Today I am wracked with bittersweet thoughts...
Our team is now on the road, and we're in the Vancouver area. We'll be heading to Saskatchewan tomorrow... yay for long road trips.
For the last 2 days we have been working with the UGM, Union Gospel Mission and doing programs and other stuff around there to encourage the staff and the homeless. It has been a really cool time of growing spiritually (especially... though we've all been growing sideways as well)...
The other day, the team was approached by a deaf lady on the street and nobody knew what to do with her... that was until Nathan walked up, tapped her on the shoulder and started to talk with her in sign language... :D That was a really great experience for the team. I actually wasn't there to see the event though. Karina and I were in the Indian Embassy place when the team met the deaf lady... we had to wait about 3 hours to get through the line up... It was a busy day.
We were also at a church youth group last night and were able to do a program for them. That was a fun experience too.
Today though was a lot harder on me.
We as a team had planned to have some time to relax and take in the Vancouver sights. We went to stanley park in the rain and the team went down to the ocean front. Karina and I were talking at the van for a couple minutes, then we locked up the van and caught up with our team. When we got back, one of the girls was missing her backpack of clothes and her cell phone. Karina was missing some loose change that was in her backpack under the seat and my laptop bag was gone. (laptop, portable hard-drive, cds, mouse, wallet... flash drives... everything was gone... including my folder of my own written songs)
*sigh*
That was about 6 hours ago...
I suppose when you're on the road a lot and your bag becomes your life, if it disappears... it's kind of the same feeling you'd have if your house washed away.
So, I guess this next while is going to be a lot of making lists of things I'm going to have to find all over again. I'm not really looking foward to that. Really though, there are two things that trouble me about all of this the most. It's losing a lot of the pictures that I probably don't have anywhere else... (perhaps of my honeymoon and being in Ontario with Grandpa before He passed away) I hope I have those somewhere...
and the other is the songs I've written...
I hope the same God who has inspired to date, will help me to write again... and maybe... maybe even a little better.
I know that God is in control... whatever comes will come because this life is temporary. I know that some day we will wake up and everything in this physical world that we have cherished will be gone. The only bit that is left will be what we have done for Christ, that is, what Jesus has done though us for His glory.
I pray that I won't let this theft make my heart cold for the homeless... there are a lot of people out there that are desperate for love.
