April 09, 2007
My dream
Every once in awhile I have dreams that are so interesting that I wonder if they might be from God. Here's one from last night that that I not sure how to interpret. There are some obvious symbols in there but I don't quite know how to piece it all together, if that's even possible.
I had a dream last night that I was in a large city in South Africa. I was there on some trip and was staying in a fancy hotel. In my touring I came upon a begging woman. She had black sunken eyes and that what she really wanted was water so that she could nurse her baby. I tried to bring her water from my hotel room in a dixie cup but spilled the water before I got to her. Then I talked to the front desk woman about buying some water. She let me fill a dixie cup with milk but I spilled that as well. Why I was trying to get her something to drink her baby died. After this happened I went with her to see her home. She lived in squaller. I met her husband. She explained that her room did have a tap but that her landlord wouldn't turn them on unless he had financial incentive to do so. Instead of water he would give them soap, which of course they couldn't use without water. She told me that most days she could manage to bring home for herself about 1/2L and she would try to make do with that. I told her about how where I am from water is in abundance. That every home has running water, no one is really poor. I even told her about how I had a rain barrel in my yard full of water and that people would actually complain about the rain as though it were not precious. After visiting we went for a walk back to my hotel. We passed a bus that was picking up people to take to different prisons around the world. In particular I remember Vancouver and Pitsburg. I mused with this woman over whether she could do anything that would send her to these place but she sighed and said that even that was hopeless; they would just send her to the prisons there, which were worse. While we were walking back to my hotel I realized that I could get her some water in my water bottle instead of a dixie cup. When we got there she noticed the front desk woman step away for a moment and decided that that would be her opportunity to see what she could steal from the hotel. I told her that I wouldn't endorse that but that I would still try to get her some water. At that point I woke up.
February 19, 2007
I'm back
We're home! We've been away the last couple of weeks for Joel's interviews. We drove all around western Canada and it is so nice to be home now. We had a nice chance to spend time together and to visit my family. I should be a more regular on the blog again now that I'm home.
On another note, if you haven't seen the NET bible I would suggest checking it out. It is a new translation that was put together so that the bible could be more freely distributed instead of being tied down like most bible translation in copyright red tape. You can download the whole bible for free in a decent format or Posted by rose at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
Our Upcoming Trip
We're heading up to Northern BC tomorrow for another month of Joel's electives. We'll be staying in Dease Lake, a town in the sheer middle of nowhere, for two weeks and then in Vanderhoof for another two weeks. I'm pretty excited about going on this adventure. Dease Lake is mostly native and has a population of about 700 people. Vanderhoof is very Mennonite and has a population of about 5000 people. We're hoping that it will give us an idea of what it would be like to work in a really small remote community someday.
I'm not sure how frequently I'm going to be able to post while I'm away but I'll try to average at least once per week. I don't really know if anyone reads this blog regularly (my stats are screwed up because of people trying to post spam comments) but I don't want to lose you if you're there. Things should be back to full swing in December.
October 14, 2006
Thanksgiving and Teaching
We had an alternative thanksgiving celebration last weekend. We had a bunch of people over and served rice and beans and prayed together. We also collected about $100 for Canada Food for the Hungry. It was really nice to be able to focus on our gratitude for our every day lives. We are so blessed everyday. Praise God for your abundance. May we give what we can to others.
I taught a pro-life apologetics class yesterday for the Salvation Army war college students. I've never done that sort of thing before but I enjoyed it so much. I've been longing to share the urgency of this work with people for a long time but usually Christians are uninterested in hearing me. I think that reason that I blog is because I'm passionate about justice and I desire to share that passion with other people but I don't usually have forum for that. Sometimes when I'm talking to people that seem somewhat responsive I get really excited and talk at them about my topic until they're overwhelmed. I try to keep that to a minimum but it's hard. Anyways, I think that the students were interested which made me pretty happy. I feel "called" (whatever that means) to teach but I have no idea where to do it besides on my blog. I hope that I can have other opportunities like this class to teach people about some of the things that I'm passionate about.
September 16, 2006
God's Creation in Powell River
I've really been enjoying my time here in Powell River. I think that the best part has been in the respite from the city. The population density and the busyness of life in Vancouver really craps my spirit. I've been enjoying the nature so much. I took the kids blackberry picking a couple of days ago and it made me so happy. In some ways I think that God designed people, well at least me, to function best in a rural environments. I love being able to get away in the nature and just soak in God's marvelous creation. The city crowds out his creation and I find it easier to forget how awesome God's work really is.
We went for a walk yesterday on a trail in the woods right next to the ocean and we saw no more then 5 people the entire time. It was so wonderful to have an opportunity to absorb it all undistracted. This has been a great vacation.
Nature reminds me of hope. I think that city seems so polluted by worldliness and sin. All that you can see is the disgustingness of humanity. Rural areas remind me that God really still is in charge and unbridled. He's so wonderful.
February 04, 2005
What's been going on lately
Since I haven't done much blogging lately I thought I had better catch up and fill you in on a little of what's been going on in my life. Nothing very interesting but maybe it'll give you a bit better idea of who I am and what I'm like.
A couple of weeks ago my grandmother died. Don't worry about me; I didn't know her so I didn't feel any grief. Anyways, my mother flew into Vancouver from Winnipeg and my sister and her fiance drove over from Courtenay (a small town on Vancouver island) and we all drove together to Kelowna (a city 5 hours from Vancouver) for the funeral. It was really nice to be able to spend some time with mom and sister and to meet her fiance. The funeral, though, was really terrible. The minister kept making references to my grandmother being in heaven even though she was not a Christian. While no one knows for sure where her heart was I found it totally offensive that the minister was willing to lead people to believe that she was most certainly in heaven. He read a bunch of scripture out of context to try to prove this. My aunts were also reassuring my grieving sister that "Nana's dancing now. There's no need to be sad". I was crying with frustration but everyone but my mom thought that I was grieving. The following day at the entombment of the ashes my mom, her sisters, my sister, her fiance and I gathered together to put the ashes into a tomb. One of my aunt suggested we say a prayer together. The prayer started out fine but degenerated quickly. My aunts were praying about how heaven wouldn't be the same now that their mom was there. One of the them then piped in "And for God's sake don't let her drive". In a prayer, who do they think they're talking to?! They then started praying to my grandmother which made me feel very uncomfortable. In retrospect I wished I had stepped aside at that point. They would have just thought that I was grieving. I feel a bit like I endorsed their inappropriate prayers by remaining the circle. It's over now. I think that what I'm frustrated with is that I didn't get much of a chance to speak the truth. I just got a clear picture of how deceived my family really is.
Since Christmas I've been working on a few domestic projects. I'm trying to learn how to make sourdough bread. I'm attempting to make it with wild yeast like the people in the olden days did. Basically you let some flour and water ferment for a few days and then use that in the bread dough. During the fermentation process yeast multiply and are then able to rise the dough. I've also just picked up knitting. I'm making a scarf for practice but eventually I want to be able make socks. This, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that knitting is trendy these days. I've wanted to be able to knit for eons and I'm a competent crocheter and have been for awhile. I'm also learning to sew. I got a sewing machine for $3 dollars at a garage sale a couple years ago and replaced a part. I just sat down with it a couple of days ago to figure it out. I've had a stack of mending to do for quite awhile so it was nice to get through that stuff. I'm also getting really excited about spring gardening. The bulbs are up (in my to be herb garden unfortunately) but every nice day so far I've been busy. I'll bore you with the details some other time.
My upcoming project is that I plan to develop a website along the lines of instructions in how to live an extremely frugal life. There are plenty of sites devoted to frugality but I intend mine to be different in that I'm assuming that people only want to use resources on things that are absolutely necessary. That means no info on frugal entertainment (maybe free entertainment but that's far down my list of things to add). In case you're new to my blog let me explain a philosophy that I try to live by. My goal is to waste as little of the resources God has given me as possible so that I might be able to use what is left over for his kingdom. Along the lines of "seeking first the kingdom of God". I'll let you know when I've a got a beta site ready.