theBjørnIdentity

Blogs, Bookmarks, and BjornBulthuis.com

2005-08-20T23:56:00.000-07:00

It seems that I am never happy in one place for to long. It has been nine months since I moved my blog to Blogger from its original location at Spymac. Blogger offered me many more features to work with and a more enjoyable reading experience for you. That migration added options like in post links, customizable sidebars, an RSS feed, and direct posting from Flickr. These are just a few and many I have taken for granted.
Well, in an effort to always be moving forward, I have made another move. Great, you might exclaim, now I have to update my bookmark again. How many more times is he going to do this? Well, I am pleased to announce that the answer is never! I have forked out the money and purchased BjornBulthuis.com. It is quite an exhilarating feeling to have your own .com, especially for a computer science student like myself. The new, and hopefully permanent, address for my blog is blog.BjornBulthuis.com.
I am using the opensource software WordPress to run my blog. Many more features have been added, and hopefully it will not be to confusing. To increase ease of use I have stuck with the default design, a pretty basic layout. In the future there will probably be tweaks done here and there (that is the beauty of opensource), but the basic idea will probably stay the same.
One feature that might be of interest to you is the addition of tags or categories. Much like Flickr and del.icio.us, I can now tag my stories. So now you can instantly find all entries involving my family. There is also a handy search field to quickly find an old entry.
Another thing I am excited about is that I was able to bring over all my blogs from my Blogger page, including comments. This took a little extra work and research, but it was well worth it. So update your bookmarks and RSS feeds, I am here for the long run.
(An interesting side note, I went out and got an iPod Shuffle this week. I have been eyeing them for quite awhile and finally gave in. The main reason I got it was because I was tired of not wanting to take my iPod certain place, for fear of it getting damaged. The Shuffle will fill a nice “off-road” niche of my portable music world. Activities where I will use it include work, skateboarding, mowing the lawn, running, snowboarding, bike rides, hiking, the beach, long walks…)

The Northwest Washington Fair

2005-08-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

The guys wanted to get breakfast together before work on Tuesday morning. We went to Dutch Mothers. I got the Dutch Fry, which was huge and had a lot of potatoes. I could barely eat it all. After eating the guys decided that they didn’t want to work that day. So that left me to work by myself or go to the fair for the day, I chose the fair.
Every summer I want to go to the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden. I haven’t been since I was a kid, so I was real excited to see it again. After my morning run I took my free ticket I got from my aunt and went to the fair. I walked around for a while looking for my cousins with their animals. I found some of them and said hi and then did a once over of all the booths. My cousin Bria was going to be showing her goat, so I went to the goat barn and waited. They were a long ways behind schedule, so I read for a couple hours. Mikal was also showing his sheep in the same barn, so I talked to him for a while. Marika was over in the draft horse barn working with our neighbor’s draft horses.
I didn’t really go on any rides, but I walked around everywhere and even got to talk to my curling instructor at the TWU booth. That was kind of cool. Uncle John, Zac, and I also watched a hypnotist’s show, which was pretty funny. In the evening I went to the big horse show in the grand stand and then made my way home for an early end to the evening.

Hinds Feet on High Places

2005-08-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

The drive up to Mount Baker is a pretty amazing one. The road is narrow, has many curves, following much of the North Fork of the Nooksack River. I enjoy most of the drive, but when a slow car gets in front of you, it just seems to ruin everything. Ironically, on the way home we got stuck behind the same car. The road goes up past the ski area to Artist Point, which yields beautiful views of Shuksan, Baker and the surround Cascades. There were quite a few people up there enjoying the sun and many bicyclists resting from the cycle up. Jenny and I found a shady spot to eat our lunch before embarking on our hike. We decided to summit Table Mountain and then walk up its ridge to the other end. To get to the top is a steep mile hike up a cliff. The elevation gain is amazing. All of a sudden you are on top, looking down at the miniature version of your car below you. The mountain is correctly named, as the top is mostly flat. The trail across the top is much less traveled. We finally got to the other end and were looking down that side and saw these little alpine pools. After a short break we started descending this cliff to get to this hidden oasis. The trail was pretty steep and we had to do a little rock climbing at places, but we finally made it down. The pools were well worth our trouble. Secluded from the crowds we relaxed by one of these pools for much of the afternoon. I named the “High Places” because they reminded me of the book “Hinds Feet on High Places.”
On the way back to the car we watched this family trying to climb down this snowfield. The summer melt had revealed many rocks littered across it. As we watched this little girl slipped and started sliding on her back down the slope, screaming the whole way. She got turned around and ended up heading backwards, headfirst. She nearly hit some big rocks, but I imagine there was no way she missed all of them. After about a hundred feet a guy from their party grabbed her. She seemed to be all right, besides being a frightened, but it was quite the ordeal to watch.

Another Day with Matt

2005-08-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had to pour the second half of this patio at work. Matt wanted to hang out with me, so he came and helped so that we could get out of there sooner. The truck could not get to the back so we had to carry wheelbarrow loads from the truck to the patio. It was pretty hard work, but we got out of there quick and went home and played computers.
Matt just got Tiger, so he spent most of the day setting that up. We also watched a bunch of tech shows. In the evening we drove up to Jenny’s for Mexican food. I think I am going to be eating a lot of pizza and burritos next year. Not that I can’t do other food, but those two are just so good. We will see how long they are good for though.
After that we drove Matt to Pt. Roberts, because his parents were staying there with friends. Pt. Roberts is this little point that is part of the US, but only accessible by driving through Canada. As I was driving up this hill to the border I moved into the right lane to get around some cars that were stopped at this light. Well, it turns out the reason they were stopped is because they were in line for the border. The only way to turn around is to go through Canadian customs. So as we were in line Jenny was looking at Matt’s passport and then she passed it up to him. When we got up to the booth they told us to pull over so they could search us. I guess they were watching us and were trying to figure out what Jenny passed to Matt. It was all pretty ridiculous, especially because we hadn’t even been to the states yet.
When they let us leave they told us that we could cut to the front of the hour and a half line headed into the US. So, in the end, my mistake, which seemed to be a hassle, happened to save us a lot of time.
Once in Pt. Roberts we drove around for a while to see if we could find Matt’s parents car. When that didn’t work we drove around looking for wireless internet that we could use to get directions to the house. That plan ended up working and Matt and I were pretty proud of ourselves.
So I finally got to meet Matt’s dad and have a conversation with him and Matt’s mom. In the two years that Matt and I have been roommates I have only said hi to his mom once. This is because they have been living in the Middle East. Now they are moving to Manitoba and Matt is going with them. He will be studying engineering at the University of Manitoba. He is really looking forward to it and I think he will be really good at it. Matt’s parents are really great and very interesting to talk to. It is to bad that I was not able to spend more time with they in the past two years. Hopefully I will be able to visit Matt soon and then I will be able to get to know they more.

Roomate Reunion

2005-08-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

Matt emailed me last night and said that he was going to be in Vancouver for the next two nights. He convinced me to ask for today off work and I might be able to get off early tomorrow too. So now I am waiting at the Tsawwassen Ferry for him to show up. After that we are heading to Jenny’s in Langley and then back to Lynden later tonight.

Well, Matt had a great time tree planting. He got to ride a helicopter to work like sixty times, which is right up his alley. Today we did a little shopping. Matt picked up a copy of Tiger, an inverter, and some clothes. Later on we had pizza with my relatives and played computer. Tomorrow he is going to come with me to work and help pouring concrete.

A weekend in Oregon

2005-07-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

This last weekend Jenny and I drove down to her house for her brother’s wedding reception. Jenny’s friend Shope is living in Bellingham and he caught a ride down with us. It was a long drive down and we got there at about one in the morning. The next day we spent most of the day cleaning up the yard for the reception on Sunday. I mowed some lawn and trimmed some trees. That evening we went to a wedding at The Oregon Gardens. The gardens were really nice, and I enjoyed walking around in them a lot. The wedding went well too, and I got to meet tons of other people that Jenny’s knows. There was also a lot of dancing at the reception. I wasn’t to down with that, so I did a night walk through out the garden. Sunday morning I spent getting ready for the reception. There was a good amount of people there. Most of the people were from the church and some family. The rain held out until the very end. After that was the long drive back and an early morning of work.

War of the Worlds

2005-06-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

This evening my aunt and uncle took my cousins and me to War of the Worlds. My first thought was that it was a very different role for Tom Cruise. Usually he is the rich, cool guy, but in this one he is a workingman. It seems to have been awhile since a good alien invasion movie. A few things seemed to not be consistent, but overall a good watch. It is kind of similar to Signs in cinematography. It also has got me interested in the original radio show. I am hoping to find a recording of it or something.

Vegas Wedding

2005-06-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

So many of you are probably wondering what has happened to me for the last month. Well, Jenny got back from Europe and I have been pretty busy, and trying to hang out with her as much as possible. This last weekend though, I went to Las Vegas and got married.
Actually, that is not true at all. Well, I did go to Vegas, but I didn’t get married, Jenny’s brother Jeff did. But every time I told people I was going to Vegas, I got a look. So, I guess I just wanted to tell everyone what they wanted to hear.
Anyways, the whole trip was a lot of fun. I flew out Wednesday morning and got back Sunday afternoon. The early part of the week we just explored the Strip and looked at all the cool hotels. There was wedding planning stuff here and there that people had to do, but there was also a lot of free time. We stayed in Bally’s. It is right in the middle of the Strip, so everything was very accessible. Out my window I could see the Eiffel Tower at Paris and across the street was the fountain at the Bellagio (remember Ocean’s Eleven). That was one of the coolest things. Every fifteen minutes, or so, there would be a fountain show to a different song. It was so amazing to watch, especially at night. I also rode the roller coaster at New York New York, snuck to the top of the Luxor, and took a romantic ride in the Gondola’s at the Venetian.
The wedding was at the top of the Stratosphere, the Space Needle like hotel/casino. Everything went pretty smoothly, and it was a really fun wedding. There was even an Elvis to sing a couple songs at the end. From there we took the "party bus" to the Wynn hotel, where they had rented an incredibly nice suite for the reception/honeymoon. I didn’t sleep that whole night, and until I got on the plane to fly home. I fell asleep before the people next to me had sat down and woke up as we were landing. I had so much fun there, and would love to go back another time. The trip also brought the cumulative days I have spent with Jenny over six, in six months.

On the Banks of the Nooksack

2005-06-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

My cousin Zac and I have been trying to work out a time when we could go down to the river and ride motorcycles and quads together. Last night it rained and this afternoon was sunny, together they mixed to make perfect conditions down at the river. We loaded up the trailer and drove the two miles down there. They used to be able to drive through the farmer’s fields all the way down there, but this year they have not asked yet. The riverbanks are perfect for riding though. Much more interesting than the usual open horse field that we ride around in. We are really kind of in the flood zone. In the spring, when all the snow melts, the river floods and washes logs and stuff over these banks. As a result, every year is a little different down there and right now there is a big tree across one of our main trails. When the river gets low enough you can get across to some of the islands, and do more exploring. Today we mainly just cruised the regular trails. At times it just seems like you are cruising through the forest in South America or something. I took a bunch of pictures, most of Zac, some following behind as he rode down the trails.

Flickr Farewell

2005-05-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

Flickr was recently bought by Yahoo!, so as a result, they are moving from their birthplace of Vancouver to San Francisco. So, last night they had a going away party at the Alibi Room in Vancouver, near Gastown. Boone and his friend Tim came up from Marysville and picked me up in Lynden around nine. We were driving around looking for the place and we saw all these flashes going off. We knew we were in the right place. There was a good number of people there and everyone was getting pictures of each other. All our favorite Flickr people were there. People would introduce themselves by their screen names and meet people that they had never talked to, but had looked at their pictures. It was pretty weird. Boone was having a blast though. I think he talked to everyone in there though. His goal of the night was to get his picture with Stewart, the head Flickr guy. We actually got to talk with him a couple times and his wife Caterina, who does the FlickrBlog. I also saw Rhonda and Angela, who go to my church. There is also this other lady, Laura Grace, who heads up this Vancouver Digital Photography group. Boone and I were going to go to it during the year, but never got a chance. We did email back and forth with her for a while and finally got to meet her. She also introduced us to a bunch of the other people in the group. Hopefully I will be able to go to it some time this summer. I got back to Lynden at one thirty and got a good four hours of sleep before having to get up and go to work. Oh, I also got a Flickr tshirt that I am wearing right now.

Update: Stewart uploaded a picture of me, mistaking me for Boone. Pretty sweet.

Footballs, Frisbees, Fun

2005-05-26T18:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to this potluck and prayer get together with my church. We had it in a park because the weather was so amazing. After being in the sun all day, my new sunburn wasn’t doing to well, so I tried to stick to the shade as much as possible. People threw footballs around and swung on the swings and climbed some trees. It was a really cool time to just get to know people, especially for me, since I don’t really know anyone. I think potlucks are one of the great things about churches. Everyone always has a good time and it really does help build community. Maybe that is why the early church did it so much. I think churches should eat meals and hang out together regularly. And if your church is really to big to do it corporately all the time, then small groups should do it. It really makes it feel more like a family.
I also hung out with some of the kids for a while. They are just always so unthreatening. And I am always the cool guy because I am older. It is to bad that I am going to miss Youth Extreme this week. They are doing their first summer event. I guess I will have to wait a couple weeks. So I swung on the swings and stuff, and at one point I was going on the teeter-totter with the pastor’s kid. We were bouncing around having fun, commenting on how dangerous of toys they really are. Well, I don’t know what happened, but I sent him flying into the air and he landed on his head. I felt pretty bad, and a little embarrassed, but he was okay. Tough kid. But I kind of found out what it was like to be on the other side of one of those situations today.
I went over to another job site to help these two framers move and set these really big trusses. I was standing in the middle balancing them, while walking on the interior walls. Well we were bouncing it around and these other ones came lose behind me, and it just creates a big domino effect. Anyways, I was slammed down onto the floor, landing on my back. I could see how scarred the guys looked, so I instantly reassured them that I was fine. It really is a miracle that I didn’t hit my head or anything. There was a perfect gap in the trusses that I was slammed through and then I kind of half grabed/smacked the wall and fell on my back. It all happened so quickly. One minute I am standing on a wall, the next I am laying on the floor. But I am sure the guys felt really bad. We should have had the trusses braced better, but these things happen.

My Big Pony

2005-05-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

This experience is the opposite extreme of my "little pony" post. Marika and her friend have been riding the neighbors draft horses around the last couple days. Draft horses are much larger than your average horse. They are also usually not ridden around like your average horse. Instead, they are better suited for pulling your sleigh through the snow or your wagon into town with a load of hay. When I was younger, spending my summers in Lynden, we would always run when the draft horses came near while walking in the fields. It just feels like there is an elephant coming right at you. I mean, their back is almost taller than my head and their hooves are bigger than my face.
Anyways, after much hesitation, Marika finally convinced me to ride one. You basically just go bare back and find something to climb up on so you can get on. Actually, one time I was using this broken stepladder to get up and jumped. Well, I just smashed the ladder in a loud crash and sent the horse into a tizzy. Must I remind you that it is not very comforting to have those immense hooves pounding up and down around you? The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. It actually is a pretty smooth ride and they are pretty calm. Mairka used this opportunity to try some vaulting, gymnastics on the horse's back. She just has so much fun riding around out there every day. She is truly in love with her horses.

Kappa Karnival

2005-05-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to WWU to visit Steve and see Rocky Votolato play. Markus just happened to be there with his friends Will and Emily. They were just visiting to check out the school. Emily is planning on going there next year. After the music and stuff we did a lot of walking around the school and some sitting in the sun. We also played some campus Frisbee golf. It was actually a lot of fun. They also have added a really fun rule that if someone picks up your Frisbee and throws it back at you, you can't say anything or show any emotion, and you have to play it from where it lands. Makes for some exciting games. We ended the evening by watching The Motorcycle Diaries again.

Visiting Lu Dogg

2005-05-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

After work I drove up to TWU to visit Lu. He is taking summer courses and living in dorms. There sure weren't many people around, Trinity people that is. There were conferences going on and they were using the buildings for that. Lu and I did a lot of walking around campus. We climbed up on the roof of one of the buildings to look around, and walked around the pond as well. Lu is taking photography, so he was looking for good shots everywhere.

Bob's Funeral

2005-05-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago my good friend Jeff's dad died. Jeff's mom and my mom are best friends, so Jeff and I have known each other our whole lives. About five years ago his dad, Bob, had a brain tumor. He got it removed, but was in a coma and almost died after the surgery. The last five years have been really hard for the family, as he slowly recovered. In the last year though he had gotten his drivers license again and was even doing a little work, something that the doctors said he would never do again. Last week though he felt sick one day and stayed in bed. He died that afternoon of a heart aneurism and died, something totally unrelated to the tumor. I have been back and forth between Port Orchard and Lynden for the last week.
Last night was the funeral at our church. There were almost 600 people there. They even had video feed going over to the youth building, where there was more seating. The funeral was really good. They started by playing a couple worship songs and Jeff even got up and played bass with them. Jeff also put together a great slide show of pictures of his dad. There was an open mic and some people that were invited up to talk. The sermon was really good. John talked about how God was trying to teach us things through Bob over the last five years. One thing was the importance of a father to teenagers. Bob was able to be here to see his kids through high school (Missy graduates next month). He also talked about their commitment as a family, even through the rough times. He also congratulated Camie, Jeff's mom, for sticking by Bob through the last five years. Everyone started clapping and I couldn't stop crying. Finally John talked about how even Bob had lost his job and status and everything through his handicap, how he was able to model a child like faith to us.
It really was an amazing service. Afterwards there was a reception and we had a bonfire behind the church for the youth to hang out with Jeff and Missy. I am glad that I was able to make it down for it, and my Aunt Marti came with me too. Lindsey Widstrom was at the funeral and stayed at our house last night and we drove here back to SPU on the way back up to Lynden.

Moderate Giftedness

2005-04-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

-from Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.
I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives - maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.
That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.
The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist."
How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning. "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"

My Little Pony

2005-04-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I brought a second car load of stuff to Lynden and set up my room. I love doing that, and now my room is ready for when I go back in a week. My cousin Marika is training this miniature pony to jump. It is so small, but it can jump almost as high as its back. It is so funny to watch her run around with it. It is more like a dog than a horse. I gave it a try and had some fun with it too.

This is Not Jib Jam

2005-04-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

Today we were supposed to do Jib Jam. Jib Jam is this annual event that MRD puts on. We build these ramps and then go to the ice skating rinks and get snow for the ramps. Throw in some rails and you have a snowboard competition in the spring. There is also a skate comp that we put on with prizes. Last year we had like four hundred people there. We had been preparing for week for it and Boone had done a lot of work getting sponsors and insurance and stuff. The only thing we needed was good weather.
Well this morning I get up and it is pouring rain. You can't have a snowboard competition in the rain and you can't skate either. I decided to go to the park anyways and see if anyone showed up. I got there around nine, when we were planning on starting to build the ramps and no one was there. I decided I should wait for a little bit and woke up at eleven. By that time it had stopped raining, but everything was still wet. I drove back to school, because nothing was going down. The strange thing was though was that little breaks in the clouds were starting to appear.
I got back to school and got in contact with Boone. Jib Jam wasn't going to happen, but we said that if it cleared up we should go to the park anyways and have a BBQ and stuff. Well, by around one, when Jib Jam was supposed to start, it was dry and we headed out to Brookswood park with a bunch of MRD people. We skated around a bit and gave out hot dogs and soda. We also had a bunch of t-shirts and a backpack to give away, so we did a little skate competition. It was pretty fun, and despite not having snowboarding, it was pretty fun.
At around four thirty it started to pour and then to hail. We packed up real quick and got out of there. The timing was perfect. We just finished the competitions and it started. There was that perfect period of the day though where the weather totally worked out for us. God totally answered our prayers, just not exactly how we had planned.

The Compline Choir

2005-04-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

After Mars Hill we went to St. Mark's Cathedral for their Compline Choir service. Basically there are like seven prayers that monks do throughout the day, the last of these is the Office of Compline. Well, some music students started sing it every Sunday night back in the 50's and then it kind of caught on and tons of young people would come to hear. Then in the 60's they started broadcasting it on the radio (Interesting side note, the service is actually supposed to last twelve minutes, but they extended it to half an hour to fit the radio slot. See, technology does affect our worship). Now there is a eighteen man choir that sings it from nine-thirty to ten every Sunday night. Tons of people come to just sit and listen.
The real amazing thing about it is how many young people are there. We got there a little early, and we walked around the immense room in awe. It is so amazing in there. They have the lighting done very well in the room. Already people were starting to take their positions. Teenagers in every corner huddled in thought. Numerous people are sitting through out the pews, just sitting and listening to the silence. On emo type girl sits right in the middle of the highly light stage, right next to the altar, writing in her journal. The room is unfinished and the walls are covered with mildew. The cold floor echoes your steps as you walk around the room. One of the most amazing features is the pipe organ in the back. I have never seen everything like it. It's huge rusty pipes controlled by this little keyboard in the balcony.
We decided to just sit on the stage, a little weird because everyone in the pews is looking right at you, but we wanted a place to lie down. It may seem weird, but that is how it works. There are no rules about where you have to sit. Some people bring blankets and pillows, and pretty soon the stage is full of people.
The choir files in quietly and takes their position in the very back of the sanctuary. They say a prayer and then begin to sing. To tell you the truth, it was a little quieter than I had expected, but I guess it is a big room to fill. I just lay back and closed my eyes and listened to this amazing music just surround me. After a while I sat up and started looking around at the other people. I was amazed to see how many more people there were. The whole floor was covered with people, and everyone had their eyes closed with their head either bowed or looking upwards. You could almost see the sound soaring around the room.
One of the most touching points of the service was when this little girl walked down the isle with her stuffed animal and lay down right before the altar. And there she lay clutching her stuffed animal. It was such an incredible symbol.
When it was over, there was a special organ recital afterwards. That was incredible as well, and let me tell you, it can really fill the room. One guy from our group made the comment while walking around listen that he just felt like he should pray or something. There is something amazing about a worship space like that that allows you have such a different encounter with God. We could see a couple people in the balcony where the organist was, so a couple guys from our group snooped around to try and find I way up there. I followed and boy was it worth it. We got to be right behind the organist and watch him as he controlled this amazing instrument that surrounded us all.
Right before we left we were talking to someone form the church in the foyer. He found out that we were a class and he let us into this little side chapel. It is the only actual finished part of the building. The rest of the cathedral was supposed to resemble it, but after the stock market crash and the Great Depression, there was no money to do it. It was pretty cool that we got that little sneak peak though.
Well that was my experience of St. Mark's Cathedral and the Compline Choir. I would suggest it to anyone for their next trip to Seattle. Actually it is a must see. If I lived in Seattle it would be the perfect Sunday night wind down to prepare me for the week. Also check out the web links above and get the real story.

Mars Hill Church

2005-04-05T23:09:00.000-07:00

My class got to Mars Hill Church in Seattle about an hour and a half before the service. We were going as a field trip for my worship class. I really wanted to go find the troll under the Arora Bridge, but no one else wanted to do it. I had seen a picture of the huge concrete troll as a kid, but had never been able to see it. It is one of those things I have always wanted to do. So instead we sat in the foyer of the church. The other people that came with me played some games and I worked on some homework. I know, what a loser. Let me tell you a little about Mars Hill. I remember hearing about it when it was in the Paradox Theater in the U-District. They were pretty tied in with these concerts they would host there of Christian and secular bands. This is the crowd they drew from. Anyways a while ago they moved across town into their own building, a warehouse that has been fixed up very nicely. They continue to host lots of concerts at their new location, which provides a good outreach to that community.
Mars Hill is probably considered an Emerging Church and appeals mostly to the postmodern crowd. The church I have been going to, Vintage 242, kind of modeled themselves after this church. Mars Hill has seen immense growth though. With weekly numbers of 3500 divided among four services and the acquisition of a new building a walk away, Mars Hill has changed a lot. What started out as a kind of rebellion against mainstream churches turned into a megachurch of its own, a little ironic. Anyways, there is one main sanctuary and then a side room with live video feed of the service. The service started off with two songs. The worship leader started off by explaining what worship actually is and we were going to do it in the service. This was right on and gave us some direction. The first and last songs were the only ones in the service that I knew. That is because they were hymns. The rest were all songs that they had written themselves. It was also very loud. Even in their newsletter they had a letters section. Someone wrote in saying that they really liked the church, but they could stay because it was so loud. Their response was to tell them to get earplugs from info booth. They kind of showy in their playing and many people in my class complained that it was like a concert.
The pastor came up next and preached for a little over an hour. It was amazing; he held our attention the whole time. And he didn't do anything flashy. All he would just read a couple verses and spend some time explaining them and how they apply to us. This is what they do every. To give you and idea of their pace, they are going through Genesis and were at the part about Isaac. They plan to be finished with Genesis in September. I really like that kind of preaching though. That is what drew me to Vintage. It is just so biblically focused and yet it doesn't get very overwhelming. And I can actually remember the sermons, and even without fill-in-the-blanks. The most amazing thing is that he does three of these services and in a year and a half he will be doing six.
The main singing section followed the preaching. During this time you could go to the front for communion and to bring your offerings as well. Speaking of offerings, in December they received almost double their budget. I really enjoyed the service overall, but it would have been cool if they had incorporated more creative elements into their service. Go check out their website to get some more info about them.

St. Herman of Alaska

2005-04-04T02:13:00.000-07:00

I got up early this morning, especially because of the time change. I met a group of people at Ethical Addictions. Brian told about the Orthodox church he was taking us to as I drank my Chai tea. I was pretty excited because I have been looking for someone that goes to this church so that I could go with them. The church is called St. Herman of Alaska. Form outside the building looks like a normal small church. We went in and the service had already started. The room was not very big, the ceiling was made of cedar ( just like my house, haha ) and there were no pews or chairs. The room smells heavily of incense and the choir sings from the back left corner of the room. I stand right in front of them with the rest of my friends. One lady from the choir came over to us and explained some things about the service, so that we would have an idea of what was going on. Everyone is standing and there are priests and deacons behind a screen in the front performing some rituals that we cannot see. People of every age were there, listening, crossing themselves, and responding together as one man reads. He did not just speak the words, but instead he sung them. This is how scripture was read throughout the whole service, and always just a voice, never with an instrument. All of a sudden a curtain in the screen was drawn back to reveal the altar table with many ornamental objects covered with bright lights shone down from above.
A few people came in late and they went forward to the front of the room and bowed before a picture of Jesus. They then light a candle and placed it in a little box of sand on one side of this picture, where there were already a bunch of candles from the other people. Parents and children do this together and some even kiss the picture.
A few time during the service there is a procession where the priests and deacons come out into the congregation with incense and candles. One instance of this is before the scripture reading, where they come out with the Bible raised high.
During the sermon, most the people sat on the floor, while a few sat in pews that are against the walls. The sermon was the only spoken part of the while service. It also contained a few jokes and was not that different from a Protestant sermon.
During communion the people line up and the priest serves them. You must be a member of the church to do this, so I just watched. There was also bread up front for the fellowship meal. A couple people grabbed some of this bread and brought it to the people that did not participate in the Eucharist.
This was a special Sunday for them and they had a relic there. That one lady that had explained some stuff in the beginning told us that is was a little piece of the actual cross. People went forward and prostrated themselves before it a couple of times and crossed themselves and kissed it. She said that I could too, if I wanted. So, I was towards the end of the line and went forward. Who knows if I did it right, but everyone stands and watches you, so it is kind of intimidating.
The very last thing was were we go forward and hold out our hand and the priest puts some bread in your hands and gives a blessing. Some people would kiss the preist's hand, so I did that too. It was pretty funny, I was wearing one of my Further Seems Forever shirts and the priest kept me there for a while because he wanted to read it. On the way out the door, people would turn and face the front and cross themselves. The whole service lasted two hours.
One of the priests greeted me in the foyer and talked with me for a little while. I also talked to this girl from Trinity that is a friend of Sheri Nelson. I had to go back to school after this so I could go on my field trip. I wish I could have stayed though, because they have a meal together every week and then classes later on where you can ask questions.
For my worship class field trip that I also went on today, I had to examine how the churches we visited related to culture and stuff like that. The Orthodox Church seems largely by culture in their worship. They continue to do things just as they have been done for hundreds of years. They make no changes in their worship in order to be more seeker sensitive. They are however extremely friendly. Many people greeted and talked with me, more than probably any church I have visited before. It is also obvious that they are very close as a family and get together throughout the week. I think that is why my friend enjoys going there so much. He says that church is now the highlight of his week.

Easter Morning Service

2005-03-28T00:06:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-25T00:09:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-19T23:41:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-14T02:10:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

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.

End of the Year for Seymour

2005-02-25T00:58:00.000-08:00

mud puddle
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Today I decided to get some use from my Seymour pass. I left around one by myself and headed on up. I checked the internet before I left just to make sure it was open. And then on the way there I could not see any snow on the hill. I started to get a little worried, but I figured I could at least have a nice drive, even if I couldn't snowboard. When I got up there, I saw how bad it really was. The entire bottom of the run was basically mud. I rode up anyways. It was actually a beautiful day. I got a few runs in and then headed over to the small rail park. I spent the rest of my time there practicing the rails. I actually got quite a bit better. So hopefully I will be able to do better the next time I go, probably next year. Seymour also got some snow machines from Whistler today. That should help them out if it stays cold enough. On the way down I gave this guy a ride and then had to sit in rush hour traffic forever. Tonight a bunch of us also went to Costco for the opening. They had tons of samples and there were quite a few Trinity kids there. We also had MRD tonight and Matt and I played on our computers.

Dorm Ice Hockey

2005-02-25T00:36:00.000-08:00

putting on a hospital dress
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Last night my whole wing of the building rented some ice space at the local rink so that we could play hockey. They dragged me along, but I was kind of excited. We started skating around, warming up. It was actually fun to have the whole thing to ourselves. Anyways, all of a sudden I looked over and Konrad was on his face bleeding out of his chin and mouth. We all quickly went over to him and checked to see if he was okay. I went with him to the bathroom, so he could get cleaned up. We realized the gash on his chin was really big and he needed stitches. So then we went back and started taking off his skates. All of sudden he didn't know where he was or what happened. He even forgot about going to get cleaned up. We decided he really needed to go to the hospital. I drove his car and we went to the emergency room in Langley. We got there about midnight and there were only a couple people in there, but it still took a while because there was only one triage nurse working. While we were working this really drunk bum came and was hanging out and they had to get the RCMP to get him out. Finally Konrad went in and they got him stitched up. The doctor started asking about how he fell and was pretty concerned because he fainted and they didn't know why. So, the doctor had them do a bunch of tests and moved him into another room. We were there for quite a while and I fell asleep in my chair. When I woke up it was almost five in the morning and my foot was asleep, worse than ever before. It hurt so badly and I had to wait a couple minutes before I could even stand up. They had gotten the results on the tests. It seems that Konrad might have this heart valve problem, one that his brother has too. So, the doctor gave him three specialists to go to and we left for school.

Weekend at Big White

2005-02-21T22:56:00.000-08:00

pat w/ broken collar bone
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

This weekend I went to Big White with my family. It was so sweet. The place we stayed at was the most ski-in, ski-out-able of all the places we have stayed there. I snowboarded for all three days. A bunch of my friends from back home just happened to be there too. They hung out with us and it was cool to see them again. The lifts also opened early this weekend because one of the major lifts was down. We went early both days and had some incredible runs. The weather was also incredible. The climax of the weekend was when my friend Pat broke his collarbone. He did pretty well with it, but he was bummed that he couldnât say he hadnât broken a bone anymore. He made me feel it. It was totally separated, but not poking through the skin. I drove him down to the hospital to see if we could get him any help, but we were doubtful because he is American. We did get him some painkillers and a sling at London Drug. They all decided to go home that night instead of the next day to get Pat to a hospital in Bellingham. So that is as much as I know. I hope you are okay Pat.

My Twentieth Birthday

2005-02-14T09:34:00.000-08:00

birthday hat
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

This weekend I went home for my birthday. I go there on Friday evening. Then I slept in on Saturday and when I got up I spent the afternoon reading. I know not the ideal way to spend a birthday, but I have a book review due Wednesday. In the evening I went with the family to El Sombrero. It was pretty good and I got a picture with the sombrero and stuff. Then we went back to our house and opened presents and had cake, well mud pie. From my brothers I got Good Will Hunting and The Mars Volta album. From my parents I got The Cult of Mac, a coffee table book about people's obsession with Apples. I also got an iSight web cam and have been having a lot of fun playing with that. So if you have a web cam, we should talk. I need some people to talk to. Sunday I went to church and then read for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I got through most of my book, which is good. Then Brett and I left pretty late and he talked to me about one of his books for a couple hours. It was pretty sweet. He was so much story up there in his head. It will be cool to see when it is out on paper. Good luck with that Brett. Have a good Valentines Day everyone.

Happy Birthday Flickr!!!

2005-02-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Flickr!!!
Originally uploaded by caterina.

Today is Flickr's birthday. Wow, maybe that is why I like it so much. It was born two days before my birthday. Happy First Birthday Flickr.

Vintage.242

2005-02-06T20:51:00.001-08:00

Vintage.242
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

I just got back from church. What you ask? Isn't it night time? Well, yes, church started at five. This week I went to Vintage.242. It is this new church in Abbotsford. I heard about it from someone at school and decided to check it out because we are talking about those kinds of churches in my worship class. I thought it might be empty, being the SuperBowl and all, but I figured most of the people there would be like me and wouldn't care about it. I mean I don't even know the outcome of the game, or even who was playing. Well, actually, I saw Will Smith, so I know Philadelphia was playing, but I don't know what team that is, sorry. It took half an hour for Matt and I to drive there and we got there at five. The service didn't really start till like five thirty. Until then they had a fellowship time in the foyer. I thought it was pretty neat that they had that time to talk with each other, since one of their main focuses is relationships. Their name comes from Acts 2:42, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." I just talked to Matt though during this time and he found it awkward and just wanted to go sit down. They use another churches building and it is pretty nice. The sanctuary is pretty nice and is decorated with lots of candles. They age group is definitely of the 18-30 age group, although some are not is this generalization. They service started with two songs, "Hungry" and "All Creatures of Our God and King." The music team was composed of two guys on guitar, a girl singing and one guy on the djembe. They all sat on stools. Right after this was the welcome from the pastor and the sermon began. It lasted for maybe a little longer than half an hour and was on a section in Romans. The church is going through the book of Romans passage by passage. Following this was an extended worship set and communion whenever you wanted during the back of the church. That is one thing I liked about this church. They do communion every week, although I wish they did it as a group instead of individually. Not like I am used to in the seats, but where everyone comes forward to the table. Maybe this wasn't the normal format, but just my feelings. Overall I liked the service. I enjoyed the style, even though I hate saying that, but I wish it could be more multigenerational. I did like it better than Parkside though, one because to the atmosphere, and two because everyone wasn't from Trinity. Although I think everyone there was from CBC. There was one person there from Trinity that I knew and it was her first time too. Afterwards one guy, Dallas, came up and introduced himself to us. I got to find out some more about the church from him, like that it started in November. This church has a lot of the things that I think a church should have and I think I might try going there a few more times.

The First Snowboard Club

2005-02-05T22:34:00.000-08:00

the guys
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

MRD (Mountain Riders Discipleship) is a club that I am apart of here at Trinity. We are different than most clubs though. Many just have BBQs and a couple of meetings every once and a while, but we are pretty active. Every Thursday we have Snake Pit. That is basically just our main meeting. Here we play games, hang out, have a bible study, worship, plan events and pray for each other. It is really a fun time we have gotten pretty close. Monday night Boone and some other guys runs Skate Club. They pick up some local kids that they know form the Murrayville park and drive them around to different skate parks. I wish I could do it more, but I always end up having class then. The kids are so crazy and rad. They also usually have a Club Talk (devotional, lesson thing). Besides that, sometimes we do other things in the community, like or annual Jib Jam and other skate competitions, usually geared towards the skater/snowboarder crowd. And of course we hang out together and go snowboarding (when there is snow). This year we decided we wanted to do more ministry with the snowboarding thing. We have been piecing a bunch of ideas together and came up with Snowboard Club. Through connections made with Street-E (a street evangelism ministry run by Trinity students in East Hastings, Vancouver) we decided to take young guys up to the mountain with our VIP passes and a bunch of gear that we have collected from everyone. The only problem is that we haven't had any snow. Well Seymour got 15 cm and Brian convinced me to go with him today and do it. We picked up two guys, Gabriel and Mike, at the Union Gospel Mission Youth Drop In Centre in Van and went up to Seymour. Unfortunately only the rope tow was open but it was still good. Mike was pretty crazy and didn't like to have us teach him. He just liked to go straight down the hill until he fell. It looked like he was getting pretty beat up, but he seemed to have fun. He will get it eventually. Gabriel had been six times before when he lived in Banff, so he was pretty good. I got him started on doing this little jump on the side of the run, and that is basically all we did the whole afternoon. We got to know each other and next time we will probably be able to have more conversation. It wasn't that awkward though. I even got to have a talk with Gabriel. In my worship class we are talking a lot about postmodernism and our post-Christian culture. I am starting to see it more and more. Our conversation was just like the examples in the book. I was talking to him about how I go to Trinity and how it is a Christian school. So he asked me if I was a Christian and I said yes and we talked about that and then I asked him if he was into any religious stuff. And like a typical postmodern he said, no I am not into any religious stuff, but I am spiritual. I asked him what kind of stuff and he said yoga and some other things like that. Textbook example. I don't know, I think I am starting to agree with a lot of this emerging church stuff. If you dont know anything about it you should read some. It is very interesting and if it is true, it is the future of any successful ministry. Brian also got to talk to Mike for a little bit over a hot dog. The whole thing went pretty well and I am excited to do it again. If you remember, please keep this ministry in your prayers as we try to get it off the ground.

Going Home

2005-01-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

clean room
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

This morning we got to sleep in till around ten. For breakfast I had ice cream on my pancakes too. Then we did our last Devo and the cleaning began. We got the kids headed home pretty quickly and then we finished up on all of the cleaning. It wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be and I got home fairly early in the afternoon. I have pretty much been relaxing since then, but I am going to guys prayer now and will hopefully get some reading done later tonight. Despite all the work this weekend was, it was incredibly fun and the highlight of the winter for many of these kids.

Our Full Day at Camp Stillwood

2005-01-30T21:49:00.000-08:00

messy leaders
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

I got dragged out of bed around 8:30 this morning. I actually got a lot more sleep than the rest of the leaders. In the morning I was assigned to the gym for two hours. We did a lot of skateboarding and I taped some of the kids with my camera and let them watch themselves. Throughout the day we played a lot of games and had some Devos. The most incredible thing though was the messy games. Games like the one where you blow an egg through a tube and the one where you use your mouth to get the Skittles out of the whipped cream. After a while it just turned into a mass food fight. I have never witnessed anything like it. When it was all over, the entire floor was covered with chocolate and shaving cream and potatoes and flour. You could not even walk without falling. The wall was covered with Jello and there was not a person left untouched. So, for the next couple hours some of the other leaders and I kept the kids busy while the rest of the leaders cleaned up the room. Now, we are sitting in the upstairs room with the boys telling stories. Who knows when we will go to bed?

First day of Winter Retreat

2005-01-30T21:36:00.000-08:00

where do I go?
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

I left at 6:30 from school for camp Stillwood by Coltus Lake. We got there before the pick up crew with all the kids. It is a pretty nice camp. From what I have seen so far it is like most small camps, but the buildings have been remodeled with river rock, and the lodgy wood look. All the kids got here and dinner wasn't ready yet, so we played this wrestling game that I like a lot. Dinner was followed by games in the dark and then the Devo. Ross and I played guitar and Chris sang. It actually turned out good and I am excited to do it again. We had a little talk afterwards in small groups. It was incredible, when we broke the kids up, the type of questions they would ask. This Jr. High boy was making four university guys speechless with his questions about God. "How do we know God is perfect?" We ended the night sliding down the stairs on mattresses and Rashaun sat next to me drawing as I wrote this.

The Search for Pure Gold

2005-01-27T01:24:00.000-08:00

Kon and I with the Prize
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Just like last year, ACTS Seminaries put on their Pure Gold contest. They hid a piece of paper on campus and for a week, Missions Week, they gave out new clues for it each day. The winner would get $1000, $500 to keep and $500 to give to the mission organization of the winner's choosing. Well, last year we spent a lot of time looking for it. We got close, but did not get it. We had a lot of fun with it though. This year Konrad and I made a pact to work together on it. If we were together when we found it, then we would split it 50-50. If one person was off by them self, then we would split it 60-40. We also decided not to make a big deal about it to try to limit our competition. The clues go like this: each day two new word scrambles would be given. Once the words were unscrambled, a designated letter from each word would be part of a final word scramble. Well Tuesday we had some good leads, so we went around looking. Brett walked around barefoot in the dark the whole time. Today though they had some really long words that the unscrambler on the internet that we were using couldn't figure it out. I did some searching online and found a way better one. It found the words with no problem. This one also allowed for as many wild cards as you wanted. That means for letters that you are unsure of you enter a question mark and they give you all the possible words. We did this and discovered a list of words that would work, with streetlamp being the most likely. So I went to class and Konrad went out to check all the streetlamps on campus. When I got back a nice surprise awaited me. Konrad had found it. We were so excited and opened to examine our treasure. I can't believe we actually found it. So tomorrow Konrad is going to go in and redeem our prize. There is a little skill test that you have to pass though to get it. It is the law for lotteries and stuff. It is always really simple, but there is so much pressure to get it right. Now we have to decide which mission organization to give the other five hundred to. We are narrowing it down and should have our decision soon. We want to give it to an organization that is not involved in the tsunami. Not that it is bad, I have been donating too, but there are so many other needs that are now being over looked. We visited the prayer room and prayed about what organization we should donate to. We will see.

Friends Langley Vineyard

2005-01-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

church art
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Friends Langley Vineyard was the church of choice this week. I heard about it just this week, so I thought it would be fun to check out. Supposedly at one service they had movies playing during the music time. Nothing like that this week though. Singing did last for almost an hour though. And since it is just about their 20th anniversary they sang a lot of older songs, older being 1988-1994. They were also all Vineyard songs, but I knew a couple of them. One thing I have noticed at the two Vineyard churches I have been to is that they the kids just run around during the music time. Some of them are dancing in circles with each other. Others just run around or hop up and down. While it can sometimes be distracting (everyone wants to watch the cute kids), it is neat to have the whole family there to worship and the kids become used to worshiping with the adults. The sermon went on for quite a while too. I found it interesting though that the pastor didn't read any scripture for the whole sermon. He talked about a couple stories and paraphrased them from memory, but he never recited any scripture. This was a little discouraging, but there were still many good thoughts. He also liked to have people raise their hands in response to his questions. This he did repeatedly throughout the service. It also seemed like he kind of went with the flow and didn't really have a very structured sermon. After the sermon there was a call for people to come forward and give some kind of testimony to what had been talked about. One guy came up and gave a quick story. This was also done at the other Vineyard church I had been to. It is kind of neat, because it allows the church members to get to know each other better, and many people can relate to the stories that people share. The ministry time followed and was when things got a little different from what I am used to. Healing for the sick, speaking in tongues and all that stuff. There was quite an emphasis on speaking in tongues. The pastor's son even got baptized, and from the questions he was asked, it seemed that the reason he was being baptized was because he was hoping to receive the gift of tongues. I found this to be very interesting. I did like all of the art that they had in the church though. Especially these paintings they had on the metal posts on the stage. Most of the people there had young children or their children had left the house. There seemed to be a gap missing of teenagers and their parents. There was one older couple there though, but overall a lack of the over 65 crowd.
This afternoon I talked online with Jenny for quite awhile. And I don't mean chatting, I mean really talking. She found this application called Skype that lets you voice chat for free. It works pretty well, amazing considering she was on the other side of the world. You should try downloading it. It works a little better than AIM (AOL Instant Messanger), in my experience, but still not as good as the phone. If you get it my user name is BjornEide, and you can add me as a contact.

Saturday Drive

2005-01-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

me driving
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Today I finally got to sleep in. I get up at eight every day during the week (which I know is nothing for most of you, but here it is rare). This afternoon I did call Jenny though. I used up my phone card and it only lasted five minutes, but it was still worth it. I didn't tell her I was calling and she had to run down five flights of stairs to get it. I am researching a better method to use besides these phone cards. Hopefully satisfactory audio internet chatting will come around soon. Getting closer to the evening I went on a drive with Brett and Matt. We just cruised down country roads in the dark and rain and ended up in Abbotsford. It allowed for some good conversation.

Pilgrimage to Ludicorp

2005-01-21T23:37:00.000-08:00

Bjorn: So Stoked
Originally uploaded by yeahboone.

Yesterday was MRD and it was rad. Boone has a blog post about it. Afterwards we went out and hit up Langley with the guys. Today was really fun though. Earlier this week, Boone and I were talking about how much we love Flickr (the photo sharing website I use). We started to talk about how the company that does it, Ludicorp, is in Vancouver. We suddenly go the idea to go and try and find their office. We instantly wanted to drop everything and go. But we resisted and set our trip for Friday morning.
My roommate has been making fun of me a lot lately for how much time I spend on Flickr. I might even rival my brother in his World of Warcraft playing time. Well anyways, I was telling him about how excited I was for our trip to Ludicorp and he said it was like a pilgrimage. I thought that was funny, a little idolatrous, but still funny.
So Friday morning Boone, his girlfriend Jacqi and I headed out for our journey. Boone and I both had our cameras in our hands and were taking pictures of everything. Poor Jacqi had to put up with our giddiness and the embarrassment of being with the biggest tourists ever. She was a good sport, and good to have along to keep Boone and me on track. Otherwise, we might have done something we would regret.
We found the building and walked right in and rode up the elevator. We had no idea what to expect. We had never done anything like this before. We found the door and just looked at it for a while and took pictures. We lost Jacqi. She was getting embarrassed again and had ridden the elevator down and up again. We came to the decision that we should ring the doorbell. I mean what is the worst that could happen? "Well, what are we going to say?" Boone just readied his camera and I started laughing.
The door opened. Boone shot. And we scarred the living daylights out of the guy who opened it (Cal). Then we kind of awkwardly told him why we were there and he let us in. Our eyes started to gaze around at every nook and cranny of the room, taking it all in as quickly as possible, snapping a picture whenever we remembered to. Well, we tried to explain what we were doing there, and everyone seemed a little frazzled. We really didn't have anything planned. We had only thought up to getting in the door. So we did the only thing we could do, took pictures of each other (Cal's pic of me, my pic of Cal). We told them how much we loved Flickr (or tried to) and tried to get them to tell us their top-secret info. They keep a tight ship. They were good sports though and a fun bunch, considering they had these giddy fan boys (and girl) bust in on them. Looking back we probably could have planned it better, like bringing offerings of gratitude. I guess you learn from your mistakes. It was fun though. And now I am just that much more stoked about Flickr.
When we got back to school I went to class for an hour and then drove back to Vancouver for Youth Extreme. We went to the pool this week and I got to jump of the huge diving platforms again. It was rad. Boone also has a good entry about our trip if you want a different perspective. Much thanks to the Flickr crew for being so nice and for making such a sweet product.

Wednesday Morning Adventure

2005-01-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

fort langley
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Today I got up at 6:30 to go to this men's breakfast thing, after going to bed at 2:00 last night. I was a little late, so I got the last of the food. Then we sang songs and had a speaker talk. He talked on the importance of having a close set of friends to support you. Then I had a class at 9:00. When that was over, it was so nice and warm out, yet overcast and a little windy. It was beautiful. I love this weather. Everything was soaking wet from days of rain and so there was lots of flooding. I went down to the pond to take pictures and decided to walk around on the path. I met this guy Mike on the path who was doing the same thing. I got quite a few pictures, but when I got back to my dorm room, I felt like going on a longer walk. So I grabbed my Bible and drove down to Fort Langley. I had never been to the fort before, so I decided to stop by. I started walking around it and came to the front gate and it was open. So I just went in and started looking around. There was a class of elementary kids running around and I just started reading signs and looking in buildings. It is really quite a neat set up. You can climb the tower and look out over the wall at the river. They also have a real blacksmith shop and other things like that with people dressed up. Then I went and started looking at some exhibits. After a while this guy came and told me I wasn't supposed to be there, so I got out of there. I had seen a lot of the fort already though. Next I decided to drive across to the native reservations and get some pictures of this cool old church they have. On the way out I had to stop at this roadblock the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) had set up. They were stopping cars that were getting off the ferry and I had to go through it to get back to school. The mountie told me to pull over to the side of the road because of the crack in my windshield. I had to get out of the car to get my registration and insurance stuff out of the trunk. I told him I was going to Trinity and he asked me about my major. He also asked if I was visiting someone on the reservation and I said I was just driving around. Then he asked me if I had been smoking pot. I said no, but he said my eyes were red and asked if there was any reason they might be red. I said that I was at the fort and they had been burning branches and maybe it was that. He took me to the front of the car and made me do their drug tests. First I had to lean my head back and close my eyes and tell him when I thought thirty seconds had passed. I must have done badly on that one because he made me do the line-walking test. Then he went back to his car and wrote me up a warning for my windshield. After that I went to these trails that I like in the woods nearby. I hiked up to this quarry and read my Bible for a little while there. Then this older guy with an accent came by. I asked him some questions about the trails and he told me all about them and how he had been walking them for ten years and how they get longer as you get older. After I was there for a little while longer I walked back to the car and got some pictures of this horse across the street. Then on the way home I saw the guy again, on his bike this time, so I got a picture of him too.

Skating on the ice

2005-01-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

yo
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Last night I went ice skating with Youth Extreme. I took my friend Iain with me, so he could check it out. We did pick up instead of the usual drop off. I took us an hour and twenty minutes to drive to Vancouver, where it would take half an hour with no traffic. I had to make a couple trips in my car to pick up some kids. Iain went in the big fifteen-passenger van. The people that were going to do the devotional were not there, so some of the leaders had to do one with out any planning. Then we just left for the ice skating rink. Oh yeah, I didn't have my beanie, because one of the Sr. High girls stole it from me. Who knows if I will ever see it again. Ice skating was a lot of fun. I feel like I can connect with the kids now a lot more than before the semester. We have gotten to know each other a lot more and it is pretty comfortable now. There are a couple of the kids that like to take pictures a lot with my camera, so I kind of hung out with them for quite awhile, letting them use it. We also played tag out on the ice. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and it is so much easier now that I have built a relationship with these kids and can just hang out with them.

The Scoop on My Classes

2005-01-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

slide
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Well I am getting into the groove of school again. I have been to all of my classes now, but one, which is a Monday night class. Tomorrow morning I have my C++ class again. That is a computer programming language. The reading I have done so far has been interesting, but there is a ton of it. I think I have to have 170 pages of textbook reading done by tomorrow and I am on thirty-five. I will stay up as late as I can reading. And it is only a two semester hour course. There is another class to kind of add onto it called Object Orientation Seminar. I only have that once a week. After that will be Fundamentals of Music. A lot of the stuff I already know, so it is not that hard. I think it will be good to start from the beginning and learn it all though. Today I had Life and Letters of Paul. That should be very interesting. It is taught be my adviser and I have had him for another class, so I know him pretty well. Our book is called The Apostle of the Crucified Christ. It is pretty new and he thinks it is one of the best books on Paul, so I am looking forward to reading that. My Monday night class is Current Worship Leadership Issues. This will probably be my favorite class. We are reading a book called The Emerging Church that I am really looking forward to reading. I really just love learning about worship and stuff. I am also taking voice lessons, but I have to figure out when those are. Finally is curling. I had the first class today. It was pretty fun, just sliding around on the ice. It will be fun to learn and I just talked to someone tonight who said it was a really fun class. I have read 180 pages in Curling for Dummies by Monday though. So overall, I am really looking forward to this semester because I am interested in all the classes; I just hope I can keep up with all the work. Oh yeah, also, my RD found out that he has cancer right before Christmas. He is on sick leave now and it will be weird because he usually comes around to the dorms a lot and hangs out. So if you could all remember him in your prayers, that would be incredible. Well, I'm off to do more reading. God Bless.

Taking off for School

2005-01-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

Taking off
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Brett and I made it back to school fine. The roads were not snowy at all, except a little in Lynden. Actually most of the drive there was no snow at all. Looks like the Kitsap Peninsula was one of the few hit with the latest snow. Just north of Mount Vernon, in Sedro Woolley, we were driving along and there was no snow on the ground anywhere, even in the fields. Then we went over this irrigation ditch and the fields all instantly had snow. I have never seen anything like it. It was incredible. The mountains there were full of snow. It was pretty nice. I also got dark real quick. But now I am in my room, completely settled in. It took me a little over an hour to get everything the way I like it. There is no body in the dorms yet, only three other guys in my hall. Brett and I will probably go out and do something. Oh, I forgot all my toiletries at home so I have to go but all that stuff. Fun. I think that is the biggest pain about moving back and forth. I always forget that stuff.

Pat and Ted's Show @ Coffee O.

2005-01-09T03:09:00.000-08:00

The audience
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Right now I'm sitting in The Coffee Oasis in Bremerton. There is the little show going on and my friends Pat and Ted were playing. They did pretty well and I haven't seen Ted forever. I also got to see a bunch of my old high school friends like Kelsey and her new guy friend Mark. He seemed pretty cool, and I would like to hang out with him more. Right now this band, Some By Sea, is playing, they sound very similar to Bellingham phenomenon Death Cab for Cutie. Oh well, they have a cello so it is kind of neat. I am probably going to hang out with Pat, Brett and Steph tonight, play a Halo 2, one last time before we head back to school around 2:00 tomorrow. This week I have been taking it pretty easy. Getting caught up on sleep and stuff. I have also been playing with my Flickr.com site. If you haven't checked it out yet click on my pics on the right side of the page. My mom has been helping me make cases out of neoprene for my laptop, iPod and camera. They are sweet. I made them out of diving shorts I got at the thrift store.

Mount Bachelor

2005-01-01T20:14:00.000-08:00

jenny
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

For the last five days I have been at Mount Bachelor, by Bend, Oregon. I went with my mom's side of the family. On Tuesday morning we left pretty early in the morning and met up with my Uncle Michael and Aunt Marti in Tacoma. I slept for quite a bit of the ride down and tried to do a little reading, but mainly I just looked out the window. By Corvallis we met up with my friend Jenny and took her with us to go snowboarding for a day. I drove the van over the pass and we got to the Inn of the Seventh Mountain around five. Just before we got there my dad just about hit a deer, he actually nicked its ankle. Anyways, that night we unpacked everything into our two little condos. We had booked our rooms pretty late, so we had two six-person rooms for fifteen people, and they were a couple buildings apart. The rooms had one bedroom, a hide-a-bed and on of those wall-fold-down beds. It worked out pretty good. All the boys and my parents had one room and everyone else was in the other. Our room was the Halo 2 room while the other was reserved as the main living area. We all got pretty hungry and we ended up eating at this Mexican restaurant in town that I thought was pretty good. We were going to go ice skating that night, but they were about to close when we got there, so we went swimming and in the sauna. The night was finished with a quick game of Dutch Blitz and some Halo.
Early in the morning we got up and had breakfast before hitting the slopes. Getting up for snowboarding is never a problem. The night before I can think about how awful it will be and how I would much rather sleep, but in the morning it is no problem. The weather was cloudy the whole day, and I am pretty sure it did not stop snowing once. The morning we spent on the main runs, but they were so crowded that we headed to the backside as soon as lunch was over. We couldn't find Jenny for a couple runs in the morning. We lost her in some trees. But we eventually found each other again. Our lunch was not much of a lunch, a community water jug and some pumpkin bread, but it was enough to get us through the day. The afternoon was a lot of fun and flew by. The snow was much better on the backside and there were virtually no lines. As soon as we got off the mountain though, Jenny and I had to leave to bring her home. She had a flight to Europe the next day. The drive back wasn't that bad at all. There wasn't that much snow on the pass though. We met her dad on the other side of the pass and said our goodbyes. It was about a four hour round trip for me, and I was pretty tired when I got back from a long day. And to answer many of your questions, yes Bjørn has a girlfriend. I know many of you thought it would never happen, but crazy things happen at college. I wish you could all meet her soon, but she will be in Lithuania for the whole semester, so maybe in the summer.
Thursday we took a much-needed break from snowboarding. I was so sore and just flat out tired. My mom got sick and lay on the couch for the entire day. I went with the adults to Sunriver to look around. When we got back we took the kids to this funplex to go bowling. After one game we played in the arcade for a while, which is one of the few times I have ever used an arcade in my life. They always were seen as a waste of money and I was never allowed to play. Maybe sit in the car and pretend. I ended up seeing them in this way even now, not understanding the point. So this was a real treat. And I learned something; they are a lot of fun. The graphics are a lot better and the equipment makes the games quite a bit more fun than a controller at home. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but at least I now know their appeal. We took all the kids to Arby's, but they didn't have any roast beef, so everyone got chicken. I went with the adults to this nice restaurant in town. It had been around since around 1936 or something. It was very nice and I enjoyed having a nice meal with my uncles and aunts (and parents, of course). I was done after that though and went straight to bed to be ready for snowboarding the next day.
Friday was our second day snowboarding and the weather was not much different. The boys and I stayed on the Northwest chair for the majority of the day. It has the most change in vertical feet of all the lifts, 2400 ft. When you are at the top it is hard to believe that you really snowboard down that far. That top is pretty miserable and cold, but once you get down into the trees it is fun. If you stay in the trees you can find more powder. The first part is steep and then it gradually flattens out. The bottom has nice rolling blues that we cruise through as fast as we can. I always look forward to that part. I got so tired by the end of the day though. I could not go any more and had to stop one run before the others. That night we had our Christmas gift exchange. Before that we played the animal name game where you go around hitting people. I would hate to be the people beneath us. I got a USB thumb drive from my cousin, which will be very useful around campus. It makes it so easy to exchange files. No one stayed up for the New Year, we were all too wiped out.
In the morning we had a free breakfast buffet in the resort restaurant because our hot water had not been working in one of our condos the whole time. We filled up there, finished packing and headed out. I switched of between looking out the window, reading and writing this blog throughout the trip, oh yeah, throw in a little sleeping of course. Our only stop was at Jack-in-the-Box. When we got home we unpacked and then we had to go to the church and set up chairs. I was not to happy about that because I don't get paid for it anymore. When we got back Calvin and I took a sauna and then I finished writing this and getting all of my stuff unpacked.

Christmas with the Bulthuis Side

2004-12-26T23:57:00.000-08:00

Bishop Family
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

We went to Christmas with the Bulthuis side of the family today. We left at nine thirty so that we could make it to Olympia in time for church. We went to my aunt and uncle's church, which had just recently gotten a new addition. That was pretty cool to see. Then we went to their house with everyone. It was quite a big group of people, many of my cousins who I have not seen in a while. They also brought two new babies to show the family, Anika and Caden. That was pretty exciting and provided for much the conversation. We had another wonderful meal to finish off a great weekend of holiday foods. After dinner we took a nice walk through the neighborhood as well. Presents were fun because we had all bought presents for ourselves with money that grandma had given us. Then we had her open the presents and guess whom they were for. I was the only one who hadn't gotten theirs yet, so that was kind of sad.

Christmas with the Famly

2004-12-25T23:47:00.000-08:00

Whole Family
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Christmas has gone very well. Christmas eve we went disc golfing during the day and then had a big meal. After that we went to a candlelight service at church. Then, just like every year, we opened our presents that night. Today we hung around for most of the day, well actually I slept till about noon. At about four we went over to the Manning's house and had Christmas dinner. Afterwards we watched Super Size Me, and then we went home and watched Napoleon Dynamite as a family. I also got my grades tonight. I did okay, best semester yet, but not as good as I had hoped. I guess there is always next semester.

Christmas Shopping in Seattle

2004-12-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

The family went Christmas shopping in Seattle today. I had to rush after getting out of the shower and we just barely made the ten-thirty ferry. The ferry ride was nice. Calvin played GameBoy, Markus and I walked around and Mom and Dad talked to some people from church. It was such a beautiful day and I was especially excited to be going to Seattle. We took the Alaskan Way Viaduct, because it just has great views. Our first stop was Glazer Cameras. I looked at some Lomography cameras and my dad checked out the telescope style binoculars for looking at boats from our house. My dad just wanted to know how much this one was, but they took him through this long demonstration of it and then found out it was like a grand. Why do sales people waste their and our time like that? Next stop was one of my dad's favorites, the Armchair Sailor. Basically it is a store full of sailing books. I found this one book of pictures from Norway. A guy whose last name was Eide made it (that is my middle name). We also went to University Village for a while to make our Apple Store stop. I also saw my fifth and sixth grade teacher as we were walking around. Luckily it was a nice day out, because University Village is an outdoor mall. I donât know whose idea it was to make one in Seattle, but I guess it is kind of neat. They have umbrellas everywhere that you can use though. Our next stop was South Center. We were in the mall for quite a while, but got really hungry because we did not have lunch, but not before checking out the mini Apple Store they have there. We decided upon Red Robbin, which is usually pretty safe because Markus can get the Ragin' Cajun Chicken Burger. Of course we also had to make a stop at Ikea. There were actually not that many people there, which was a relief after all of the crowds of the day. The last stop of the night was at Borders in Tacoma. Our family goes there just about every time we are in Tacoma. I am getting to know those books pretty well. Being there makes me wish I could read a lot faster. There is so much interesting information. I could sit in there all day looking at books. On the way home my parents dropped me off at church so I could hang out with the college group for the end of their Christmas party. I got to see a lot of people I have not seen in a while, which was pretty cool. They have grown a lot too. There were over twenty cars in the parking lot when I got there and they started with three people two years ago. I also got to see Brett again for the first time since I dropped him off last Sunday. Well I took seventy-six pictures today and posted about half of them on my Flickr site, so go check them out (click on my pics in the right hand side bar).

Studying for Pyhsics

2004-12-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

studying for pyhsics
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Finals are finally over. It has been a crazy, long week, but it is over and I can sleep now. I went home in the early part of the week to study and got a bunch done. My physics final was on Friday and my Computer Science one was Saturday, the very last final that anyone on campus had. On Friday I studied with the guys in the picture for seven hours. It helped me a lot, and I was glad they invited me, but the final was still pretty rough. My roommate and I agree that the Computer Science final was the hardest we have ever taken. What is a big pain though is that one of my labs showed up as a zero so now I have to try and sort out what happened to it with the TA, and grades are due Monday. I will probably have to work on that next semester. Aaron and I drove to my house last night and then got up at five this morning to take him to the airport. He isn't going to be back next semester, so it was pretty sad. He will return next year though. After I got back I went to sleep again and then got up for church. It was the children's Christmas program, so it was pretty exciting. I thought it was very funny. The kids dressed up in the traditional clothes but had coffee makers and duct tape and stuff. Afterwards Jeff and I went to get teriyaki while a bunch of others wanted to go to Quizno's. So Jeff and I got ours and met them there. I was totally surprised to see Stacy working there again and she had her break while we were there, so I got to talk to her for a while. Then I went to Jeff's and laid around till he had to go to work. I played with his new Gameboy DS (Dual Screens), which is pretty incredible. Now I am back at home, kind of in a state where I am uncomfortable and tired, but not tired enough to fall asleep. Oh, also, many of you know about how I work with kids in Vancouver every Friday night. Well, we are trying to raise money for them to go on this retreat this winter. I am responsible for raising money for four of them. We kind of made this little Compassion child like cards for them with their picture (we only had a picture for one of the four that I have, so we drew pictures of the others). The cost is $25 CAD (~$20.50 USD) per kid. It is only a one-time thing, so no long-term commitment. If you are interested in sponsoring one of them, just get a hold of me. Thanks.

Polar Swim

2004-12-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

huddle
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Sunday I went to North Langley Vineyard for church with Jenny and Jana. I enjoyed it a lot. I had never been there before, but I had heard lots about it. Some of my profs go there and the music is pretty good. It was nice and chill, no drum set, just congas and stuff. A lot of popular music comes from this church too, like 'In the Secret.' They meet and a school and they are not that incredibly big. I mean Harper has more people. The first hour was mostly music and then there is a coffee break. During the sermon they also had a testimonials. It was also communion Sunday. They have couples serve communion at tables around the room. You go to the table whenever you want and they pray with you and talk and then the service is over. After church I took my car down to a park by the river and did some homework. It was so incredibly cold that I almost had to go back to school. My car also started sounding a little weird. There is this extra sound that was never there before in third and fourth gear. At five I went with Amy and Jenny and a bunch of their friends for an end of the semester thing. Of this group of about six girls that are really close, only one of them is coming back next semester. So they invited all there friends out for this thing. We first drove around downtown Vancouver and looked at Christmas lights. Then we went to Stanley Park for the Bright Lights Festival. There is just a ton of Christmas lights everywhere, a petting zoo and a train ride through the woods with more lights everywhere. It was pretty incredible. I dropped my camera when we were getting on the train and it got a little dent. I was looking at it when I was sitting on the train and for some reason noticed that my memory card was gone. I jumped off the train real quick and made them wait for me. I ran over to where I dropped it and started trying to get people to move so I could try and find it in the dark. I was just about to give up because the train was trying to leave and I found it. I think someone had stepped on it, but it still worked fine. I really love my camera. I am surprised, considering it is a Casio. Everyone else that sees it is amazed as well. They always find it pretty shocking home reasonable it was too. After the train ride we went to Cafe Crepe downtown and had crepes. I got dark chocolate and banana and it was incredible. Then we went back to Stanley Park and went swimming in the ocean. It was so incredibly cold out, but it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Then we hopped back in the warm cars and drove back to school. It was an extremely fun night, and I am so glad that I went.

Kim Chi Palace

2004-12-06T14:01:00.000-08:00

Kim Chi Palace
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Friday night was Youth Extreme again. We drove around Vancouver in the rain, measuring stuff with candy canes. You mostly just got some in Stanley Park, but we also went to Granville Island. I had the two guys in the car with Ross and me. They were nuts. Yelling the whole time and screwing around. It is kind of fun though and I think it would be pretty boring if they were not. When we were on Granville Island, Ross got out to do something and I left the door open. I made the kids stay in the back and was holding them there. They started yelling at people going by, saying that they were being kidnapped. It was a little awkward. I had to ground one of the kids from coming out next week because he was cursing a whole lot and trying to see how far I would let him go. Saturday I did homework all morning and afternoon. I got one of my papers on open source software done. It was pretty interesting and I had fun writing it. In the evening a couple of guys and I went to visit Kyle again, he had had surgery on his ACL. He was doing pretty well and was just hanging out in his motor home, with his mom cooking him food and some friends from home watching the football game with him. He seemed to be doing pretty good and can actually walk around on his leg. At six thirty, Aaron took me and two of our friends, Amy and Jenny, to the Kim Chi Palace. It was a pretty good. We got sushi and this BBQ thing, where you had a hot plate in the middle of the table that you cook all your food on. After that we went to Amy and Jenny's room to cook cookies. We stayed there for most of the evening and then I played some Dutch Blitz with the guys.

War Stories

2004-12-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

war stories
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Last night my wing of the dorm played a campus wide game of capture the flag. It was a blast, and very tiring. If you got your flag pulled you had to go back to your base, which was on the other side of campus. So, you really didn't want to get captured. I mostly sunk quietly around. I did have a nice get away in to the woods as well. As I lay there catching my breath I saw an owl. He was just kind of hanging out in the tree. I walked over and watched him for a while. Then I slowly made it back toward their base. I was sitting pretty close to the flag and then they called the game off. Here is a pic of us swapping war stories from the game. Today I went to Lynden to get a check to pay for tuition. I also went to this store and got Dutch Blitz. I can't wait to play.

Further Seems Forever Show

2004-12-01T01:03:00.000-08:00

steve
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

The last time Further Seems Forever came to town the show was cancelled. I was pretty bummed so I emailed the band and they put me on the guest list for this time around. This was really nice because it saved me $26. I also got to bring a friend with me. I was going to bring Matt, but he bailed on me and I took Kyle. So after a day of working on an essay all day I drove into Vancouver. It was at the Commodore Ballroom. I had never been there before, so I was pretty excited. It is probably the nicest venue I have ever been to, but I still like the Showbox in Seattle better. This place even had a coat check though, which was pretty nice. We sat around with some people from Trinity for a while waiting for it to start. It took forever. The first band was Sunshine, but I wasn't incredibly crazy about them. Up next was Further. The new lead singer made it kind of awkward. He did pretty well on the CD, and his own songs were satisfactory live. He didn't handle to old stuff very well though. Hearing the band though was still incredible. I really respect the original three guys that are still sticking it out. Up next was Sparta. I had never heard them before. They provided some good energy, but their songs got a little repetitive. Kyle and I decided to leave part of the way through their set, and get back to school to finish some homework.

Jaimi's Birthday

2004-11-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-28T02:26:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-28T02:11:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-20T22:29:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-20T02:06:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-14T23:37:00.000-08:00

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 PÃ¤rt 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!

2004-11-14T23:36:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-11T01:40:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-10T23:58:00.000-08:00

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.