Prayer Requests

Hi Everybody!

I'm just 24 hours away from leaving Alberta and 7 days from leaving the country. I don't think I'm quite comprehending it.   However I've been asked a couple times to share my prayer items as I head out to do another 7 months with YWAM. I don't know if I have officially said on this blog but my boyfriend Shay will be going to Slovakia as a student in the DTS, something that we are so grateful to be allowed by our staff. We really appreciate having the opportunity to be on the same base.

I love this picture of the WWII museum in Banska.

So my prayer requests are these:

For safety on our travels as last year my bus got in an accident on my way to the airport. 

That God would be preparing me and all TEN students for the months ahead of us.

Prayer for safety for those students and that God would work their circumstances that they can come without regrets for leaving people behind in their home countries. 

That God would help me reconnect with the other staff that I already know, and maybe even bring us someone else to help?

For Shay and me to be able to handle anything that gets thrown at us in these next months.

For wisdom as I'm going to have to make many more decisions than last year.

I want to be open to everything God has to teach me this next year so I'm praying that my heart and mind and spirit would be fertile soil and that I would learn how to bring this new understanding back into how I live my life in Canada. 

For guidance as we decide where we will be doing outreach (please somewhere warm!)

Lastly, I'm asking God for cohesion for our group. Last year we hardly had any reason to feel disconnected as a group. We got along so good. I am praying that God would help that be the case this year and prepare each persons heart to want to make the group one that is connected and very much a family.  I know that takes time, but I'm really praying for it to happen quickly.  

Thank you to everyone who has already told me that they are praying. I'll keep you updated on what you can be praying for and what is going on in a general sense. I expect that the next week I'll be in an internet black hole but look for a post while we are waiting to take off in Vancouver or between flights in London.  

Blessings, Alison

Three days

Three days from right now I'll be in Mission, BC.  That is the first leg of my trip to Slovakia, and I'm so excited.  I've been packing and preparing for a while already, but now it is getting so so close!

I expect that many new people will be checking out my blog in the next few days, so I want to give you a couple pointers on how to comment on my blog.  I LOVE hearing from people who are reading. It is especially good to be commenting on things you read on my blog because it encourages me to keep posting. So if you want something else to read about my trip, tell me what you think about the posts you do read!  It also helps me see who my audience is.  I've told an awful lot of people about this blog. I want to know who exactly I'm writing too. And if you don't know me and just stumble upon my thoughts, please join the conversation. I'd love to know someone I haven't even met is reading!  

So to comment click the little comment link at the bottom of the post (# comments). Write what you want to say.  Choose anonymous under the "Comment as" section.  (Unless you have a gmail ID and want to use it). If you do choose anonymous, I would love it if you would include your name in the post so I know who you are and reply accordingly.  

If you feel self conscious commenting and know my email, please email me!  I love hearing from Canada.  It really is a great surprise to see an email I'm not expecting.  

Thanks for reading, and there will be brand new pictures from Europe real soon!

What am I reading...

'Reflecting' on Lewis' writings.

(North of Dewberry, AB)

Its quite a bit of CS Lewis actually.  Shay got me started reading Mere Christianity and I finally finished last weekend at camp.  I really enjoyed it!  There were one or two analogies I wasn't a fan of, but for the most part I loved what he had to say about what Christianity is supposed to be and why we should care.  There were so many good analogies that I won't even try to write them all. Read the book and see how amazing it is yourself. The people with me last weekend were bombarded by me reading snippets because it is too good to keep to yourself!  (I think that is why Shay had me read a couple of the chapters in the first place).

I do want to share a couple things though.  The first is a thought that I like and believe is very true:

"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."  If I commented this blog post would be very long. But think on it.

And the second was a great illustration of how God is the root of so many things. Lewis is talking about how God helps us become who he wants us to be. That he is not only rooting us on but actively engaged in helping and such. But some people don't think God is helping:

"You may say 'I've never had the sense of being helped by an invisible Christ, but I often have been helped by other human beings.' That is rather like the woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast.  If there is no bread there ill be no toaste. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help form other human beings."

I LOVE that. Because it is so true. God works through others and it is because God exist that the world exists, that good happens, that you are helped...

After I finished Mere Christianity it only took me three days to get through The Great Divorce. I LOVED that book too. I need to get my own copies of these so I can write in them.. right now I am using a library copy.

As for everything else in my life: I'm packing. I'm excited. I have all my flights booked.  But my external hard drive just stopped working 10 mins ago... lets hope its the heat and it works tomorrow!

Summer Flies

So earlier in the summer I said that I would teach at our church's Family Camp. It was the teen class. No big deal.  It was only three days, so that made it seem like even less scary.  But this weekend it came.  It ran up and bit me.  I felt prepared... but when you have 15 teenagers sitting in front of you thinking "amuse me", it gets a bit harder.  I hope that something of what I said was important to them. I hope that something sank in and meant something. I hope that somewhere in there God reached out and grabbed them.   It is really hard to tell.  And because of that I want to send a big thanks to  EVERYONE who taught me as a teenager. School teachers. My mom at youth group.  All the Sunday School class teachers.  I know it can't have been easy.  I hope that I helped with discussion and didn't just sit like a statue.  Thanks for pouring your knowledge into me. It reached me, or at least enough of it did to make me the person I am today. I'm sure that your words have saved me from many things. And I thank you for sticking it out.

But What Can It Do?

I think this camera is great!  I love love love that it isn't brand spanking new, so I feel more inclined to fool around and not worry quite so much how well I'm taking care of it.  (I am taking care of it. I'm just not being crazy about it.)

So here are some pictures so you can see what it can do!

A church in Edmonton by MEC. Everytime I go to MEC I want to take a picture or go in or something. This time I got a picture.

The "foxtails" and wheat and sky. 

Our airstrip. If you look really close you can see our house.