Category: general news

monday was spent on the campus of the university of waterloo. the university seems to be a really neat place. a couple of interesting moments were walking through research park and a brief encounter with a mounty bear.

tuesday morning, we spent our time doing various projects around the church. where as sunday and monday had been quite warm, things took a turn for the chilly.

during a light canadian (heavy texan) snow storm, we had a fantastic time picking up trash and cleaning up the exterior of the building. after that, we did some cleanup work inside and distributed some flyers in the neighborhood.

and in the afternoon…

curling rules.

there were doubters. there were skeptics. but curling is quite possibly one of the funnest things i’ve ever done. i’m not sure whether it was more fun to curl or watch people fall (clif wins the award for the biggest, most dramatic bust, where as ariel wins the award for the most frequent buster) or to actually play, but both were extremely exciting. many of the canadians we were with commented that it was their first time to go, but they all loved it. if you’ve never been and there’s a place around you, you should go – it’s a really fun experience, and one i’d recommend.

and finally, a picture of hailey, the daughter of the people i’m staying with.

‘night…

it was clif’s first time to fly. i think he wanted to kill us after prolonged amounts of teasing, including but not limited to josh’s asking him if he remembered to bring his goggles for when they roll down the windows. after we were all in our seats, i thought it would have been funny to ask him whether he’d paid his deposit in case we needed to use our oxygen masks… i’m not sure he would have appreciated the humor. to his credit, clif did a great job – i hear he didn’t even have to use the barf bag.

we’ve been warmly received by the church up here, and we’re looking forward to working with them this week. we’ve got a great group, and hopefully there will be more pictures to come soon!

coldplay was fun tonight, though generously only about 45% as good as u2. of course comparing u2 @ year 26 with coldplay @ year 7 isn’t exactly fair, but none the less it’s hard to compare with the show u2 puts on. my hope is that in 15 years or so coldplay will have evolved to the level of showmanship of u2 and mellowed out of some of their rolling stonesish antics.

that being said, there were several really cool moments. my personal favorites were “the scientist”, “till kingdom come” with a tribute to johnny cash with “ring of fire” tacked on the end of it, as well as “talk” and “yellow”. the encore (“swallowed in the sea”, “in my place”, and “fix you”) was quite compelling, and probably worth the price of admission alone. i don’t know that i’d payed proper attention to “swallowed in the sea” before. the lyrics from the final bridge seemed to me to be particularly appropriate for the evening: “oh, what good is it to live / with nothing left to give / forget, but not forgive / not loving all you see?”

at the conclusion, “fix you” was quite well done, with chris martin not singing the final refrain at all, but rather allowing the voices of the crowd echoing in the toyota center to rise above the strains of the piano.

“lights will guide you home,
and ignite your bones,
and i will try
to fix you.”

all in all an extremely enjoyable evening.

i was going through old benedictions tonight when i realized that there were several from the early days that weren’t posted here. i thought i’d fix that by putting them up, but i wanted to keep their date structure somewhat intact, so i’ve placed them back where they belong (a year or so ago). here are the links:

to you who are alone
you who have tasted the world
as you follow his plan
you who wait expectantly
you who search for wisdom
may you run
God reaches out to you
a people – lost and wandering
as you survey your valley of dry bones

it was still back in the early days, so some are better than others, but there are a few that i like a lot, and that are rather meaningful to me. hope you enjoy.

I’ve changed the RSS feed of this site to include the previous 20 posts.

Just so you know.

things i am thankful for right now:

1) rain.
2) wireless internet.
3) back porches.
4) chairs from ikea.
5) wool blankets from africa.

yay for fun afternoons.

“Communicating Jesus in a Post-Modern Context”

In our changing world in which we are bombarded by all kinds of differing messages, where does faith in Jesus Christ fit in? This class will help us begin to notice and wrestle with current issues of culture and morality and suggest ways that Jesus can be communicated to our friends and neighbors.

If you have no clue what Kelly’s marketing jingle means, that makes at least two of us. But James and I will hopefully figure it out before we start teaching this class on Thursday. If you came to our last class, this is a friendly PSA to announce that while there may be some overlap between the two, this class *is* enough different that you should consider taking it, espeically if you liked the last one.

That being said, we’d love to see you on Thursday!

cox is “upgrading” my internet connection, which somehow means that i am without usable internet from about 8:30 pm until about 5:00 am every day.

let me just say that my internet worked fine until the upgrades started.