Easter Morning Service

Six in the morning and I roll out of bed. I take a shower and check all my RSS feeds, the normal routine. Slowly I get my stuff together. I am getting ready for church. No one is with me though. I couldnt convince anyone to get up this early in the morning. It will be okay though. I hop in the car, flip on the wipers and put Arvo Pärt's Passio on. The drive to Abbotsford was great. I love these dreary mornings, especially with a good sound track, although I couldn't complain if it was a sunny Easter morning. I will take this though.
The service was being held at the house of some people from the church. Actually we were down by the lake. They had set up a huge tent, which kept us dry from the light drizzle coming down. I stood around for a while, just watching people and the lake while sipping coffee. There was really no one to talk to, but I was okay with that. The service began with a few songs and Johnny gave a short message. Then they started to do baptisms: testimonies, words of affirmation, scripture reading and then the deed. There were a lot of parents and relatives there, which was neat because they got to say a few words about their kids. I always get so choked up about that stuff, and I don't even know these people. I also got to see this lady that I met on Flickr get baptized with her husband. One guy even came up to Johnny this morning and said he wanted to be baptized, so he did. Johnny emphasized how in the Bible people repented and were baptized that day, and he left the invitation open to anyone else that wanted to do it.
After the service they had breakfast ready for us. I got my food and then went to stand by the fire where Dan (a guy who was in my curling class) and his friends were. I finished my food and got myself warmed up. Dan and his friends then went to get food. One of the girls who got baptized was standing there by the fire. I talked to her for a while and found out that she is pretty new to the area. Actually, she had only been to the church the week before.
Then I went back to the tent to meet some other people. My friend Steph knows the guy who leads worship, so I found him and started talking to him. His roommate is actually going out with my friend Tressa, which is kind of neat. After talking to him I once again made my way back to the fire. I got to talk to this lady there that had graduated from Trinity. She was really nice and her little daughter kept slashing around in puddles in her little rain boots.
I was one of the last ones there, and Dan too. Right before I left I went and met the pastor, Johnny. He had emailed me last week about getting together for coffee sometime to talk. We talked for a while and I got to learn about his background. He is really passionate about the church being strictly Biblical, like with male elders and things like that. He is going to be heading down to Disneyland this afternoon with his family for the next week and a half. When he gets back we are going to get together sometime. I am looking forward to it and hopefully getting more involved with the church.

Maundy Thursday

For MRD tonight we decided that we wanted to do communion. We went to Save-On Foods and got some bread and grape juice (TWU is not down with the wine thing). I thought it would be cool to have a Maundy Thursday service, so when I got back to my room I looked up some liturgies and cut and pasted and kind of formed a liturgy for our service. I enjoyed doing that a lot. I think I would like to do that for a job, just design church services. I called Caleb up real quick and asked him if he could do these songs that would fit in well. We decided to do it in this little upper room (ooh, symbolism). It was so cool that we could sit in this little upper room together and kind of reenact the last supper that Jesus had with his disciples.
Well, no one from MRD really showed up. It was basically just the people that planned it. Everyone else went to this concert they were having on campus. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to share this experience with our group. I decided it was best to just go on with it and invite other people to come and join us. It could be a sort of outreach for us to campus. I went and tried to find some people and invite them while Boone went to try and get some people from the concert. Chris from my dorm said he would come (thanks a lot Chris), and I asked some more people in the Lower Caf. I even went out of my comfort zone and invited this girl that was just kind of standing around. Everyone I asked just seemed really confused about what we were doing. Anyways, it ended up that the only non-MRD people there were Chris and the night janitor, Clyde, who we have made friends with.
It turned out to be a pretty good-sized group for what we wanted to do. I will give you a little rundown of what we did. Started with a song and a welcome. Next was a prayer of confession was read, and then a time of individual confession and reading an assurance of forgiveness. After reading the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet, we went around the room washing each other's feet. This portrayed such an amazing idea of humility and service. We sang another song and read the about the Last supper. Then we took communion. With this we also went around the room, one person serving the other and saying the phrases, "The body of Christ broken for you, the blood of Christ shed for you."€ Then we sang another song and ended with a benediction.
I think it went over really well. Boone and Caleb did a great job of supplying music throughout the service. I really loved how we were doing the same service that people all around the world today and throughout history have done. There is much more of a feeling of the whole church body coming together even though we are separated by time and space.

Science World

For Youth Extreme we decided to go to Science World on Saturday instead of doing the usual Friday night thing. There was only one guy kid, so Lu and I kind of went around looking at stuff together. We watched three movies in the theater: how things are made, octopuses and the history of physics. We did play around with a bunch of the exhibits, but there are so many kids that you can't really do anything. Do the kids really learn much there or do they just like to play the fun games and stuff? I want to try and learn some stuff, but I can't do anything because I have to let all the kids go first. Plus there are some mean kids, this one little asian girl came up to me and took this thing out of my hands and started playing with it. Her mom just stood and watched and I made some sarcastic comment and walked away. It was fun though and especially cool because we got in free. I don't think it is as big as the Science Center though.

Busy Friday

Friday was a pretty busy day. I finished a paper in the morning and then in the afternoon there was a bunch of Jenny's friends that aren't here this semester visiting. We walked around school for a while and then went out to eat. We were taking so many picture. They are such fun people to hang out with. I wish they were all here this semester. Right after that I had to rush back to go to 12. It is this music, video, dance production that some people from school are putting on. I really enjoyed it. The dancing was incredible and the whole production was well put together. I would recommend going to see it if you can.
The CanAm game took up the rest of the night. It is this yearly game that the student association puts on where the Canadian girls play play hockey against the American guys. It is so funny to watch. This year it was sponsored by MasterCraft, so they had fancy uniforms. Rumor also has it they might do a little thing about it on SportsNet on Monday evening. Well the whole game is a joke and there was probably a thousand people there (quite a bit compared to the 20 that go to our real hockey games). The Americans sit on one side and the Canadians sit on the other and the entire game we stand on our feet and there is constant yelling.
The playing is so awful, especially the guys, many of whom have only skated a couple times in their life. Everyone is falling down all the time and it is just one of the most ridiculous things you have ever seen. Every year the guys win, but this year that changed. For the first time the girls beat the guys. So kind of a bummer for our team.

Miscellaneous Weekend Events

After my field trip on Saturday I took Matt and Mike to Lynden. We went to my relatives house and played on the four-wheelers. Matt is pretty used to powered vehicle (all he ever talks about is making a hovercraft), but mike was a first timer. Mike started out on the slower one but then Matt let him take a spin on the fast one. He stalled it the first time and we told him to give it a little more gas. He totally did a wheelie and fell off onto his butt. It was so ridiculous and we couldn't stop laughing.
The real reason we were there was to go to the free Pillar concert at the high school. Matt likes Pillar a lot and so does Mike. It was pretty fun, but strange because we were the oldest ones there besides parents. My cousin Mikal's youth group was sponsoring the event and he worked the whole day setting stuff up.
Sunday I went back to Lynden because it was Marika's birthday. I got there late though because I was stopped at the border and had my car searched. They didn't give any reason why or anything. He also wanted me to go to my car and look in my bag and tell him the exact amount of cash that I was bringing in. It was pretty crazy, but I got some pictures of it.
The party was good and we had Mexican food, so I was happy. Afterwards I went out in the field and walked around while Marika and her friends rode horses. I love the country. It nice to just go and walk around the field until the sun goes down. The silhouette of the mountains in the distance is incredible. We also played some Dance Dance Revolutions and Mikal and Zac showed me their new sound systems and lights in their cars, which were pretty cool.

Multi-Faith Worship Spaces

idol
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

On Saturday I went on a multi-faith worship spaces field trip with my Current Worship Leadership Issues class. We drove to a church in Richmond, on No. 5 Road and met there. All of the five places of worship that we went to were on that road, many of them right next door. This has raised the nickname of Highway to Heaven for the road. Most of my class was there, plus some other people from around the Fraser Valley.
The first place we went to was a Muslim mosque. It seemed kind of old, and was very undecorated. I found the talk that our guide gave us very informative however. I was amazed at how much they really have in common with Christianity. It is weird that there is so much fighting with them when they are not that much different. The guy there kind of made some jabs at Christianity though, but none more than one of us would do at them.
The next place we went to was a hindu building. The whole place was so much different. Everything was so decorative and bright and flashy. I don't really care for that style though. It just seemed so overwhelming. The religion was also so much different and hard to get a grasp of. Islam was so similar to what I believe that it was easy to understand. But in Hinduism everything is flowing with energy and love and extremely relative. The lady giving the talk also emphasized happiness.
Next was on to Sikhism. I had no idea about anything from this religion, but it was really neat because we actually got to go to a Sikh wedding. It was so different and colorful. There was also a huge emphasis on music and that was all that really happened. They played music and the bride and groom walked around this altar thing with this guy with a feathery brush dusting this thing.
Our fourth stop was another Muslim mosque. It was so much different than the other one. It was basically the seeker sensitive version. It reminded me a lot of Peace Portal. They were also very hospitable there and had a PowerPoint presentation and a Flash movie to show us. This also had stained glass windows and an art show going on in the foyer.
Finally we went to a Buhhdist temple. This one was much more public than any of the others and people were coming and going and they even had a tour guide. The idols here were huge and there was so much money put into everything. It was an amazing campus. We were also free to walk around where we wanted to and do whatever.
Overall a pretty overwhelming day, but so good. I learned so much about other religions and it was cool to see all the many ways that people worship.

Donald Miller in Dorm Meeting

donald miller @ dorm meeting
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What) spoke in chapel. I have been looking forward to this all semester, as I really like his books. It is really weird when you see an author that you have read after you read the book. Initially it is always weird, because they never look like you imagine them. I never really realized this, but as I read I develop this picture in my mind of what the author looks like and I kind of imagine that they are talking to me. If you asked me to describe what the author in my mind looks like I couldn't. Like take Gorman, an author I am reading, I can't describe what he looks like in my mind, but I know I have some image. I never really realized that I did this that much until today. Miller looked totally different from the Miller in my mind. This is why I think that they should put a picture of the author in all of their books. It would make this whole imaginary conversation go a whole lot easier.
It is also weird how much different their writing style is from their speaking style. Miller was a very enjoyable speaker for me. He is real laid back, but still very interesting. It was amazing how quite everyone was while he spoke. He is the favorite author of the college age christian crowd right now. I have also never seen that many people at a Wednesday chapel. Usually the crowd builds up through out the week and climaxes on Friday, but today was almost a Friday crowd.
For chapel he talked about not being ashamed of sharing the gospel. He is great at telling little stories and puts them all through his talk. Tonight he spoke on how the gospel is relational and not a list of ideas. He told a story how he spoke to a class at a Bible College for forty minutes about the gospel and did not mention Jesus once. Afterwards he asked what he had left out and for five minutes the stumbled around and could think of anything. His point is that we have created these lists of what you need to believe to be a Christian and Jesus doesn't even have to be a part of it and Bible College students accept it.
He went on to talk about how the gospel relational and all about becoming one with Jesus. He used this story to demonstrate how scientific lists do not cover everything. He was having coffee with one of his friends and he asked him why he loved his wife. Well, he said, she challenges me intellectually, she is beautiful and she encourages him in his faith. Miller said okay, now what if I found a woman that was more intelligent than your wife, more beautiful and more spiritual than your wife, would you love her. No way he said. Then what is it that makes you love her Miller asked again. It is not something that you can explain in lists was his reply.
The last part of his talk he went through how Romeo and Juliet compares with Christ as Juliet and us as Romeo. He thinks that this is exactly what Shakespeare was trying to do, but I don't know if that is true. I do know though that it does work as a great illustration. I won't explain it to you, because much of it is in his new book. So you can go and read it yourself. Anyways, his visit has been great so far and I am looking forward to chapel tomorrow.

Church after Break

vintage.242 (mom and kid)
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Brett, Matt and I went to church tonight. It has grown a lot since I was there a month ago. Probably twice as many people. Dan, the guy that told me about the church was also there. I am looking forward to the Easter service. They are going to do it at a lake and have a baptism. It should be sweet. It used to be that Easter was the only day of the year that a church would have a baptism. During the extended music set when the kids join everyone, this one kid went and sat on his mom's lap as she was leading worship. It was so cool. I love how they just let the kids run around and dance during the singing time instead of making them stay in their seats.

Jr. High Crosshold

my favorite game
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Last night I went and helped out with the Jr. High youth group at church. We played my favorite game. You sit in a circle with your partner and someone in the middile spins around with their eyes closed. When they stop, whoever they arepointing at has to try and touch their feet and the person behind them has to try to stop them by any means possible. If the second person stops them, they switch places. But if the first person touches the center person's feet, they are the new center person and the old center person goes behind the first persons partner. Don't worry if you didn't follow that. It gets pretty crazy though. The kids seemed to have fun too. Then I showed them a slide show of the Jr. High kids that I work with in Vancouver and talked to them about it and answered questions.