Jaimi's Birthday

Jaimi's Birthday
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Yesterday was my friend Jaimi's birthday. We went and played laser tag in Langley with a bunch of people. It was so much fun, but I did awful. My laser tag skills are severely lacking these days. There were also these kids that would just stay in this big clump and nail you with shots when you came buy. I think if I played again I would have been able to do a lot better. I did sweat a ton though, and ranked right about in the middle. Afterwards we went to Red Robin and I got a smoothie and we sat and talked for a while. A few of you wouldl also be happy to know that I met a Manitoba woman.

Prayer board

YEboard
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

My school is just finishing this 24/7 prayer thing for the last two weeks. People signed up for an hour of the week, and they got to pray during that hour for two consecutive weeks. I signed up for Saturday night at midnight. Well, this week one of the coordinators came around at about ten thirty and asked if I could do the eleven o'clock slot as well. I said sure and started getting ready. I thought about what I was going to pray for during those two hours. How would I be able to focus my attention for that long? Since I had just started doing the Mod Podge thing, I decided I should pray for people and paste them on a board and make a collage. At first I was just going to use random pictures that I found around. Then I remembered that I had taken mug shots of all of the kids at Youth Extreme on friday. They were going to use them as 'sponsor me' photos to send them to camp. I printed off all of them and started to work. It was incredible. As I cut each of them out I could pray for them and actually have something in my hands as a constant reminder. Then glued them on to the board and just prayed for the group in general. I loved it. The time flew, and now I have a lasting reminder of these kids. For the second hour I did some prayer for the school and I kind of did a prayer walk around the school. It really wasn't that bad at all. So many people think that it would be impossible to focus their attention for so long, but God can do anything, right? Really that extra hour was a blessing.

Procrastination aids

YE kids
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Friday night was youth extreme. It was really tiring with all the work that is going on at school, and then it was raining, so we had to stay at the church and the kids were wild. We could not get them to listen during devotional time at all. It was kind of discouraging. But we played some games around the church for the rest of the night. We did have to chase a couple of them down because they get tired of just being at the church and try to sneak out. It is kind of scary running around in the middle of East Van trying to catch these kids. But these kids live here. They walk around these streets all the time. Back at school, I just kind of hung around for the night. I had gotten some art supplies the day before and spent the evening playing around with Mod Podge. Saturday I tried to get up early. I got up at noon. The guys next door had left their alarm on and it went for a good couple hours. I went with Matt and Konrad to Value Village. They are really pretty expensive. I am getting sick of going there. I really need to start going to garage sales. We also stopped by Taco Del Mar. Man, I love that place. Back at school I did some reading for my paper. I am having trouble with a topic though. I don't know what I should specifically write on. In the evening Kyle invited me and a couple other guys from the dorm to go have Thanksgiving with his family. They were staying in there motor home in a campground near by. It was really cool to get to meet his family and to get some good food. His dad knew exactly where Southworth was and actually used to hang out with this girl that went to Harper.

Meal in Lynden

Table two
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

My Aunt Marti was having a party for her dad today and I was invited to come down. The meal was a Thanksgiving meal because they are going to be up at Whistler for Thanksgiving. It was so good. I miss home-cooking so much. The caf is nice and convenient though. I also got to hang out with my cousins and play Halo 2 for the first time. It was a lot of fun. I guess my brother just got an XBox for that game. That is grounds for disownment in our family, but I think we will let him slide. After I was done I went to visit this assisted living place that my grandma was staying at. I got there and found out she had moved out last month. Funny how that kind of info never gets to me. So I went to her apartment, but she wasn't there, but I left a little note. Once back I went to a small group meeting for Youth Extreme leaders. We watched the BC Lions game which was pretty funny. The CFL has a few different rules. I don't know all of them, but the center line was 55 and the goal posts are at the front of the end-zone. Now I hope to get some reading done for my computer science. It is so hard to get reading done because it just takes me so much time.

Mt. Baker

the guys
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

At seven o'clock I got up and went to Boone and Caleb's house where a lot of the guys spent the night. Boone's girlfriend, Jackie, and our friend Steph made breakfast for us. It was awesome. We were going to go snowboarding at Mt. Baker. The lifts aren't going to open till Sunday, but we wanted to go up to hike and play around. It took us forever to actually get up there. We had to pick up other people, food, and stop at one guy's house in Lynden. When we finally did get up there it was incredible. The snow was nice and soft and the sun was shining. We parked at the upper parking lot and hiked from there. I saw the pastors form the church I do youth extreme with. They were up there with some of the Sr. High kids for a retreat. We hiked up to a good steep part and made our base camp. We first hiked up for a nice long run. Then we set to work making a kicker (jump) over a gap. It was okay and we had some fun on it, but it wasn't anything special. We did some more hiking and I climbed all the way to the top. One time while we were sitting around a camp robber came around. We got some food and started feeding them from our hands. We even got them to eat off of our heads. I think we got more pictures of the birds than of snowboarding. When it finally got dark we rode down to the parking lot and had a BBQ. Then we packed up and headed home. When we got back I went to a hockey game and to Little Caesar's. I hope that I will be able to get a paper done this weekend for my computer science class. We will see how that goes. I also have more pics of the Mt. Baker trip.

Skating and East Van

skating
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

My Aunt Kay and cousins Kelsea and Zac came to visit Trinity. They came with their school and got a tour of my school. I brought some of the guys into to see guys dorms. Then I had a midterm in Physics and went to Youth Extreme directly afterwards. We went ice-skating this week. First we had a devo at the church. It is hard to get the kids to sit down and listen. We chased the kids around the ice for a few hours and then took them home. I took one of the leaders, Jenny, to a hotel in East Van where she was going to be staying for the weekend with her anthropology class. They are going to be talking to homeless people, drug addicts, and prostitutes and doing research. Their hotel is right in the heart of it. I hung out with their class for a little while. We walked the streets for a while and then went to a bar. Some of the students are even planning on sleeping on the streets tomorrow. I drove home by myself and stopped by Boone's house to see if anyone was still there from the snowboard waxing party.

scooter fun

happy me
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

This weekend Mark, Konrad and I stayed at Laura's house in Victoria. Mark is pretty interested in Laura's friend Kim, so he came to hang out with her. Konrad had never been to Victoria before, so he was pretty excited to see it. Friday night we watched Envy, a new movie with Jack Black and Ben Stiller. It was funny in parts, but not the best movie ever. Saturday, the big thing we wanted to do was rent scooters. We went downtown in the early afternoon and all five of us rented scooters for an hour. We drove down Dallas along the water for a while and then came back and drove around downtown for the rest of our hour. It was incredible how much fun it was, except it was extremely cold and everyone laughed at us and hated us. It was totally worth it though. For dinner we ate at Cactus Club Cafe. It had opened a week and a half before and was nice. The bathrooms were probably the highlight though. They had an easy chair, TVs above the urinal and the toilets that have that plastic covering over the seat that changes for each person and has a flush button on the floor. The food was also very good. I got a teriyaki chicken bowl. Later in the evening everyone went to the gym except Konrad and I, so we just drove around Victoria. After that we went to Kim's house and recorded music for a little bit and watched Romeo and Juliet. It was the new one, and I had never seen it before. I actually really liked it. It was cool how they kept the same script even though they made it modern day. I was surprised how much of it I remembered from high school. Sunday Konrad and I slept until like one thirty and then Mark, Kim, Konrad, and I went to downtown to walk around. Laura had left early to make a ferry back to the mainland. We went to the Empress and the parliament building and just saw the sites. Then we had to drive real fast to the ferry, but then it was an hour late. Once on the mainland we went to the airport to pick up Liz and Kira on their way back from Alaska.

hardcore show

hardcore
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

I was sitting in my room Thursday afternoon and a couple guys came in and asked if I wanted to go this hardcore show in Josiah Hughes' apartment. Josiah is the son of my Old Testament prof last year, Paul Hughes. They live in this little apartment above a warehouse in the industrial district in Langley. There was a bunch hardcore kids packed into their living room. Most of them were want-a-be straight edge. Straight edge is a sub culture of teens that listen to hardcore music and focus on taking care of their bodies. I mean they all have tattoos, earrings and plugs (those rings people use to stretch out their lobes), but they don't do drugs, smoke or drink, and most of them are vegans. It was pretty fun though. We watched a couple bands play, skateboarded down the stairs with just a deck, and hung out on the roof. After that we went to Josiah's house with his brother Johnny and his friend David. Paul and his wife were still up and so was their little brother Jordan. We hung out with them for a while, which was really fun. Paul is one of the most popular profs at Trinity. He always tells cool stories and is just a fun guy to hang out with. His wife was really nice too. She had some of her art hanging around the living room, and I had seen one of her paintings at the art show a couple weeks ago. So I talked to her about that for a while. Then she told Johnny to show us this techno album he had just finished. He made it using Acid Pro and estimates that he spent over 500 hours over three years on it. It was really good and it was really cool to listen to it and have him explain all the songs to us. He also let me borrow some of his SoulJunk CDs and this one I have been looking for. It is by this modern composer Arvo Pärt that I have been listening to for a while. I was super excited to finally get it. Afterwards we just went back to school and Josiah stayed the night. I took David home and on the way home we found out that his dad is Andy Park, the famous worship leader. His most famous song is In the Secret. We started asking him all sorts of questions about his dad. He has had Martin Smith, lead singer of Delirious?, over at his house and has played ping pong with him. He has also met all sorts of other famous worship guys like Matt Redman. Who would of thought something like In the Secret would have come out of Walnut Grove. When w got back to school we watched Ren and Stimpy until four in the morning. Then I got up at ten and drove Josiah to work at Taco Del Mar. Later on in the afternoon I went back there with some guys for lunch. Now I am driving to the Tsawwassen ferry to go to Vancouver Island and Victoria for the rest of the weekend.

Don't shake!

Don't shake!
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Thursday morning I went to the library to get books for my research paper for Worship Foundations. It is on architecture. I got so dizzy from all the old book smells, but I did get a big stack of books. Later in the afternoon Konrad, Aaron and I drove to North Vancouver to go to a suspension bridge. Copilano is the popular one, but it costs twenty-five dollars. So there is this park near by, Lynn Canyon, and they have a free one. It isn't for cars. Barely two people can stand side by side on it and it is over these waterfalls in the forest. The whole thing shakes when you walk across it too. A couple people only make it twenty feet and then have to turn back. We went on a little hike through the woods and then headed to mall and then Subway.

Visiting Snid' Dogg

5 lower with the sniders
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Tonight for dorm meeting we went to President Snider's house. It was pretty sweet. Aaron, Eman and I went late because I had a night class. I was pretty excited. I have been looking forward to it for months. When we got there Snider was talking to everyone about Trinity's plans for expansion. They are working on the incredible deal with these developers that would be a really sweet deal. I just wish I could be around when it actually happened. We also played pool downstairs, talked to the Sniders and watched the news of Arafat's death on the news. They also served us some ice cream and then we were on our way. Here is a pic of us all.

the Move

Well today has been a bunch of moves for me. First Google announced that they would be adding POP3 support to Gmail. So I decided to make the move to a Gmail account. It is Bjorn.Bulthuis@gmail.com. Second I am kind of getting tired of blogging with Spymac because there is so few features. I have paid money, but they aren’t really going anywhere. With Blogger I can do so many other things. And thirdly I am thinking about switching from Safari to Firefox. Firefox just came out of beta, so it is pretty solid. There are also some neat features to it. There are things in Safari though that I would miss, so this decision may take a while. Anyways I hope you like this new site better. It is just a template now, but there are many new options. I have though about moving all my blogs to this blog, but that would just be a lot of work. So to read any blogs from the last year or so, go to ibjorn.spymac.net/blog. Welcome to my new home. I look forward to many years here.