Week 2

Sept 27, 2009

This weekend Trinity Western University held a retreat here in camp Qwanoes for their student leaders, around 300 of them! Part of my ministry here is to help out with the chores/duties on such retreats and events. On this particular retreat I was in the dishpit (kitchen), they didn't think I had sufficient skills for anything else (totally joking). For 6 enjoyable hours I helped make food for and clean up after the hungry students. This included chopping tomatoes for tacos, making veggie plates, cleaning equipment and clearing many dishes from the tables. Along side me were a couple other Kaleo students who don't mind waking up early and Qwnaoes staff who, I must say, are strikingly diverse. Some of the staff are from Australia, a couple from Great Britain and a few were chatting in Spanish all day. Through this experience I have learned to appreciate the people who work everyday hard and diligently so we can eat to our hearts content. Did I mention that the food here is top notch? Greek salad, salmon, roast beef and vegetarian casserole, Yummy! I think it may be hard to keep off the "freshman 15" with mountains of bacon and ham everywhere you look.
I had the opportunity to play guitar in church today, the team was all male with a bass, acoustic and electric guitar and an extra vocalist. The Senior pastor's son Justin played the acoustic and lead the worship for us. According to my home church standards it would have been a gong show, 20 minutes before the service started I was given the songs and we ran through them quickly and not completely. But out here in Duncan, they could care less if we mess up or rock out. I kinda like it that way, takes the stress out of church. I should give a quick moment to describe Justin to you, He is by far one of the coolest dudes I have ever met; a teacher by profession and one of those people who truly cares about what you have to say. His face is also kinda frozen into eternal smile, I don't think it is physically possible for him to frown. I look forwards to getting to know him better. We have made plans to jam and kind of figure out what this year will look like in regards to the praise and worship ministry. Please pray that we would be able to find God's direction in this area. At this point, ministry at the church looks quite promising with no major obstacles to overcome. Praise God!
I forgot to bring notebook with me so I really can't remember what was said during the sermon. But that's fine, My mind will be surging with information when classes start on Tuesday. All I can say for sure is that Pastor Joel did the sermon, continuing with the Abraham family line in Genesis Chapter 27. Joel had actually just returned from a massive hiking trip out on the west coast so he was hobbling around with a sore left knee. I know you may consider where I am as the west coast, but as explained to me in depth by Justin (or was it Joel...?), the term "West Coast" means the west side of the island and "East Coast" means east side of the island. These BC people are a little...different. Please pray for them. While you are at it, please pray that I would not be satisfied with status quo in my ministry but that I would allow God to push my boundaries and go beyond what I would normally default to.

God bless

Trent

First Day of Church

Sept 20, 2009

Today was our first visit to the church which I had chosen to minister too. North Cowichan Alliance Church, A recent church plant which meets in a school in the nearby city of Duncan. Believe it or not, I was not nervous at all! I was rather excited about going today. It started with a quick sit-down with the retiring Pastor, Marvin Croswell. He explained to Jenna and I the specific needs in the church some of which are musicians, techies and a sunday school teacher. All they had today for a worship band was a guitarist/vocalist, a djembist and a bassist, so I am eagerly waiting to start playing with them. They have a music meeting on the 30th which they will discuss the future of the praise and worship at North Cowichan Alliance. The sound system there is also bare bones. They have no means of connecting the keyboard to the console and they usually use the old style overhead for the words so one of these days I'm gonna help them with the tech side of things. Ok, enough with the tech already...In attendance today was about 60 people, mostly young families just like back at home, with a couple of elderly people here and there. The whole service was non-formal, the worship was enjoyable. The sermon was about Abraham in Genesis Chapter 24. I liked the sermon because instead of the average sermon where you pick a subject refer to different parts of the Bible, Pastor Marvin used Genesis 24:1-20 As the sermon. The two main points were stepping out in faith, as Abraham's servant did and going beyond expectations as Rebekah did in the passage.
After the sermon, Pastor Marvin invited both Jenna and I over to his place for lunch. While there he explained to us the general situation of Vancouver Island. There are many Natives here that are unchurched and this is one area they would like to expand in. Over the past little while they have been trying to minister to a younger congregation and to do this they prayed for a younger pastor and Just recently God granted their request! Slowly, Pastor Marvin's son Joel will be taking over the church.