Twenty20 - The Weekend

So Last weekend out post-high school/college age group (~18-30) went a few hours up north to go camping for the weekend.  It was called The Weekend.   The Weekend consisted of lots of food, fellowship, worship, sessions and relaxation.   As you'll see in the pictures below, the cottage property that we were at had just about everything.  The family who owns it, is now using it to glorify God and His people.  Many camps and groups from our church are on this property.  Theres everything from hiking trails, a lookout over Lake Huron, volleyball, hammocks, rope ladder, swings, zip lining, trampoline, tight roping, indoor and outdoor games, a bush maze, and a lake for their canoes, paddle boat, kayaks, inner-tubes, peddle boat and more.   This place has everything.  There were about 80 of us there and we all slept in one of 4 cottages, 3 bunkies, 4 campers and a barn.  Guys slept on ones side of the property, girls on the other side and many adults, leaders and such stayed in the middle.   I was in a small bunkie with 6 other guys.    Overall, it was a ton of fun.  There were 3 sessions, all were lead by our new worship leader, JP Smits, and we had some awesome and powerful worship times, sessions and prayer times (I will go more in depth on this in a future post).   Some of us, on Sunday, went Hiking on some trails about 15 minutes away.  It was a ton of fun, we hiked on a 2-hour long trail, and had some fun "rock climbing" experiences.  For example, climbing under a number of tight rocks and dips.   The trail use to be called "Fat Man's Misery" and we soon found many areas to show that accurate.

Also Andrew Baxter drove 20+ hours from Texas just to come the the Twenty20 weekend.

(Thanks to all who took the pictures!)

Canoeing

Hiking

Archery 

Cill'n 

Trampoline 

Hiking view

Pre-Session Improv game

The barn. The top was a nice large living room-like place that housed 11 guys, the bottom was the place where we did our sessions, worship and such.

Campfire (post-sessions) and "Epic Story Time"

More archery

Trampoline

Volleyball

The Dock on the lake 

The upstairs of the barn

Fellowshiping outside of the barn (pre-session)

Worship Band practice

Campfire

Tightroping 

Swings and Rope Ladder

Post-Lunch instructions speech

Having fun

Campfire "Epic Story Time"

Hiking on the "Fat Man's Misery" trail

Playing with the kids

Zip-lining

Game time: Human Capture the Flag (Amanda was one team's "flag")

Volleyball

Side trail of "Fat Man's Misery" trail.  It was a lot of fun crawling through this.

Hiking

Some SLI's Chill'n

Canoeing 

 More hiking

Hammocks

The Kuepfer's preparing the meals

More Hiking

Rope Ladder again...

Relaxing

Bryan giving us instructions post-meals

More Volleyball...

More Canoeing...

More tightroping...

Finding fun while hiking...

Ontario's Flower

Preparing to go Canoeing

The lake (almost the entire lake was only 3-10 feet deep)

Leah Baxter Zip lining 

While we were hiking we accidentally made a wrong turn and ended up in someones back yard...

Kayaking 

Hiking

The view over the lake at night

Volleyball

Hiking

Mico, the family dog

Lunch 

Sunday Morning worship/prayer time down by the dock

Sideways zip lining

More pre-sessions inprov...

Another view of the lake and dock at night

Trying to set up a camper.  Some of the girls had decided to try to lift the top off, not knowing that you had to use the crank to lift the top up.  This cause a bit of trouble getting the camper back into a useable space.  

Zip lining

JP and his wife starting one of the sessions

The Hiking Crew

The lake and the dock during the day

Hiking "tour guide" - a ton of fun!

Hiking over water

Down by the lake...

Lunch

Hiking crew again...

The Trail we were on

Bryce Snorkeling in the lake.

The lake...

Worship session

JP Speaking

Zip lining upside down

People just chill'n, having fun and enjoying the time

Sunday Life

Sunday:  The day stared off very rushed.  I must of snoozed through one too many alarms or something because I woke up at 6:40am.  I had to leave at 7:00am (I normally give myself 60-90 minutes at least to get ready in the morning).  I am on Cameras this month.  I needed to bring a few things with me too, that I still had to prepare before leaving: including a change of clothes and two meals since I was staying at the church through till Twenty20 that evening.  

As I said, I was on cameras at church, so for both services I run Camera #1 (the seemingly less used camera, just because it is to the side).  It was kind of fun, but also a bit boring.    You have to be focused enough on the camera, yet you don't do much.  Because of this I find it very difficult to focus on the message.  I do like, though, that I get to partake in worship, since worship isn't filmed.

Right after both services I was suppose to meet a guy from Kijiji in the parking lot to sell one of my broken drives.  The guy I was communicating with, via email, seemed to be in the wrong parking lot.  Long story short, he was in the parking lot, but I had been communicating with another guy.  I had forgotten that I was planning to meet two people in the parking lot (one for a broken hard drive and one for the drone).  I didn't realize my mistake until after it was too late.  So I never ended up selling either one.

So our whole class had prearranged to stay through from church till Twenty20.  For the first hour or so after lunch we played with our Guatemalan instruments and practiced singing a song we made down in Central America.  By the end we had a pretty good video (relatively) of the song with instruments. We do plan to re-film the video with a better camera since it was filmed with a phone.

At Twenty20, I was a greeter (which was fun) and then during the Word time I spoke for about 3 minutes.  Saturday night, Bryan had messaged me and asked me to share for about 3 minutes about an experience I had shared with him that I had at the OBFF Conference a few weeks ago. When I had told Bryan about the experience it took me 30-60 minutes to tell, so it wasn't the easiest to share it in 3 minutes.

Flood of Emotions

Saturday evening:  As I was washing the dishes, the whole time I just felt very emotional.  I had no idea what it was, but I knew that I needed to find out.  While I was washing, I put my headphones on and played the playlist 25 Most Played Songs and I put it on shuffle.  Even though it was on shuffle the only music that played was music from Oto and Liz and there old band (our Missions Pastor and his wife). The music is good Spanish and English mix songs.   The songs really set the mood for how I was feeling (emotional) in a way I've never felt with that music.   I figured that after dishes I needed to get alone, really alone with God and figure out what I'm so emotional about.  So I did just that.   After dishes, I got my bible, journal, pens, and water and went for a drive.  I felt the whole way like I could cry, I just felt like I could burst out in tears (but I didn't know why).

As I was driving up a hill, I noticed the beautiful sunset.  I couldn't see the sun, but one side of the sky was full of beautiful darker clouds, and the other sided had a few lighter clouds.  In-between these two opposites in the sky was nothing, but it was very bright.   I thought that it looked like the darker clouds (darkness) was overcoming the lighter clouds (light).  But then, as I came to the top of the hill, I saw the sun, the source of the light.  It was shining through the darker clouds, showing life.  I way green rolling hills and realized that this scene was life.   Through the ups and downs (hills) in life & when  the darkness comes quick and large, God will shine through it all.  That scene of life Will be beautiful, for God makes all things good.

When I got to a quiet place out on a gravel road in the middle of the country, I stopped.   I let the emotions flow, asking God to show me what the emotions are for or from.  Then I, feeling sad, hurt and broken hearted, just started crying, like I haven't done in a long time.  While I was crying I was trying to think of why I am crying.   That's when God popped the verse into my head, Romans 12:15 "Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn."   For part of the time, I felt like I was crying with someone.  

After a bit I felt some of the untouched emotions of my grandpa's death coming.  I cried more, just letting some of these emotions out.  I still don't feel like I've let them all out, but I'm glad I was able to get some out.   I still don't know the ENTIRE purpose of all my crying and emotions that night, but I am thanking God!

New Shoes | New Journal

Saturday: I slept in until around 10:00am, about 10.5 hours of sleep - it was nice.   When I got up I went upstairs for a bit and thus stated (if at all) my day.  Most of the whole day I suffered from NDTDAS or No Desire To Do Anything Syndrome.  I kind of just laid around, replied to a number of emails regarding some things I'm selling on Kijiji, and such.   While replying to these emails, it occurred to me that since my drone crashed, it lost nearly $1,000 (CAD) in value.  It's still worth something, but not near as much as I paid for it.  I'm just hoping that I can sell it for a decent amount.
I went into town to get some new shoes, since all the shoes I have really hurt my feet (because they are not meant for wide feet) or my knees and hips (because they are causing me feet to walk crooked).  I went to the mall and to Payless and found  a larger than normal selection of size 15 shoes.  However the overall selection of size 15W (Wide) shoes are very limited.   I ended up finding a good pair for a good price, but the only problem with them is, they are white and therefore will dirty easier.  But my options were limited, very limited.  However it is so nice to have a pair of shoes that don't hurt my feet!

I also, on the way home, stopped at Staples and started window shopping (which I've found more and more fun over the past months) and I ended up buying a Journal.  I didn't necessarily have a ton of money for it, so I'll have to put it in my budget somehow.   But I think that it was needed.  I don't keep a journal, and I think I should.  I think that it would be good for me to write down each day what happened, how I feel and all sorts of such things.  So I would say it was a worthwhile investment.

Princess Event

Friday night was quite an interesting night.  The Woodstock campus of Koinonia had their 2nd annual Princess Event.  It's a night aimed for girls who love princess's, for them to come out to the church for a huge "princess party".   This year they involved the SLI class in the event, and they sold out so quickly with a long waiting list, they did a second show before the first one.   7 out of the 8 girls in out class volunteered to be princess's (some of the costumes are from Disney designers), and Janette, Daniel and I were helping out where needed.

Post each show for 30-60 minutes, I was helping run the Candy Bar.  There kids got to tell us a all the candy's from the bar that they wanted and we filled a little box of candy for them (it looked much like a candy shop).  Janette was helping run the station where you can get sparkling tattoos, and Daniel was helping out somewhere else.   Then as the event went on the three of us joined a larger group of volunteers to help server the girls cupcakes and juice.  At the end of each event, Daniel, myself and a few other men were by the doors guiding people out.  The girls loved it, there was 50-100 girls at least (per show - I think), plus their moms and/or dads.  It was a ton of fun!

Here are the Princess's 

KCA Track & Field

Thursday, May 12, 2016 - Thursday was KCA's (Koinonia Christian Academy) Track & Field day.  So us SLI's were scheduled to help out as volunteers for this event (at the church).  So we did and it was a ton of fun.  The day was super warm, sunny and clear skies (the next day was cool, cloudy and rainy - Praise God for a clear day).   From 9-noon, I was a timer for the 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500 meter runs.   Then I was moved over to Triple Jump (like long jump, except there are 3 steps/jumps that happen before you make the final jump).   I helped out with Triple Jump until the end, about 2:00.   Then the volunteers had a Long Jump completion.  I jumped a 4.06m (about 13.3 feet), and placed third.  Then Janette and I had to leave early (about 2:15)  to go to Kidzone, which also was a ton of fun.  It was a full day of fun, excitement and joy!  

Here are a handful of photos that other people took at the event:

Volunteer Long Jump

Kids Long Jumping

Three teachers

The results 

More Volunteers Long Jumping

More Kids Long Jumping

A few of us SLI's are timing the 100m races while someone is videoing the finish so we know the exact order if the timings fail.

My 3rd place ribbon for the Volunteers Long Jump

SLI Class Sample/Oral Book Report

Here is a short 6 minute clip of some of the teaching we've received in class.  This is Joseph Olubobokun talking to us right after we finished our Oral reports (which Bryce filmed - which is why this was filmed).

Here is also a 5:29 minute video of my Oral Book Report on The Holy Spirit.