Welcome to my blog, I'll be updating this when I have time, it's going to be about whatever is on my mind. Could be stories, revelations, words of wisdom or just whatever. I hope it inspires, blesses and informs you.
It's true, I took Mt. Kearsearge down. Well, I didn't do it alone. Most of the interns and staff came as well.
In fact, I took a group picture, minus myself because I took the picture of course.
Picture: The group, I'm too lazy to write all the names...
Mt. Kearsearge is a pretty big mountain in these areas but back home we know this kind of thing as a large hill. It was not a long hike maybe 20 minutes up and a 7 minute run down for me, but it's a ton of fun doing something that light and hanging out at the top. There is an amazing 360 degree view especially if you go up into the tower they have there.
Picture: If you really squint you can see Jess Mott up there
Thought I'd throw up a few pictures from the hike, other than that, it was a free weekend so we did a lot of relaxing and hanging out with each other. All in all, good clean fun!
Picture: Elisa and I in the windy tower!
Picture: Matthew M(California) climbing the tower
Picture: Sharon(South Carolina), Ali(Connecticut), Jessica H(Michigan) and Charles(Colorado) taking a breather at the top
But wait! That's not all! Just when you thought this blog post couldn't get any better I pull out amazing news like this. I know you all are dying to get into the excitement of my life so I thought I'd share with you one of the most exciting things that's happened to me tonight.
I finally got around to pulling out a big 'ole food dryer that was left here. So as I write this, unspeakably delightful delicacies are rapidly becoming devoid of all moisture while locking in the deliciously delectable flavours that will prove to be a potent prescription of palatable pleasure that I imagine to be hardly sustainable by myself.
All the interns arrived on Saturday, well, all save my sister Elisa that is. You can keep her in your prayers as she has been having difficulty with customs people getting her Visa but she'll be here soon enough!
Everyone has been getting adjusted, most are finished unpacking and setting up their rooms and we've even started our first classes! Scott Evelyn started teaching the ISD 101 class (The Art of Hearing God) Monday morning and has been doing that every morning thus far. "How come you aren't there?" you may be asking. Well let me tell you. Today is my morning off which has been amazing thus far. It's so nice to get a break and to be able to sleep in a little bit and to be able to find some time to update you all!
It's definitely different being in leadership this year as opposed to an intern last year. I haven't worked out exactly the nature of all the differences but it's definitely more tiring! I really am finding it an amazing exercise in being in tune with God all the time. I am constantly asking God what He's doing, what's going on, for insight, wisdom and everything in between! It's tiring but so rewarding and I've really noticed personal growth in my perceptions of things as I try to ask God to be always revealing His will in every situation that comes up.
I think I'm starting to have a glimpse of what Jesus meant when he said, "I only do what I see my Father doing.". I'm painfully aware of when I don't do what I'm supposed to, but I'm starting to see how I can make God a constant part of my day, how I can walk in his will all the time. There's a big difference between remembering to ask God what to do and then making an adjustment in your walk/day/attitude/decision than trying to be sensitive and aware to what God is doing constantly.
It's a shift that I cannot explain, I think it's kind of by revelation that we can learn to walk in it. All I know is that it's exciting, I see God move more and it can be tiring.
Scott Evelyn said during the 101 class this week that, "We cannot become more spiritual, but we can become less fleshly.", I feel like that kind of is a summary of what God and I are doing lately and it's been a lot of work to try and continually walk in the spirit, it's much easier to do things the way I think they should be done. It's a constant battle, during the day when I feel myself slipping into the way I think things should be done and into my own perceptions, I have to consistently ask God to align myself with His will and kingdom plans for myself and for everyone around me.
It's been good though and I would really appreciate your prayers for continued and greater discernment, wisdom and understanding.
Other than that, things are going pretty good, I still don't have any pictures really, I'll try to work on that, soon hopefully I'll get a picture with all the interns on it so you can picture them and pray for them as well!
I also have an address for all you people out there, I know you are all dying to send me care packages, well friends, fret no more because below is my mailing address!
It's about time isn't it? I've been gone to New Hampshire a little over a week and I haven't had the consideration to write a blog yet. Well that all changes now! At least for now. We've been crazy busy here in the little hamlet of New London as we are preparing for interns coming, mostly on Saturday, but one today and then Elisa tomorrow!
Dan (Scotland) and I were up to 12:30 am last night cleaning at one of our new properties that we are moving into tomorrow. There's a lot of work to be done and even more that is done but it's been fun working with the amazing team of staff we have down here.
Sorry no pictures yet, but hopefully soon I'll throw some up.
The weather here has been pretty lousy, the only warm weather we got was really muggy heat, and I hate muggy heat. Other then that it's been typical BC weather here, rain, in a whole variety of ways, drizzles, deluges, sprinkles and showers. At least it's not boring.
When I first arrived we basically jumped right into it. We had some leadership training meetings with John Paul Jackson, Patty Mapes and Scott Evelyn, hopefully later I can throw up some good quotes for you all to ponder.
I gotta get going, work will be starting soon, but I just want you all to know that I am, in fact, not dead. I kind of doubt I'll be able to update this very much over the next week as I will be really busy still. But I'll try. No promises, I mean come on, get off my back man!
It's been a while so I thought I'd throw up a hodge-podge of different things that have happened in the last few weeks-ish.
So let's see, well my family went to my Aunts place in Vancouver, she has a rooftop apartment so we watched the Annual "Celebration of Light" Fire works competition on it. I got one picture but it's pretty lame and blurry, but here it is.
Apparently this is the biggest fireworks competition in the world, and on the Wednsday night that we went, we saw Canada take it's turn exploding things in the air.
There were only three competitors this year, kind of a shame because up until a few years ago, Benson and Hedges (A tobacco company) was sponsoring it. Now Canada banned liquor and tobacco companies from sponsoring such huge events, this has led to a large lack of funding and hence the quality, at least in my opinion has suffered. Tsk tsk, remember the good ole days?
Let's see, I also went to a football game with Andrew, Jake and his dad. We saw the B.C. Lions play one of the most boring games ever against the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Honestly, it was kind of lame, I was very disapointed in their game playing, however, it was still a lot of fun.
Well I guess this brings us to one of our family nights, that meant that we took my parents new RV out for it's virgin run. We ended up underneath the mission bridge where we had some family time, Zupancic style.
I also found out that I am approximately 1894 high. At least according to the flood level of that year...
Here are some of us underneath the bridge (l-r: David, Elisa, Anna, Dan)
And this would be the bottom side of the bridge
Then there was camping, not only once, but on several occasions! I'll let the pictures do the talking(or typing?).
Here be Jake and Marg
Erin, Sheri and Tanya playing, of all things, Disney Trivial Pursuit
Myself and Jake
Andrew cooking me something delightful
Like most camping trips, this one was eventful. Yes there was cliff jumping, yes there was injuries, yes there was interpretive pole spinning and yes, there was a beetle-smore. What more could you ask for?
And this video portrays Andrew's rather large diesel van in which we both slept in lieu of a tent.
Half-way through the camping trip, a Junebug unwisely decided to make a home in our marshmallow bad. After giving me quite a scare when I discovered him with my hand in the bag, we decided action needed to be taken to prevent this junebug from ever mocking us so blatantly again!
There it is, a typical junebug smore.
Needless to say, I think that's the last we'll be seeing of the little fella
After camping I went with my parents and brother and his wife to the Agrifair, that's right, Abbotsford's own country-ish fair. We saw many exciting things, like a demolition derby, a large horse, a logging show, a sheep being sheared, a beer garden and quilts that don't need to be sewn! I have to say, as it is every year, the roll-over competion is my favourite. That's where contestants race their car towards a ramp and see how many times they can flip their vehicle over. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to get all of the on video, but I did get one and a little of the derby.
I even managed to get in a little golf this summer.
Here I am showing off my golfing prowess...
You know in retrospect, I think I've done a lot more stuff than I thought I did... Well this has been a pretty graphic/video intense post, so I'm tired. But I will leave you with one more "treat". You may wish you'd never watched it, but don't you just want to know what it is?
Mostly my summer has consisted of working, that's not much to write a blog post about. But I thought that I could throw a few pictures from a recent photo shoot I did for a good friend of mine, Rachelle Kostelyk, for her upcoming EP she's releasing. First are a few pictures of me taking pictures compliments of her sister Janna who accompanied us as a Director of Creativity and Overall-General-Support.
Picture: Taking a picture
Picture: Showing a picture
We took advantage of the summer sun and used up as much of it as we could. After we had all but finished it off, we ended our photo shoot and took a late dinner break for some sushi. Not only was it pretty good, but it was really cheap $4.95 for 18 pieces and some soup. You just can't beat cheap sushi.
Picture: Eating some sushi
So here are some of my favourite pictures from that day. We're working on what we want to do with them all, which ones will be used for what, that kind of thing, but here's a preview.
Well I hope you enjoyed this, I know I haven't been posting much this summer, but I will be heading back to New Hampshire in the beginning of September to go as a Second year intern at Streams. What I'm trying to say is that if you hang in there, before you know it, regular updates will be the norm again!
(I loved how the birds just sit and relax on the horses back!)
This weekend was Canada Day (July 1), so it was a long weekend for all, which is nice, I'm sitting here on a Monday morning really enjoying not being at work! You all can educate yourselves about this day at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Day.
Andrew and I celebrated the weekend by driving first up to Merrit where we checked out his Dad's cabin that they are building and then we took out a 4x4 and went driving around in the mountains around there.
It was pretty eventful, we scouted out a lake to check out a camping spot, and we drove on the trail where they were having a horse race, that garnered us a few dirty looks, but most of them didn't mind too much. I gotta say though, it was kinda scary because the big 'ole Suburban kept shutting itself off and it wasn't always really easy to start, I really didn't like the thought of us having to hike way back a few hours to where Andrew had parked his car. Not really an appealing thought.
We even saw some cowboys, likely rustling cattle...
After we had seen all there was to see and done all we could do, we hopped back into Andrew's car and headed up to Kamloops where we visited with some friends, Dan and Cindy Sczebel and Kate Allard.
Then we drove the 2 1/5 hours home where we watched "Dog Soldiers" a British movie about werewolves, but with a title like that how can you go wrong?
All in all, it was a very pleasant day and only one speeding ticket, so what more could you ask for?
Josiah and I spent the night in Montana and that was it. We headed home. I drove the first five hours and then Josiah said he'd give me a buck to drive the rest of the way home, well I just can't resist making an easy buck, so I drove the rest of the trip which turned out to be a total of 15 hours.
After this road trip, 3200 miles in 48 hours, driving a few hours is nothing. It really changes your perspective on driving any sort of distance. Although I have to admit, when I got home, I was dead, pretty exhausted, so I took a day off and then the day after I started working with my Dad painting. I think I would have liked at least one more day off, but well whatever, I need to start saving up so it's as good a time as any!
It’s Monday night, we left Sunday morning at 6:00 am and now, 37 hours into our trip across the USA and we’ve made our first stop. Well, not really our first stop, we stopped for gas, food and a few other quick stops, but we ended up driving through the night instead of stopping in Illinois, so this really is our first stop. At the moment we are in Montana and we will actually be able to get home by tomorrow evening so we’ve made pretty good time. All the way from New London, New Hampshire to Abbotsford, British Columbia in three days.
Map: This is what we traveled, from 6 am yesterday morning till 9 pm tonight, 2260 miles(Around 3600 kilometers for us Canadians) New London, New Hampshire - Billings, Montana
So far it's been a good drive, in the first 37 hour segment, we went through 12 states:
New Hampshire - Vermont - New York - Pennsylvania - Ohio - Indiana - Illinois - Wisconsin - Minnesota - South Dakota - Wyoming - Montana
And tomorrow we'll be going through Montana - Idaho - Washington before we get back to good 'ole British Columbia.
Picture: Here is Josiah and myself, barely awake but about to leave from New London
Picture: This was supposed to be a picture of our first red-light of our road trio, but we were a little slow...
Picture: The United States is finally catching on.
Picture: You're just going to have to believe that it's us, but there we are in front of Lake Erie
Picture: Josiah got a little lost, but I found him eventually
Picture: This morning we were greeted by a pleasant surprise, the best that Minnesota can offer, a 60 ft. Statue of the Jolly Green Giant!
Picture: I'll be honest, it was kinda cool being at Mount Rushmore, but it was a lot smaller than it looks in pictures, almost not worth the $8 parking!
Picture: Josiah and myself at the mount
Picture: This is South Dakota captured completely in one picture, this is all we saw for hours on end. It's only redeeming quality is Mount Rushmore and even then I was overcharged for parking... Well, at least my parking pass is good for a year, so if I want to see what those 4 guys are up to before December 31st, I'm good to go!
So far Josiah and I have been having a ton of fun, we've seen more than our share of dead animals, and unfortunately, I even contributed to it. This morning I swerved to avoid a crossing possum and instead of missing him nailed him square with two tires. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry so I laughed. And Josiah joined me.
I finally got around to pulling out a big 'ole food dryer that was left here. So as I write this, unspeakably delightful delicacies are rapidly becoming devoid of all moisture while locking in the deliciously delectable flavours that will prove to be a potent prescription of palatable pleasure that I imagine to be hardly sustainable by myself.
