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!

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. 

DSLR Buying

When you decide to spend alot of money on something... you really need to think about what you are getting. And when it comes to DSLR cameras, I'm clueless. Well, maybe that is an exaggeration. All I know is that I have no clue if I'd rather have a Canon or Nikon. I've seen the specs, heard the stories, talked to many, seen many floating around, but I still don't know.

So these are my trial pictures from my mom's Nikon.  I realized after that I had it on a weird setting. Which is fine, but I wanted to see what it could do on auto. Oh well. the pictures still look nice.

This is my first lens flare.. I think that is what it is called. And I LOVE IT! 

I LOVE Babysitting

When you don't get to spend a lot of time with kids, you absolutely LOVE when you get a chance to babysit.  Its funny, because somehow the parents think it is some imposition for me to spend time with their kids.

But these kids

 are the greatest kids on the earth. And I can say that because I don't have any kids of my own. Because once I have them, you can bet that they will be the best.   So K&A, you better enjoy your bragging rights  now, because you won't always have them.  But K will probably be teenager by the time I have kids.

The horrible thing is that the greatest kids on earth live too far away from me to be seen often right now. Good thing their parents like having a free babysitter when I can make my way to their house!

Sad Day

Sometimes you just have a day that you know isn't going to go very well.  Anytime you go to a funeral might be one. Or days that you know you have to do something you don't want to do.  Or days when your boyfriend leaves for the coast for two months without much hope of having a chance to see him at all during that time.

I'm not really a fan of those days.

However, God really made my most recent one much better than I expected.  I had expected to not be in a very good mood or very happy for most of the day.  And I probably was pretty sulky for the morning.  But God wasn't okay with me being that way.  I had the chance to go see friends I hadn't seen on far too long, to hold their beautiful baby, to chat with my best friend, to talk to God without any interruptions, to see a mama and baby moose, and to stop and take pictures at a couple places that I am always wishing I could stop with my mom's new digital SLR (Thanks Mom!).

And by the end of the day, it didn't feel like a horrible day at all. It might not have started off so well, but it wasn't bigger than God and his almighty distracting power. And although I'm not excited for the next two months, I know that God will still be there when I get down and that he never runs out of good ideas.