Giving it all

Week 2 has come and I’m settling in well to a good routine, as only once have I woken up to a bottle of water thrown on me. On Monday (21^st Jan) Josh Erb did an amazing talk in our morning session about identity in who we are as Christians and what lies to we keep telling ourselves in order to get through a normal day/week. He identified areas in which we try and keep away from God and think we can do ok and great on our own, when in fact God wants all of us and we should hold nothing back from him, no matter what we’ve done in the past or present. This struck a chord in me and made me realise that I can bring any wrong doing to God and he can, through the blood of Jesus, set me free from those wrong doings and he can sustain me alone. 

Also that Monday evening, Josh and I challenged each other to an AlphaDog fight, this is mainly a men’s event, however Lauren seems to get caught up in it quite a bit. There is only one rule and that is you cannot refuse a challenge. Once you have accepted the two of you, or 3 or 4 or the whole team will wrestle and fight (with grace of course) until your opponent submits. Josh and I fought for 9 minutes and unfortunately I was the one to submit. My excuse is that Josh is around 15kg heavier than me, built of muscle and that I tried to do you proud, mum. 

On Wednesday following our spiritual disciplines, we carried out a team fast for 36 hours, breakfast to Thursday morning. When I heard we were doing this, thoughts ran through my head of how much I ate at home, clearing the fridges and asking for seconds... And thirds! Fasting however is more than meets the eye to me, as it shows us that all we need and should want is Jesus and that he can sustain us alone. Our physical bodies need a small amount of food to sustain us, however we also need God to feed and sustain is spiritually which is far greater than feeding our bodies with food. Therefore the time that we could be eating, we bring that to God ask him to speak to us in that time. I thought I was going to be dying at dinner crawling along the floor, but actually I never felt hungry in those 36 hours but felt fulfilled that I had used that time wisely to hear Gods word and the news he had for me. I think it’s important to still go about your daily life while fasting, as we were still allowed to drink. We still went for morning runs and still hit the gym and I haven’t felt tired or out of energy at all. Personally I think we should all give fasting a go and see what it entails for us and how much it can make us grow with God.

On Thursday the guys went off to the ranch to mess around on the quad and the girls stayed at home and hosted a small cell group for young teenage girls. Now when I heard that these girls were coming, a rush of sweetness, innocent-ness with a hint of immaturity came into my mind. Well I was completely wrong, these girls were animals! It seems that they finish their cell group early and set traps and pull pranks on us for when we return. This week they somehow climbed round the side of the house, through our bedroom window as we locked the door exiting the same way, and proceeded to take ALL our underwear and put them out in the snow. This in itself is not the worst, bit damp you may think, however our boxers were rock hard solid, I mean we could play Frisbee and hit each other with them, not impressed! 

On Friday we went snowboarding, my last post misspelt the resort as it is Elk Water, not Oak Water. The weather last week had seemed to have some warmth about it, reaching highs of -5, however this week it is back to normal temperature of -35C with wind chill.

I have began to realize that I need God to talk to me more, as in a good/bad way, I am pretty much the only person who doesn’t seem to have had a huge encounter or regular communication with Christ yet, even though it is still week 2/3 by now. However when I was praying on Saturday, I felt a strong thought pop into my head saying “Fast from Monday to Friday next week”. Now my initial reaction was ‘If this is you God are you having a laugh!? I managed one day for sure but 5 literally a few days after my first ever small fast!?’ However this seemed persistent and after a little argument with God I finally decided to eat nothing for five days. By the time this blog is up I will be on day 2 or 3, so in my next blog I will tell you how I have done, the struggles I faced, what God did to me and any advice I could give if anyone was planning on fasting. 

This is not a Democracy, this is a Dictatorship!

Saying goodbye to my friends and family was hard. I don’t usually share emotions or show them, but going away for 5 months with little contact was going to be a struggle and it definitely hit me as I got onto the plane. It was almost like saying goodbye to your loved ones forever, as so many events would happen while I would be away.

As I arrived at the airport I met Tom and Rachael and then met Josh, Dan (also known as Scott), Chris and Andrew through security. It was a weird sensation to attempt to make your best first impressions in being as cool as you can, as these would be the individuals who I would be living 24/7 with for 5 months, sharing pretty much everything about my faith and life back at home. Most of them are from the south west so their accents I had to get used to! 9 hours later we said hello to Calgary, a city situated in the province of Alberto Canada. There we met Seb our team leader, Lauren and Mac our other leaders and Josh Erb and Kiri Erb the Soul Edge founders and directors. The next few days were going to be busy as most of it was picking up gear from MEC an outdoor warehouse, a small 3 hour hike to see the start of the Rockies and travelling 6 hours to Herbert in Saskatchewan where we would be living for the first 3 months. Herbert is a small town on highway one with a population of about 1000 people. It only has one school and gas station etc, yet it's surprising how much goes on. There are loads of churches dotted on pretty much every block and trains that make 3 loud blasts of their horn on a regular basis as they go by. 

When we arrived all the leaders sat us down and went through what was going to be happening, daily routines and what was expected of us. Josh clearly explained that although it’s all British banter with Canadian accents here, this is not a Democracy, it’s a Dictatorship. If the leaders tell us to do something it will be for a good reason of safety and efficiency, therefore rightly so we have to follow or we’ll be out pretty soon!

So our week days go something like this: 

7:30 get up, shower, breakfast and then we have our Personal Devotion time, time to read the chapters and books we’re meant to learn and any other personal things we need to do to prepare us for the day ahead. 

9:30 starts with Josh Erb doing spontaneous worship to the group. I think this is a great way to really open up and be yourself with God and not let anyone judge you by the way you worship. We then pray and Josh does his morning session with us. In the first week we have been going through the inward spiritual disciplines which are great for me as I haven’t really dived deep into this matter up until now. 

At 11 we go for a 3km run in the snow (though we don’t if the temperature drops below -20) and then hit the gym. After lunch we have our afternoon session lead by Kiri. In the 1^st week Kiri explained how we could get the most out of the Bible, giving us some great detail into the way the Bible is structured, translated and contradicted through terms such as exegesis, hermeneutics, apodictic and casuistic law. She also went into more detail about creation and in Genesis where confusion and questions may be answered.

At about 3/4ish the team splits and half goes to work on the ranch where we do anything from moving and cutting logs to riding horses and hay bale wrestling. The other half cleans the house and cooks the evening meal. In the evening depending what day, we go to cell groups, have more Bible sessions or go to the local high school basket ball matches.

Fridays we go snowboarding in Oak water, a small resort in Alberto. This is great to go and mess around on the black runs and Freestyle Park and was great to see some of the beginners pick their skills up!

Every Saturday we have an excursion, this can entail hiking as what we did the first Saturday we came, it can be survival training, snow camping or anything else they think of. Sundays is our day off and unfortunately our only time to contact home and relax due to our packed days during the week. After going to church in the morning this time is dedicated to skyping family, my girlfriend Poppy and writing this of course, my blog. So a pretty packed and well worth hectic week I have. In the following blogs I will dive into my experiences with God and explaining the national sport of Soul Edge, Alphadog.

(If you have not already seen it – there is a link to the itinerary for my course on the right of this blog)

Ready to Go

In the next few days I will be on a journey that could quite possibly change my life forever. There will be challenges set testing my physical, mental and spiritual ability, but how they are over come will be what I learn from in the next 5 months. Please forgive my lack of grammar and punctuation over the next editions; I was always the less academic child between Lorna and myself.

I am travelling to Saskatchewan Canada with a team of 7 individuals on a discipleship training course called Soul Edge. This course is designed to test every ounce of ability I have within myself which will help me trust in my faith and learn more about ‘that guy in the sky’. Throughout the five months we will dive deep into the Bible going from Genesis to Revelations, learning about what God has in store for us. We will also be trained in ministry, public speaking and working within youth groups, enabling us to reach out to the communities and spread Gods word. Half way through we will head up north to Pelican Narrows, where the First Nation community live. We will mentor them and go about our big mission to minister to them and get them on the right track!  It will also incorporate adventure based activities within this course including skiing, snowboarding, ice climbing, canoeing, rock climbing, hiking and various others... So lots to be getting on with!

Within this blog I will be trying to give my best attempt in explaining my experiences, both in growing as a person and with God. I will go through in as much detail as I can what I will be learning through the course about all aspects of the Christian faith, but also share my day to day life encounters with the people I meet while I’m out there.

So here’s where I am at the moment: Just been shopping to collect the last of my kit list items (my Dad’s credit card is hurting!). Good quality Boots, gloves, rucksacks and outer clothing are seen to be essential to cope with the -30C I will be dropping myself into! Surprisingly I’m not nervous or anxious, but looking forward and feeling at ease with it all. I love meeting new people and experiencing new things while growing with God, therefore this is why the course originally appealed to me. I will have to bond with the people I will be living with and those bonds will be tested through the teaching and through the challenges set for us all. I have never met any of these people, only a few emails and a stalk once in a while of their facebook profile, so it will be nice to finally see them face to face. The only aspect I am nervous about however, is trying to compile the kit required and the struggle to packing it all within the given weight at the airport.