sorry it's taken so long to write, unfortunately this isn't going to be an amazing entry, instead, it's a short and sweet post to appease my demanding public.

It's been a long last week, with the Trump conference and traveling home, but I finally got back to Abbotsford, B.C. Canada last night at about 8:00 pm PST. It was definately a long haul, especially with two stopovers, it tends to lengthen one's trip.

Anyways, I'm still real tired, so I'm heading to bed but I wanted to let you all know I am still going to update you on the Trump conference, but after that, I likely won't write much if any until I go back to school.

If any of you are reading this and from my area, give me a call, talk to my secretary, we'll see if we can work something out.

So, eagerly await whatever is next. If you feel like it.

It's too late to think of a title.

Last night we stopped in Hopkinton, Massachusetts at a Vineyard Church where they fed us an amazing dinner which included some homemade lasagne, definately a crowd pleaser. That night Ken talked a bit about prophetic evangelism, did some dream interpretations from up front and then we broke up into teams and gave people words, kind of like a Salem format. It was really good, it was super easy, very refreshing. I think it was so good for us to start doing this kind of thing at Claremont and at Salem, where the spiritual climate was very different, it was alot harder to get words when we were there. But here at the church, where people want it, and are already seeking after God, where we don't have to set the atmosphere with intercession, it's already there, it's so much easier to receive revelation and to just pray through it all when you are in that kind of an enviroment which is so open to whatever the Holy Spirit wants to do.

Today we got to New York, we went straight to Sharayah's church, "The Lighthouse", from there we dropped the girls stuff off at Sharayah's then we rushed as fast as our little vans could take us to New York City for our training session. We arrived a fashionable 45 minutes late due to traffic and due to simply not having enough time.

You know all the things they say about New York? Well it's true, I even saw steaming manhole covers, I'll be honest, I always wanted to see steaming manhole covers, I mean, I seen them on TV and all, but steaming manhole covers is not something common to the thriving metropolis of Abbotsford. Anyways, moving on.

I never realized how big of a deal this conference was, untilI saw some of the big names coming, like Tony Robbinson, that guy you always see on TV, with his book "Natural cures the governement doesn't want you to know." Also there will be the obvious highlight, the Mad Money guy, yeah that's right, Jim Cramer himself, I sure hope he brought along his sound effects... Well I won't bore you with any more details, mostly because I don't know them.

But you can go to www.learningannex.com there is probably info and pictures of the conference there. I don't have my computer here so I'll put up pictures later if all goes well.

I got to go to bed now, tonight is probably the most sleep I'm going to get before I go home, so I think I'm going to take advantage of it. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me, I don't think I'll answer them though because I won't have time or feel like it. However, I would take the time to read and maybe respond to any comments you leave, you oughtto know by now how much I appreciate them.

If all goes well, I've got a few ideas to sell to Donald Trump, I'm fairly convinced I can double his profits with an invention I have, I won't say what until the patent comes, but let's just say it will dramatically affect the amount of trash and mice in New York City, we'll see though...

Wagons Ho!

It's been hitting me recently how little time I have left. You'd think I'd have clued in by now, seeing how by this time next week, my flight will just be arriving home in Abbotsford. We are officially done classes, we had this morning off to sleep in and to start cleaning up our rooms. Tomorrow we have the morning off to pack up as well. We are leaving for New York tomorrow early afternoon so pretty much I'm packing a bag to take to New York, then I'll pack the rest to be ready for when I come home to go again. I've also been cleaning up all my stuff, and just making my room generally even more amazing.

Not only that, adding to the reality of the shortness of this semester is the number of student impartations we had the last week or so. We had a lot and it was really awesome to hear everybody's heart on all this different things. It was cool had God spoke to everyone so differently in what to share. It was always so perfect, what everyone had to say was so unique and refreshing.

I've really felt so humble in the last few days with all these people sharing. Some people have these amazing passions for different things, others have had some really hard times that God has brought them through. But in all of those, I just feel so honoured to live with and grow with these people. Makes me so much more grateful that I am where God has placed me, it reminds me of what Ali said "How is it, that all these amazing people are all here at this time." Sometimes we take God's order for granted, but every move is orchestrated carefully and perfectly. There's no way we could improve on God's order, as much as we might know that in our head, sometimes in a given moment, it's almost overwhelming to think that everything you've ever done in your life has led up to this particular moment. Shouldn't that make every moment all the more significant? If we start to truly realize how divinely our steps are ordered, we should be thanking God for every step and moment because He has us there for whatever reason we don't always know.

In this last week I'm really trying to suck everything up, trying to get all that I can before I go. I'll be home for a month and a half, and then I'm coming back for another six months. I'm really looking forward to going home and visiting people, but I'm pretty sure I'll be looking forward to coming back and seeing everybody as well. Especially after sleeping in my own room by myself for 6 weeks, who knows, I could get lonely after 3 months of sharing a room with 3 other guys. (But I don't think it's likely...lol)

This is likely the last time I'll write for a bit, I don't know if I'll have any internet access when I'm gone, so we'll see. But I'll do my best to update you at least after I get back, I'll be sleepy eyed and maybe not even coherent, but hey, it's an update at least right?

I thought I'd throw in some pictures of a few projects I was given to work on recently. One is a newspaper article poster I made for Pastor Phil from the Gathering in Salem. The other is a graphic for our Salem Testimonies which we'll be bringing home.

Please keep us all in your prayers as we are off on our last trip of the semester. I put a basic schedule below so you can track us with your prayers.

Thurs, Nov. 16
Depart from girls house, arrive in Hopkinton MA
Minister at church in the evening.

Fri, Nov. 17
Get to New York 2 pm.
Training session for conference 5-6 pm

Sat & Sun, Nov. 18-19
Very long days expected at conference

Mon, Nov. 20
Sleep in.
Little bit of sight seeing
Minister at Lighthouse Church in New York
Leave for home at 11 pm

Tues, Nov. 21
Get home early early morning
Sleep.
Pack-up
Commencement Dinner

Wedns, Nov 22
I'm getting up to leave by around 5-5:30 am get back to Abbotsford around 8 pm.


Oh and before I go, here's a link to all my movies on YouTube It may be hard to appreciate them fully, not having been here and knowing all the people, but feel free to check 'em out anyways.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=gliderguy15

Just do it.

How about a recap of the last few days, alrighty then, well let's start with a lesson I learned on Sunday.

Once upon a time in place far far away from his home land... Well maybe I won't be quite so dramatic. On Sunday, I was listed as a substitue for prophetic teams at the Bridge Church here in New London. I was quite relieved to just be a substitute because I really wasn't feeling the whole, being on a ministry team deal, especially not that day. Just before I left for church, Jon Bohy, who was supposed to be one of the team leaders asked if I could replace him, he wasn't going to church. So all of a sudden I went from not being on a team, to being the team leader! I had thought that I could handle being on a team, but to be the team leader was totally unexpected and quite frankly, not appreciated. So I complained a little, mostly to myself, then during worship, I got convicted for having such a poor attitude towards what I supposed to do that day. I realized that God had set me up. He knew that I didn't feel like being on a team, I didn't feel particularily holy that day and I didn't feel confident to lead a team. So I decided to bite the bullet and figured well, it must be God because I really don't feel like it, so He's going to have to do it all.

So after the service, when we broke up into our teams I was able to come with at least a good attitude, I still certainly didn't feel holy or very prophetic that morning. I was on a team with Danielle (South Carolina) and Matt (New Jersey) and it was just perfect. We had such a good team, everything flowed really easily. I found it so much different doing a team like this rather than in Salem. The words came so much easier, we didn't have to fight for it and interceed at the same time like we did in Salem. We had 5 people that day and it was just really good. God has a way of surprising you and pulling you through when you really really don't feel like it.

God really convicted me that day on my attitude towards doing what He wants. I thought I knew how to maintain a fairly decent attitude regardless of what I was doing, but I'm realizing more and more that our attitude is so often affected because we feel like God wants us to do things. But not really so, all he really wants is us to show up, He wants to do things through us. All God wanted me to do was to show up to what was asked of me, and then He would take me through the rest, I didn't have to worry, but if we are not going to have a good attitude or let Him do it, we can't expect it to go well.

This semester is drawing to a close, but the Lord is still doing big things, I can really feel an anticipation in my spirit for what's going to come next. I have no idea what's coming or what God wants to do in this last week, but I'm even really looking forward to when I go home, there's no reason for me to believe that God doesn't move just as much at home. It's easy to get caught up into a mindset that God moves more powerfully in an enviroment like this where there are so many prophetic people and people who are really going after God passionatly, but He wants to move just as powerfully right in your home.

Sorry I have to cut this short, I made a mistake on when we are going to leave this morning and I have to go make me a lunch in 5 minutes.

Until Later.