The Trip were everything went wrong.

Before I came home for Christmas break I spent some time in Alberta with my brother and a friend from Kaleo.  It was a hectic trip and I will not go into details, except to say that it did not go as planned but through the darkness we did see light.  

This is the cliff we climbed

Our fearless leader aka Phil Bietz

Look at Jon go!

Wild Play

Well on December eighth we had originally had plans to go snowboarding at Mt. Washington but due to an extreme lack of snow (you can't snowboard on a 12 cm base) we were forced to find an alternative out-trip.  Jim our leader came up with the idea of going to Wild Play which is a bungee zone about 45 minutes from Camp Qwanoes.  I know snowboarding would have been fun, but bungee jumping (something I've never done but have always wanted to do) was fricken amazing!  I think I'm addicted all I can think about now is doing it again and again, and then maybe some sky diving and then some more bungee jumping.  I went on two "elements" that Wild play had one was the bungee jump and the other was the King Swing which is a gigantic 140'' swing

The bridge that we jump from

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The Swing (Good looking guy beside me is Jon)

You wouldn't think it, but that water was COLD!  I guess it is December.

These photos were all taken by Kaleo's own Philip Karklins

9-12-08

Well we spent the last Bridge service of 2008 singing Christmas carols and reading the Christmas story.  Although once again there was no snow outside it definitely was feeling like Christmas.  I never realized before how much i like Carols, there so powerful, i feel we should sing them all year long and not just for one month a year.  There is no reason we can't be thankful for Jesus' birth every single day of the year.

We heard the testimony of Cobble Hill's own matt Rumley.  it was really nice to be able to hear from someone from Cobble Hill who had just only known for a month or two.  

I have one more paper to write and then I am done for this semester, although I do have some work to do over the break.  My break begins on the 12 but I'm stopping in Alberta with a friend and my brother to do some snowboarding and ice climbing for a couple days.  I will hopefully be back in the 'Peg on the 18th and then taking off again on the 4th of January.  

Can't wait for snow, see yah soon Winnipeg.

Guys Night

Monday and Tuesday the guys here at Kaleo had an all guys trip. We travelled two hours south, and then hiked an hour through the woods to Mystic Beach which is on the Southern tip of Vancouver Island. This trip was a blast, probably one of my favorites so far. It was full of doing dumb guy things, climbing up streams (getting very wet while doing so), playing around in caves trying to build a Dam large enough to block the water, smokies around a fire, and showering in wateralls

What a view, if you swam long enough you would eventually get to Washington State


Some campsite, trees are nice, but oceans better.
This is the waterfall a few of us showered in, suprisingly it wasn't that cold

It is Now December!

Oh my goodness where has November gone, although it does seem like a lifetime ago that I was strolling into this place not knowing who anyone was.  Nevertheless December is now here and i have very much been enjoying myself out here.

This past sunday I was asked to play bass for the Sunday morning worship.  If you didn't know, Bass is not really an instrument I play!  In which case I sort of had to combine what I knew about guitar and the small amount of pointers given to me on how to play bass and play through a worship set.  In the end it went fine, in fact I really enjoyed playing bass, (hey mom how do you feel about adding another guitar to my collection?)  

The bridge on sunday evening went well, One of our youth (Nick Benson) at Cobble Hill gave the sermon.  I believe he is in grade ten which is mind blowing to think about because he did an amazing job, he was funny and witty but he also drove home his point very well.

12-02-08

Ladysmith Festival of Lights

   This past thursday a group of us went to the nearby town of Ladysmith for their annual festival of lights.  It was a great kick off to the holiday season full of christmas carols, lights, and fireworks.  The only thing that made it seem fake to me was the lack of white stuff (snow).  Everything was screaming CHristmas but without snow I just felt like everything was not very authentic.  Oh well, I'm sure I'll get enough snow when I go home for the Holidays.

24-11-1008

The bridge yesterday we decided to do an all Hymn service and it went quite well.  Hymns are always more powerful when you have lots of people singing, something we were sort of lacking, but we still kept it going and it worked out alright.  

We just finished our 24/7 week of prayer yesterday.  Every hour a different person would sign up for prayer and would spend that time in the prayer room.  many of us appreciated this due to the fact that we were given time to spend with God, it wasn't like we had to make time it was given to us, now the next step is to continue this time with God in our everyday lives without having these time slots handed to us.

Between praying at 3-4 am and doing homework till obscene hours of the morning this past week I have not gotten a whole lot of sleep.  So i am hoping that this week of class will give me an opportunity to get back into a habit of going to bed early.  

This week we are in class, taking The foundations of church ministry, apparently there is a lot of class discussion so I am looking forward to this class, just for the discussion factor of it.  

Sweet Sixteenth of November

Today at Cobble Hill our "Bridge" worship team with on addition was in charge of leading worship.  Playing worship at Cobble Hill definitely has a different feel than my church back home (Braeside represent!).  It is a much smaller congregation and I feel that with a smaller congregation they would notice a screw-up a lot faster.  Nevertheless we didn't screw-up and our worship went wonderfully, from song choice to song placement.  I was quite happy with the song selection as the majority of the songs were hymns.  For some of you who know me you might be saying to yourself "WHAT!  Tom.  Liking hymns?".  But lately I have been very passionately about taking worship music back to its roots.  Hymns just don't carry that fluff and self-centeredness that most new worship music does.  It brings me to peace to be able to sing a song and not worry about its biblical trueness.  In light of this...I may have to give up the guitar and take up piano.  But learning an instrument takes a lot of time and energy, time and energy i don't have, maybe... you could all just pray real hard that God zaps me in the night with a lightening bolt full of the ability to play the piano.  

Back to a more serious note our very own Jeremiah (Kaleo student) gave his testimony, and it was very powerful, he is a man who has been blessed with words and the church was very thankful for his willingness to share.

We set-up the bridge tonight as a "camp-fire" setting again, just minus the fire, trees, marshmallows, and that wonderful smell of smoke that I love so much.  basically what I am trying to say is that the chairs were set up in a circle and we had an acoustic set.  Everything from the music to the message went good, it really seems that God has blessed this sweet sixteenth of November.

Carmanah Valley

This past week myself and two other guys went on a hike with a couple from Cobble Hill.  We hiked through the Carmanah Valley, if you don't know where that is don't feel bad, neither did I.  I;m not going to explain the whole hike to you, it was way to eventful and would take far too many words to describe.  I will tell you a couple things that the hike entailed though...

-long , long road full of pot holes

-sleeping in faulty hammocks, underneath faulty tarps

-no sleep due to faulty tarps, oh and the TORRENTIAL RAIN all night long

-trail flooded with water

-Tom fallling into swamp (soaked from the stomach down)

-Lots of fun

Oh yah also big trees were involved       

Look at us... such a fearless bunch

11-15-08

11-11-08

This past Bridge service we decided to try something different.  Instead of having the seats all facing the front we decided to seat everyone in a circle, much like a camp fire feeling.  Instead of having a the whole worship team we just had an acoustic guitar except my string broke during one of the songs so we did Amazing Grace with the piano instead of guitar, but who is going to complain about piano, I am sure not.  Quite a few other Kaleo students made it out so that was very interesting, giving them a taste of what we do every Sunday night.

A have a story to tell that happened this past week.  I was talking with a lady from Cobble Hill two weeks ago at the bridge service her name is Donna.  We were conversing over cookies that had been out.  I guess I they weren't the most amazing cookies because I had mentioned that I really missed home cooked baking.  Sure enough the next week Donna comes to church with a huge basket of home baked cookies.  I was awes truck as my jaw dropped, its women and people like Donna that make me feel very welcome at Cobble Hill.

11-08-08

Today a group of four of us went to a retirement home in the close town of Crofton.  We spent an hour in the afternoon just hanging out with ladies with Alzheimers.  I am terrified of "hanging out" with people I do not know, never-mind elderly people who I have nothing in common with.  This may be one of the reasons I signed up to do this, to be stretched and challenged in doing something I am not comfortable with, or maybe it was just to impress some girls, who knows?  Despite my reasoning and as awkward as the visit was at times I really enjoyed it, and hearing the ladies we had been visiting ask us to come back soon just made me feel like I could endure that awkwardness forever if it brought joy and happiness to someone's day.  

I Just Bought Way Too Much Candy!

This past Friday we finished off our class of hermeneutics, man was it a good class!  Before the class I was thinking that any class with a name that sounds as dumb as that is bound to be boring and very bland.  But yet again I was proven wrong.  I doubt that I will ever look at the bible or a book the same way again.  Our prof.  Merrill Dyck was amazing, I found myself wide awake and listening for every class.  We have a final major project project for this class and I am actually looking forward to write it.

The Bridge today went well once again.  I like to continue saying it is very successful despite who comes or who doesn't, because the truth is it would be worth every hour and minute of preparation if only one person would show up.  God will work how he wants to not how we want him too.  

Tomorrow and the day after we are spending a day in Victoria handing out Lost and Found clothes from the summer to homeless people at the same time handing out new pairs of sicks we've all chipped in too buy.  We were told that on the streets socks are like gold, but I continued thinking about it and realized that socks aren't like gold just on the street but everywhere!  How nice is it to be given socks as a gift, I'll tell yah that that is one gift that I would never get tired of.

Then the next day we are going to Nanaimo and going caving for the day, yipee!

Minds Work Best at Night

Yeah Right!  Well that title is a lie, even though some people out here might disagree with me, but if there is one thing I've learned out here so far it is that I'm always right and everyone is always wrong (that was sarcastic).  

For our class of Hermeneutics we had a group project/presentation that was due on the last day of class (friday).  Our group had to do our presentation on the book of 1 Peter, we talking about how all christians are going to suffer in their life just as Christ suffered.  We had come up with this great idea to do a Nooma video.  So we had written out the script, filmed all the scenes.  That might seem very simple but that took a lot of time and effort.  Thursday night we finally finished filming and we were moving on to edit.  Turns out the camera we have has a defect and is not able to transfer footage to the computer.  Seven hours, four computers, and three cameras later we came to the conclusion that this footage was not going to be edited.  

At 2 in the morning we came up with a different way for presenting the next morning and it worked out very well, but the point of this story is that we were shown first hand the power of God's will.  WE wanted to make that video, and WE wanted it to work out, but WE were very mistaken.  God intervened and said "No" you are now going to it my[God] way.

4 8 1 5 1 6 2 3 4 2

Sorry for the very uncreative title but I am not in a very inspirational mood right now. We just had our first class today in Hermeneutics. It was really interesting I already feel like I will never be able to look at the bible or any other book the same again. But despite the fact that the course was very educational it came with some extra work, and that work added onto other work that I have seems to be making me very busy, tonight and the rest of the nights this week will most likely be quite late. But hey couple cups of coffee later and I won't even be able to tell that I'm lacking sleep.

I guess this is a wierd prayer reequest but please pray for the ability to not feel tired? I'm not sure if that seems right so maybe pray that I get my work done fast (while still doing a good job) and be able to get a proper amount of sleep.

We had our third Bridge service last night, it went well again, i don't have very many complaints about it. I do have to say though that it gets discouraging when not very many people show up, but I've been told that Lech our pastor at Cobble Hill started pastoring the church when there were only twelve people attending. Whenever I hear that I am instantly put at ease, I have to learn to not worry about numbers, because numbers do not prove how succesful a church or service is.

Please continue to pray for the Bridge, the people involved, and the people that come out. You can also pray for The Kaleo Cobble Hill team cause on November 16 we are leading the SUnday morning service while Lech is going home to Poland for a visit.

Turning Grey

Yesterday we left at the early hour of 8 O'clock in the morning to go to Victoria. We went to the SALTS headquarters to help them winterize there boats. Winterizing these sailboats basically consists of taking down sails and masts. Although as beautiful as the day was yesterday we were working inside in the shop. We got put to work sanding down the Dorries (life rafts) and the booms (big wooden poles that hold the sails horizontally). All in all it was an awesome day, and we all enjoyed decorating ourselves with sawdust.

UP TA DATE

Well we (Kaleo/ Cobble Hill team) just put on our second evening "Bridge" service. I felt it went very good. The worship team seems to be getting to know each other better, not just their names but also there playing styles, leaders, and area in which we all need to challenge each other in. The sermon was given by a woman from Cobble Hill she had just finished doing a YWAM and told about how her eyes were opened to the capabilities of peoples charity, and how people who have nothing still seem to find ways to give something. Our scripture and prayers were bang on too. We are still fooling around with what we want the evening order to go like but that will just take some trial and error. One crucial thing we remebered this time that we had forgotten the service before was...people! A few staff from Qwanoes came out and others from the church came.

Please continue to pray for the Bridge and Cobble Hill in general.

We are kind of in the middle of a two week break, only break is an understatement. Everyone is pretty stressed out right now with work and assigmnets. We are trying to finish up post course work from Spritual Formation, then we're in the idst of assignments for Camp Ministry and then we have pre-course assigments for Hermeneutics which starts in a week. I'm not sure if I've ever read so much in this amount of time in my life before.

Please pray for motivation, concentration, and endurence (sorry I was trying to think of another "tion" word but i couldn't. Feel free to insert your own cause chances are I need prayer for that.)

Tofino Surf Trip

27 mouths full of water, 15 bruised heads, 4 headaches, and one sliced ear later we got back from our three day surf trip in Tofino. I sadly cannot say I am a surfer now although I did enjoy trying to surf quite a bit. I got up about 5 times and those times were incredible! It's really amazing being able to jump on a wave and ride it. We were kind of expecting some rainy weather and we didn't get it, so I was quite happy to be able to surf in some sunshine. Another amazing thing that happened on this trip was that I got to vote for the first time in my life!

Up/Down and Coming/Going

This past saturday we had an over nighter at church with the youth, we played some games and watched some movies, ate some food, and lost some sleep. Here are just a couple pictures of that evening.

This weekend being thanksgiving and all, we will not be having the Bridge due to the fact that all of us Kaleo students and well the rest oif the world are going home for food and good company. For those of us who can't afford to go home, we will be finding friends and making them drag us to their homes (I'm spending thanksgiving in Victoria with a friend of mine from Kaleo). After monday we woll once again begin to plan out the next Bridge service, but school work has begun to get heavy so please pray for me as I embark on many short nights and tired days. Our pastor at Cobble Hill Baptist is taking a trip to Poland in the near future and we have been asked to "sub-in" for a sunday. So a few of us will be taking care of the sermon or message while others lead worship and such. We are all pretty new to this situation na dwe hope and pray that it will go well and won't result in us being excommunicated or anything.

The Bridge

We had our first official "Bridge" tonight. It went well, from worship to prayer to the talk. The only thing it lacked was people. It seems we were having problems in I guess "advertising" it. So please pray for our next Bridge that people from the community will come out. Were not running it next Sunday due to Thanksgiving but the sunday following will claim to be our second Bridge service.

Church Ministry

The plans are slowly coming together as we just got our worship team together to practice for our Sunday night youth service called "the bridge". A couple other Kaleo students and myself will be spending some time this week to plan the evening service from everything from music to prayer to the sermon.

S.A.L.T.S.

Well we are now back from our five day SALTS trip but I still feel like I'm floating on water. Our first day out was amazing, full of waves, wind, and sea sickness. Nothing like being forty feet up in the air on top of the mast as the boat rocks back and forth over waves. After the first day it seems the wind decided it didn't like us and took off, but none the less we still had a good time partying in the rain.

Church Ministry

i have begun to attend a church called Cobble Hill Baptist. A few young people from the church, a couple kaleo students and me are going to be responsible for a Sunday evening youth service. We will be leading everything from worship to prayer to sermons. Please pray for us as we begin to plan things out. We will probably be starting this in the beginning of October.

SALTS

This Monday we are embarking on a new journey, instead of mountains, this time we are conquering the sea. We are leaving on a week long sailing trip which will allow us now to to see God's wonder from a new perspective.

Mount Albert-Edward

We just got back from a three day hike up Mount Albert-Edward in Strathcona park. This hike rendered me breathless, in both my physical condition and also my spiritual condition. This hike was definitely not just a stroll in the park which is awesome because it was great to get to know my peers while they were exhausted, covered in sweat, and reaking to high heaven. No matter how long we had hiked no one really cared because once you got to the top of that mountain you forgot all about the effort it took to get you up there. All we were cared about at 7000 ft is how amazing God is and what an amazing artist he is