The Bible in a Year: Week 7

This has been a really incredible week for me! Just an amazing sense of God's blessing, lots of discernment and so much fellowship!

This weekend was February Frost, an annual winter retreat involving lots of people from Crosstalk Ministries' various groups and events. It was a really great time, staying up incredibly late playing Dutch Blitz, enjoying amazing times of worship and fantastic lessons with our wonderful guest speaker.

What a lovely bunch! And this wasn't even half of us!

It was such a blessing being able to spend the weekend with lots of amazing young people who are all so passionate about God! We even had a buddy of ours fly in from Winnipeg for the weekend, which made it all the more excellent!

Anyways, I started reading the book of Mark this week, and I'm glad I did, because I also finished Exodus and started reading Leviticus, which was a lot less exciting. So far, Leviticus has not inspired much in me. Lots of rules about offering animal sacrifices and whatnot. But Mark was interesting so far, so I will talk about it a little today!

What I find most interesting about Mark so far is that it starts right off with John the Baptist preparing for Jesus' ministry on earth! I have to wonder why it leaves out the virgin birth and Christ's childhood, but at the same time, I am really impressed by how straight-to-the-point Mark's gospel is. He kind of just gets right down to business and focuses on miracles, parables and teachings.

I don't really have much else to say about that, but I'm very excited for the next couple of days' readings, so keep checking back, in case I find time to do an extra post this week! If I don't, well, see you Wednesday!

God bless,

Recent Goings-On

So you might be wondering what I've been up to recently that's kept me so busy!

Or you might not, that's cool too.

Either way, I figured I should talk a little bit about how I've been spending my time the last couple of weeks!

I finished school a couple of weeks ago, so it's weird that I've had less time to write recently than before. You would think that being done with all my classes would give me more time, but that's not really the case. Christmas is a really busy season for me- and probably for a lot of us, now that I think about it! I was asked to lead the music for the Emmaus Christmas Day service this year, so I've been thinking a lot about Christmas music lately.

We also wrapped up youth group this past Friday night with our annual Christmas Party! That was pretty amazing- we had a gift swap, only we did it "yankee-swap" style and it was a lot of fun to watch people steal gifts from eachother. Hot ticket items included a package of bacon, an Edward Cullen action figure, some Angry Birds merchandise, a lock of hair and lunch for 3 at a tasty dumpling restaurant.

Also this weekend was the December edition of Crossroads! Crossroads is a monthly youth service hosted by Crosstalk Ministries, where I have the pleasure of helping lead musical worship alongside some truly wonderful people! It was a really great service as we celebrated the advent season with a spaghetti dinner, a special Eucharistic service and a ginger-bread house making (and eating!) competition.

 I've also been working, and eating more pizza than is probably healthy, and enjoying the company of friends and family! Last night I had the final meeting of a small study group I was attending this semester, as most of the group are heading back to Singapore next week! A quick shout-out to Abigail, Leroy and Tommy and all of your companions! Praying for you guys to have a safe trip home and looking forward to hearing from you soon :)

Well, that's the end of my exhausted ramblings for now. I'm still pretty wired though so I will probably write up something that's actually interesting and provocative in a few minutes.

Dawson College Peace Garden

This week I had the honor of participating in the opening ceremony of the Dawson College Peace Garden. My voice teacher, Jacinta Luis, wrote and composed a song in honor of the ceremony and had our class perform it at the end of the event.

And I ended up on the front page of the Montreal Gazette! Not as the headline, that was an article about getting druggies out of the gay village, but in a short teaser for the article located a few pages into the first section. But still, a photo on the front page? That's pretty rad! I got excited when my buddy Simon texted me telling me his mom saw me in the newspaper, haha.

Anyways I've linked to the article up on the Gazette's website, take a look at the great shots in the album!

More posts coming later this week, possibly about some really intense stuff! :)

Emmaus Youth Group Leaders' Dinner 2011

Last week, we all went out for dinner to celebrate a great year working with the Youth. Thanks to all of you who made it possible! This was a fantastic season for the group, and it's got a lot to do with the team (some of whom couldn't make it to dinner, sadly). Going into this next season, I'm praying that our team will be as tight as it was in 2010-2011!