Sunday in Nigeria

The 3 hour church was a very lively one as expected. One of our hosts is the bishop of the church so he was the speaker. Great sermon and great music.

We were seated in the VIP section with the jazz trumpeter from the worship band right behind us. Even though I was immediately beside the air-conditioner and there were large fans everywhere I dripped sweat for every minute of the 3 hours. Good thing we had brought water with us.

This afternoon we sat around as a team sharing our testimonies and getting to know each other. With such a small team of only 6, it is easier to get to know everyone than the normal sized teams. We have a very qualified team for the project ahead.

Our hosts are determined to have us fully rested before we start so they wouldn’t let us start work yet or have any meetings. They are ensuring we had enough time for an afternoon sleep or two on both Saturday and Sunday. I am beginning to think they are expecting a whole lot out of our team this week. Maybe even a miracle or two.  Tomorrow will start off with a full workday of introductions, meetings and tours before we can start any really work which probably will be no sooner than Tuesday.

Please pray for the team as they start the coming week with meetings . . . for good communication across cultures, for the necessary information to be shared properly, and maybe for those miracles . . . 

(Want to see more photos?  I’ll be posting the ones Kevin sends me here)

Next Up: Mission Vision FSJ

I still feel like I’m processing so much of what happened in Haiti . . . trying to figure out what the “God Story” is that comes out of this particular trip.  But this weekend I’ll have lots of chances to tell my story and share about eMi.  It’s Mission Vision in Fort St. John . . . a community-wide Missions Conference held annually where we used to live in Northern BC.

It’ll be a full weekend!  I’m flying in Thursday night and flying home Monday morning.  And here’s what’s on the schedule so far:

Fri  – Mtg with the (new) Pastor of our sending church – lunch with a friend – sharing at the Christian School Chapel – setting up the display booth – displays open from 6:30-9 p.m.

Sat – Displays open from 9 a.m. – 7 p.m.  I’ll also be conducting two seminars . . . one on Communicating Across Cultures at 1:45 p.m. and another on using Social Media for Ministry at 4:15

Sun – I’ll be sharing in the kid’s open session, the jr high SS class, and during the service at North Peace MB Church.

So – if you’re in the area, I’d LOVE for you to drop by and chat a while!  If you’d like to see outside of these events, let me know – I’m in the process of trying to get my schedule worked out . . .   I may also be looking for a ride to the airport on  Monday morning – perhaps with a breakfast meet-up.

Pray for me next weekend, and also during this week as I prepare.  I still feel like I’m catching up at home and at the office . . . and I’m expecting Fort St. John to be fabulous, intense, and exhausting 🙂

Whew!

Between two Missions Conferences – one that involved a week out of town – and an office move, I feel like I’ve gotten behind on a lot of things.  My list of things to do at the office seems to be getting longer, not shorter . . . and prioritizing is getting more difficult.  And we’re not even back to normal yet, as Spring Break – which throws off my schedule once more – is yet to come.  I’m behind on things at home too . . . it’s amazing how messy a house can get while we’re not even at home 😉  So I’m starting small . . . today, a blog post, tomorrow, the world . . .

Last week we were up in Fort St. John for MissionVision:

MissionVision is a fabulous community-wide missions conference put on by the local churches in Fort St. John . . . and it’s a great excuse for us to head back up there and connect with many, many friends and supporters.

MissionVision itself was on the Friday and Saturday.  We had our display up and Kevin & I both led a seminar on Saturday.

On Sunday we were sharing at church – and Kevin led another seminar during the Sunday School time.  Through the rest of the week we shared with three care groups (well, five if you count the combined groups separately), I spoke at the Awana club, and we had more breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and “coffee times” than we can count.  We left well-fed but exhausted on Thursday morning . . . and felt rather guilty on Sunday when our pastor asked, during his sermon, how we were doing at building margin into our lives this Lenten season 😉

It WAS crazy busy – and we knew it would be.  But it was also wonderful.  Wonderful to share what God is doing in our lives and through eMi.  Wonderful to watch Talia be especially touched by the speaker at MissionVision.  Wonderful to watch the girls reconnect with good friends.  Wonderful to catch up with our friends, to celebrate joys, and to share burdens.

And then, we followed the eMi project trip model and took a bit of time for rest & relaxation – and debriefing – before arriving at home.  We could have driven through in one day – but for our sake, and especially for the sake of the girls, we did a shorter driving day and enjoyed some family time together in the evening before heading the rest of the way home the next day.

Now we’re home, and trying to find some semblance of routine for the week before spring break – between a sick kid, broken glasses, an overnight field trip, and the ordinary distractions of life.  Hmm . . . maybe we’ll put off routine until next month 🙂

 

How Big is Your God?

At church this morning, our pastor posed the question:  How big is your God? Is there more to God?  What is limiting your view of God?

My mind immediately wandered to this write up that Kevin had shared with me over the summer.  I hope you won’t mind me sharing it with you too.

How big is our God? The more I encounter Christians from the developing world, the more I marvel at how big their God is. In my world, my God only has to get me out of traffic jams, heal my colds, and get me over my anxieties. In countries like Sudan, Haiti, and Kenya, God has to provide food each and every day, has to free children from kidnappers, has to protect against local authorities, and also has to figure out a way to get the pump working again. Our limited brains cannot comprehend his power, his compassion, his vision, but surely he is bigger than what we make him out to be in the west.

Reverend Painito, who I met in Burundi, would pray what I thought were really big prayers. For example, he prayed that God would influence government decisions so they would provide a free electrical service to their property. And you know what? God indeed did provide the $300,000 electrical service to the site at no cost to the ministry. What a challenge to our notion of how big God really is!

How big is YOUR God?  What really big prayers are you praying today?

Christmas is coming . . .

I think we just survived the busiest week of our pre-Christmas season. It’s been a bit hectic since the end of November/beginning of December, with seasonal church activities, my Aunt & Oma coming up for a week (they were volunteering at Samaritan’s Purse, but got to stay at our house) and just regular weekly activites . . . but our past week had more than its share of special activities:

Monday: English Corner Christmas Potluck – great turn out, great fun.  We’ve got such a wonderful group at English Corner this year.

Tuesday: Care Group & Pioneer Clubs . . . except, partway through our regular potluck before we send the kids to clubs and do our Bible study, we were informed that we had to evacuate the church due to a potential gas leak.  The fire engine came and we finished our dinner outside in the cold . . . and then headed home when clubs was cancelled.  Talia headed to school to sing with the choir after all (there’s two Christmas concerts at the school, and the choir has the option to sing at both) while the rest of us enjoyed a surprise evening home.

Wednesday: School Christmas Concert . . . both kids were “Secret Agents” (part of the rhythm band playing Orff instruments), Talia was in the choir, and both classes had poems to recite (in German!) as part of the performance.

Thursday: Decorating the Christmas Tree

Friday:

In the morning, I went in to the classroom to help out with some Christmas Baking happening in Talia’s class

After school, the girls each brought friends home . . . 5 girls all together . . . playing, borrowing the neighbour puppies, creating science experiments and the like.

In the evening . . . well, Talia had gotten tickets from her dentist to go see the Hitman game . . . but since she had another evening of Junior Lifesaving Club, she gave her tickets to Kaisa and Dad (with promise of her turn later) while she went for her last swimming.

Saturday:

First – Kaisa’s drama performance.  We ran errands during her dress reheral, and then went to watch her be an Obsk (the kind that only eats Rhubarb and Corn on the Cobsk from Dr. Seuss’ “If I Ran the Zoo”).  She was very cute, and I think she’s hooked . . . I’m guessing there’s more drama classes to come.

Then, in the evening, we went to the Geocachers Christmas Party . . . a potluck, some games, a silent auction, a gift exchange and the like.  It’s nice to be able to put faces to some of the geocaching names that you come to recognize.  Our family was so lucky . . . we ended up with several draw prizes on top of our gifts, plus, Kevin ended up getting tickets to another Hitman game in the silent auction for him and Talia to go to.

Sunday: We took Misaki, our homestay student, to the airport first thing in the morning to say our good-byes.  Our girls always find that a bit tough . . .

Then we headed to Tim Horton’s (since it was a bit early for church yet, but not worth heading home) and then to Church.  The kids needed some down time, so we pulled out the paints and the girls did some Christmas crafts.

Then, Daddy and Talia headed off to the “Teddybear Toss” Hitman Game.  Thanks to the silent auction tickets, they had seats right near the front, and got rained on by lots of teddybears 🙂

Today is the start of another week.  There’s a Pioneer Clubs party tomorrow, but other than that our regular events have ended and we should be able to take things a bit slower . . . and that’s a good thing . . .

African Children’s Choir

Have you ever had the opportunity to see the African Children’s Choir?  They’re absolutely fabulous! I remember seeing them 15 or so years ago, and I was thrilled when I heard that they’d be performing in our church this past weekend.

Besides seeing the concert, we were also able to host a few of the choir members overnight.  It was so exciting to see my girls and these girls  from Kenya and Uganda enjoying themselves just being kids (the ACC girls were SO excited to find that they were going to a house with kids . . . and dolls . . . and dress up clothes . . . ).  The time was way too short, but I’m sure the memories – at least for my girls – will last a long, long time.

Here’s a picture of the actual performance . . . that’s one of “our” girls singing the solo:

After the concert, the Choir Leader was talking about the Music for Life Primary School that they’re building in Uganda.  It turns out that Kevin’s been there!  EMI did the design for their new campus.  While Kevin wasn’t part of that team, when he led a team to Uganda last year, his team stopped by the construction site to take a look at local construction methods.  Small world!

If you want a chance to see the choir, check out their tour dates – they’re in and out of Calgary, through Alberta and into BC this spring.  And there are other tours in various other parts of North America.

Haiti – Day 7

Church:

We attended a baptismal for 23 candidates at the creek this morning. It was our highlight of the week so far. To see the whole congregation walk ½ hour up the road to the creek, singing all the way, perform the baptisms and then head back. It was really a time of rejoicing for the church. They even brought with them the pieces of tin to block the creek so it was deep enough to dunk.

Then we attended the regular service of 200 people under some big trees. The singing was great and the even though we didn’t understand the sermon, we were blessed by it. The kids sat amazingly still for the 2.5 hours in the service. We were the ones that were wriggling the most.

A whirlwind . . . and he’s off . . .

It’s been a whirlwind few days both getting ready for Haiti and just doing the every day things of life.  We didn’t KNOW Kevin would be leaving on a trip this weekend when we did our scheduling, and you can tell.  Even without that added in, it was a busy few days.

On Thursday, I was back at work, trying hard to get the ACDP article edited. It was also one of our pre-planned team building exercises . . . we took the interns to experience the very Canadian sport of curling 🙂 .  It was a lot of fun . . . but it did cut into Kevin’s time to clear his desk off before his looming trip.

On Friday, the Aylards came to visit the eMi Canada office.  The Aylards are a family from Kelowna who are preparing to join the eMi East Africa office. They will be the first missionaries that the Canadian office has “sent out” to an international office.  Their deputation is coming to an end, their tickets are already purchased, and they’ll be leaving at the beginning of May . . . you can check out their story on their Team Aylard blog, if you like.  I’ve been helping out with some of the HR stuff – largely the cultural training – and Kevin, of course, is involved in the financial administration side of things, so both of us were very involved in the time they spent getting to know the Canada office.  In the evening, we also had a more social time with the Aylards – all the eMi families had dinner together, the kids got to know each other, and we had a time of prayer to send the Aylards out.

On Saturday, I had agreed to help out with some Cultural Training with the Calgary ESL Ministries Association – a full morning of work for me (but so much fun!).  Kevin had last minute errands to run, and we were very thankful for a former intern staying with us for the weekend who kept the kids entertained all morning playing Lego!

When I finally got home, Kevin headed off for a long run (trying to make up for no training for the time he’s gone), and after supper we all headed up to the church for a family event “journey to Easter”.  It was really well done, with different stations playing out the different parts of the Easter story.  The girls took a couple of friends along who weren’t very familiar with the Easter Story, and it was neat to see how fascinated all 4 of them were with the scenes playing out before their eyes.

Then home . . . a late bedtime as the girls said their last good-byes . . . last minute packing (how do you fit a hard hat AND a camping mat into the suitcase along with ALL the other stuff???) . . . and a very short sleep.

We were very glad the intern was around so that I could drive Kevin to the airport at 4 a.m. without having to wake the kids!  And he’s off . . .

I got a couple more hours of sleep, and woke up to this email from Kevin:

I made it through customs with lots of time to spare: 1:45. I got here just before the lines started getting too long. There are lots of kids around here already, even at 5 AM. I wonder how the parents got them out of bed. I imagine Kaisa and Talia sleep/walking if they were here.

The things you see:

• Tim Hortons must be catching on.  There was a US custom’s officer with Tim Horton’s coffee.
• The bar was open and someone drinking beer at 5AM
• The breakfast line at Harvey’s is 20 deep already.

I have a 5 hour layover in Dallas and then on to Fort Lauderdale for a quick night. Then we catch a very early flight to Port au Prince where I pray everything is set up for us and the whole team makes it. And I hope I have enough rain gear. It looks like it’ll be muddy and wet the whole week.

Please pray for safe travels for Kevin and the team, and for the logistics to fall into place when they arrive in Haiti . . . I’m not sure how much I’ll hear from Kevin, but I’ll definitely try to keep you posted . . .

MissionVision, Home & Haiti

The MissionVision Weekend in Fort St. John was fabulous, as always.  I am constantly amazed how a relatively small community like Fort St. John can pull together a Missions Conference that rivals the big Missionsfests in everything but size!  But through my years living in Fort St. John, one of the things I definitely came to appreciate was how well the churches there manage to work together.  MissionVision is only one example of this.

The big difference for us between MissionVision and Missionsfest is our target group.  At Missionsfest, we’re mostly talking to engineers and architects who might be interested in coming along on our trips.  Here, we’re mostly talking to people from our ministry team – those who pray for us and/or support us financially – as well as others who follow our newsletters or otherwise remember us from our days in Fort St. John.  The types of information these individuals are looking for is much different – and the conversations are much deeper!  And needless to say, by the end of the weekend conference, we were utterly exhausted! I have to admit – I was thrilled when a few of the young people who were in my seminar last year (about “what can a kid do” to prep for missions) stopped by the booth!  These are definitely some missions-minded kids.

Sunday morning, Kevin and I shared at our home church before a quick lunch (at Wendy’s, of course – the place to go after church in Fort St. John 😉 ) and just like that, our time in Fort St. John was done.

We didn’t try to make it all the way home.  We’ve learned from experience that we need the drive to rest and regroup.  And apparently we were right – Kaisa fell asleep just before Beaverlodge, and didn’t stir until we arrived in Whitecourt!  We were originally planning to stop in Grande Prairie for my birthday dinner, but we REALLY didn’t want to wake Kaisa, so we found a nice Pizza & Steak House in Whitecourt instead.

Today, we continued the drive.  It was gorgeous out, so we took it slow, stopped for some geocaches along the way, and arrived home just before supper time.  After cleaning out the car and a quick bite to eat, we actually jumped on our bikes for the first bike ride of the season (to Safeway to get milk, but hey . . . )!

The drive wasn’t all rest & relaxation though.  We managed to download emails when we stopped for lunch, and Kevin spent a good chunk of time on his phone and on his computer, trying to get things organized for Haiti . . . his structural engineers are confirmed, but the logistics are still being worked out.  Flight itineraries, where to stay, what will be needed on the ground . . . so far, it looks like Kevin will be leaving on Sunday.  Between now and then, there’s a ton of things that need to be done.  Most people here don’t even know he’s going yet, since the call didn’t come until we were on our way to Fort St. John.  After a day in the office tomorrow, hopefully we’ll be able to give you a better idea of what Kevin’s time in Haiti will look like.  Until then, please keep praying for him, as he has to deal with logistics for the Haiti trip AND work at clearing up whatever has piled up on his desk over the last ten days while we were gone.

Visiting, visiting, and more visiting

You know you’ve been doing too much visiting when your daily schedule is divided into breakfast / morning / lunch / afternoon / dinner / evening . . . and you manage to fill most of the time slots 🙂  Of course, usually there is some overlap.  Yesterday was probably our busiest day – we had breakfast and a visit with one friend, then when directly to lunch with another.  We dropped in on another friend in the afternoon, went from there to a dinner engagement, and then while our kids went to clubs, we went to present at a Bible Study.  We were glad that we didn’t have ANYTHING scheduled this morning – we got to sleep in and get some laundry done before dropping the kids off and heading out for lunch.  But tiredness aside, we’ve been loving connecting up with everyone!  So many people have affirmed us in our ministry, and it’s just been neat to share about what we’re doing – and to “just visit” with some friends too.  We’re bound to miss someone since we’re only here for a week – but we’ve been doing pretty well at fitting people in (some on very short notice!) and working our way down our list.

The Open House in Fort St. John also went really well.  Two Bible Study groups decided to come to our Open House instead of study this week, and along with a number of others, that made for a decent crowd.  The questions were totally different than in Dawson – there, people were still asking about how eMi worked, here, people wanted to know more about how we were doing personally. 

So – what’s next?  On Friday, Mission Vision exhibits start in the evening (I think set up is sometime in the afternoon), and that runs right through to Saturday night.  On Sunday morning we speak in both services at North Peace MB (our home church here).  And, Sunday afternoon it’s homeward bound . . .

I’ll have an update on what’s happening after that soon . . . since on the drive up here, Kevin was asked to lead a structural assessment team to Haiti.  There’s been lots of phone calls and emails, and the details are still being worked out . . . please pray as that comes together in the midst of a busy time here . . .