smokiing or non-smoking?

There is a program called Out of the the Cold that operates in many urban centres around North America. Churches open their doors to the homeless community during the cold winter months so they have somewhere warm to stay. The program usually wraps up the end of march, middle of April but because of the unusually cold spring this year, the program here has been extended. Unfortunately two of the churches that normally run the program during the week are not able to keep up their involvement for the last two weeks of April. So, even though my church is far away from downtown, we are opening our doors for the Out of the Cold program tuesdays and fridays until the end of the month. So tonight, I went to help out. I got there in time to serve the meal, then I helped with clean up, made sandwiches for people who arrived too late for dinner and then manned the door to register people who arrived.

What made this evening interesting to me was not just interacting with the people who came for the program, but the fact that things at the church went on pretty much as normal. There was a cooking class going on in the kitchen so we shared the space with them which we were cleaning up after the meal. There was a worship band practice going on in the sanctuary upstairs and the youth had an event in the gym. Can you just picture the parent's reactions as they picked up their kids and saw 6 scruffy men standing around outside smoking?! Pam told me about a conversation she had with our friend Joe and they said that the smell of cigarette smoke in the church foyer added character. I agree:)

Weird

So today at work I was on break and I went to my locker to see if my mom had left me a message on my cell phone about what she wanted on the grocery list. As I was putting in my combination my cell phone started to ring. Weird!! It was Steph and that made me happy. Now I am going to her house to watch amazing race and desperate housewives.

I think I have made up for my lack of blogging now....:)

Good Books

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. For my trip to Rwanda we have been encouraged to read about the genocide and anything else we can find about the country. Right now I am reading a book called the Bishop of Rwanda.It is written by a Rwandan bishop and looks at what happened during the genocide in 1994, but it also looks at the way God was present there, how forgiveness and healing are rebuilding the country. It is really encouraging and powerful.
Also I am reading Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Steph has written about this in her blog and it really is a dangerous book. It is also a book that has taken much longer for me to read than I thought. I have been accused of "eating" or "inhaling" books because I generally read so quickly. This book however takes a lot of digestion so I can only read it in small chunks at a time. It is challenging but it is also comforting. One of my favourite parts so far is where he talks about the gospel as being unsafe. He suggests that maybe being in God's will is not the "safe" place that we are told it is. Even today in church the pastor of Grace suggested that when we find God's will things get easy. Let me tell you, I am not finding this easy!!
On a lighter note, I got the compete works of Jane Austin from my sister for Christmas. It includes a book that I have never read before called Lady Susan that I have just started. So far it is pretty good - not Pride and Prejudice, but good :)

Rewind!

Ok, so here is my last month in a "short" entry. Obviously my blog stopped working properly and I still don't really know why. Grr. But now it is working again yahoo. (I hope!) So here is what you missed!

I think I mentioned before that I lost my passport in January. Rather, I realized it was missing in January. I don't know where it went so I don't know when it was actually lost. So I looked for it until the end of February, convinced that it would turn up in some stupid place.Needless to say, it didn't. So at the beginning of March I started the process of applying for a new one. As I was filling out the online application I realized that I had not seen my birth certificate in awhile. Then I remembered putting my birth certificate in my passport for "safe keeping." The passport that I couldn't find.

This is not good because in order to apply for a passport you must have your birth certificate. I tried to apply for a birth certificate online but the website wasn't working so I took a road trip to Toronto with Jen to the placey place downtown. There they told me that it would take two months for my birth certificate to be replaced. Two months!! In two months I would be leaving for Rwanda!!! So this was just a little stressful. Then the guy said that if you apply online it only takes three weeks. I told him the website was down and he said they had it set up on the other side of the room. So I went all the way to downtown T.O. to apply online. Grr. Happily though my birth certificate arrived three days later - just in time to be a very happy birthday present!! I got to apply for my passport after standing in line for only 8 minutes.


So in order that my suffering has not been completely in vain, you must learn from it. First and most importantly, DO NOT LOOSE YOUR PASSPORT!!! EVER!!! .... but if you do make sure your birth certificate is not in it. When you apply do it online - you get to jump to the front of the line which is very nice. Lastly, and really I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT LOOSE YOUR PASSPORT!

This was all very stressful, but it is over now. My other adventures this month have to do with baking. I did A LOT of baking. We had a bake sale to raise money for the trip. I wanted to make paska, which I have never done before, so I did a trial run the wednesday before. It tasted great but looked weird. On saturday I went to the Elmira Maple Syrup festival. For those of you not from around here, this is a tradition here and everyone from miles around pours into Elmira, the small town 20 minutes outside of Waterloo where my dad grew up. The main streets turn into wall to wall people and the normally short scenic drive takes more than an hour. Good food, tractor rides and of course, maple syrup covered pancakes, are the main attractions. Fun times! Then in the afternoon I started baking. I made four batches of paska, 5 pies and 7 pie shells. I was in the kitchen until one in the morning and then because of a frosting crisis I had to get up at 5 to go to the grocery store. (Sobey's is open 24hrs.) For the record, I HATE frosting. The bake sale went really well and my pies sold out really quickly. We made 1500$. Later in the the week we did some baking with my small group to help my friend Cheryl who was doing a fundraiser at work for one of her coworker's whose son has cancer. Then I made 4 dozen cupcakes for my sister's birthday party. Again, let me say how much I really hate frosting!

Easter weekend was nice. Good Friday there was a joint service with all the MB churches in Kitchener Waterloo. It was cool to worship together like that and to take communion together, but the service was really basic and didn't have a meditation or any direction. It was a little disappointing. Sunday morning I went to both of my churches. WMB's service was really great - I love Easter at my church. The message was challenging and fun, the worship was good and I got to see some people I haven't seen in awhile. Then I went to Grace, where the message wasn't as good, but the hymns were good Oh well, nothing is perfect. I did miss St. Andrew's (my church in SA) and St Margarets though. I missed the liturgy, the tradition and the mystery of those services.

So, there is a recap of the last couple of weeks. I've been away from the blogging world for a couple of weeks, but I'll try to be better.