November 26, 2006

This was our second day in Russia. It was -20 again
when we woke up at 8:30. We had egg omelets for
breakfast. That was all good.  James L.
came and found us this morning and we walked for a few
blocks to the bus stop and then from there we rode
about 10 minutes until we came to our stop. From
there we walked about 5 or 6 blocks… It may have
been longer, but it was around large apartment looking
buildings, a large park that had a nifty path and
trees, benches and a stage…There were long
streets with billboards everywhere … It reminded
me a lot of how China looked while I was there. It
was really interesting to see the look of everything
inspired by communism. I was mentioning to James
along the walk, I really enjoyed having to walk again.
They walk a lot in Russia because of the lack of
money and because most of the time things they need to
be near are close enough to walk. Anyways, that was
something we had to do all the time in China. I
really really enjoyed being able to go for a crisp
refreshing walk. I’m sure there will be days
where I tire of walking everywhere… but for now
I’ll try my best to enjoy the moving around. It
helps a lot that James keeps us from getting lost.
Oh… I was going to mention, I’ve been
trying to get the team to call me something else than
James… everyone calls James L. James…
therefore, everytime they need to talk to him,
I’m up looking around. Rhys has started to call
me Jimbo. Whatever works. 
Church was interesting… We sat in the very back
of a theatre type room in a school. Apparently the
church rents it out there. It was amazing. Being in
a country, with a Bible in my hand in a country where
not just Christianity, but God has been outlawed for a
good long while was something very awe inspiring and
humbling. The service actually reminded me a lot of
my home church, the New Life Indian Alliance
Fellowship. It was fairly easy going and had a lot of
testimonies, some accompanied by long songs, poems,
sparse singing throughout the service and food
afterwards.
Our team played through ‘It is Well’ and
were able to introduce ourselves, with some assistance
from Olga, a good friend of Bruce and our interpreter
for a good long while during our stay here. Our first
impressions of her have all been good. She has a good
sense of humor and an amazing gift for language. She
never studied English, but simply picked it up on her
own from reading bits and listening. I know she can
speak Turkish, Russian, and English at least… I
don’t know yet if she can speak any
others… But I do know that she just picked up
Turkish during this last little while. James was
saying that he wishes that he could wishes that a gift
that amazing could simply be purchased!
After the service, the grandmothers were very quick
and getting myself, and later the rest of the team to
drink some tea and eat the cookies and cake put out.
They would toss the crowd in front of us out of the
way and toss us into the gap and made sure that we
left that spot with our hands and mouths full…
lol, we speculated that perhaps they were getting us
to eat because they wished to spare themselves from
hearing our fragmented and simplistic Russian
greetings and clumsy responses. I experimented a fair
bit with trying to figure out what people were saying.
It didn’t go so well. Heh, I had to get one of
the more English people to help me out. The people
there are really interesting… But then I
suppose all people who are any bit different from
myself are interesting… foreign or not…
Interesting. Oh, speaking of English people. I met
another man in church today and I had a really good
talk with him… in English… REAL English.
Over this last month, I’ve met people from
England everywhere I went… in really fluke
situations…at least from a normal perspective.
In fact, I never even realized all these people I was
meeting until Janelle brought it up. I’ve been
pondering if there is some other reason that I keep
running into people from England … even when in
Russia. I wonder what God has got planned out. This
is going to be an interesting time here.
For those who are praying for us, keep team unity in
mind…and for our unity to be founded in nothing
or no one else other that our Savior. There are still
some tensions here and there… personality
clashes etc… But I can’t help thinking
that there is more at work here than mere personality.
Pray that our work here will not be hindered.
Tomorrow we start more ‘orientation’ type
stuff and we’ll go through some of our
programming with Olga. We’re going to be going
all over. I wonder what the kids, youth and adults
will think of our programs and all the stuff in them.
I mean, they won’t be able to understand our
songs for the very most part (we have one song right
now in Russian, but it still needs some work). It
truly is humbling when you can’t even converse
with a 3 year old… and it has nothing to do with
the 3 year old’s grammar…It’s
because you can’t keep up with the kid. Ha, all
I can say to them is Hello, I don’t understand
Russian, and thank you… as well as a few other
simple words, greetings and good-bye. It’s a
tough life. The missionaries have quite a different
life. Indeed the Russian culture is different. And
just some things that we would take for granted can
become very difficult. For example, tonight we needed
some groceries, so AJ and I watched our bags that we
still had with us at the door while the others went to
find the food we needed.
Meanwhile a real tough looking guy showed up. Shaved
head, black leather jacket, a scar on his face…
He was on his way out of the door to smoke and eyed us
down so I said Hello to him… He looked at me
real funny and then walked out muttering a
‘Hello’ back. He returned a little while
after and asked if I spoke English. I said yes and
asked him if he did… nope. He ended up getting
a couple of gals from the store to try and figure out
why I was there… One girl who was had been
working the till came and asked why we were standing
in the entranceway of the store, eventually… and
I do mean eventually… was able to get her to
understand that we were waiting for some of our
friends. I don’t know if they were planning to
kick us out thinking we were bums or something…
But I personally don’t think they were… I
think they just thought we were funny looking or
something and wanted to know why we weren’t
inside, nor outside… We were in the in-between
room. Anyways, whatever it was about, we were being
watched over by someone higher than any could ever
fathom or comprehend. Please pray.
Anyways, I must go get ready for bed… I think
I’m almost used to the time here. Have a great
day everyone… Feel free to email me… but
it may be a while before I’m able to respond.
Grace and peace…
~Brother J

November 23, 2006

In a quick summary of how our trip was, I suppose it
would be tiring…But I suppose that is quite
typical of people traveling to the other side of the
earth. I was glad to socialize for a little while
with the flight attendants… We traveled from
Calgary to Frankfurt, Germany, flying directly over
England on the way… that was cool. Then from
Frankfurt, we flew to Moscow…Immediately it
reminded me of Wuhan…very little English, wet
and humid (it was raining a bit), and a lot of big
communist style buildings. I had been in a bit of
panic for a while as I was desperately needing a
washroom. I never found one for a couple hours. The
Moscow terminal #2, in other words, the
uninternational flights, was very crowded and
congested. There was one bathroom on the far side of
the building…We were on the other side with a
thousand Russians going to and fro and standing or
sitting nearly anywhere you could think people could
sit… I’ve been so used to going to waiting
areas where there’s always a lot of room and
everything. I wish I had taken a picture of the
crowds there… It reminded me of China. See here
in North America everything is very individual
centered… in China and Russia, the individual
isn’t important… Only the group. In
groups of that many people there you cease to be
‘important’ … you become just
another number or statistic. Anyways, it was a strange
sensation all over again.
When we finally landed in Krasnoyarsk, it went from
the near Zero degrees we had experienced in Moscow,
and it suddenly dropped to below -20. WHooo! That
was a difference! We had to wait a good while out in
the cold for the building to open where they were
going to put our luggage. Oh, and speaking of
luggage… we found out in Moscow that the weight
limit was a lot different than any of the other
airports. They only allow 20kg per person…
total… for all of one’s luggage. In
short, it would have cost us another 1400 American!!!
God provided huge for us and we were able to get off
with paying only $500 of that. It still was painful
but we had to remember that this is God’s
money… He will take care of everything.
Anyways, we finally were able to get our luggage and
we loaded up to the hilt, a couple of vans. The girls
went to stay with Ronada. She was glad to have them,
and I was glad I didn’t have to stay there as
she had a cat… Quite a playful cat though…
Bandito enjoys string a lot.
Us guys are staying in an apartment. It’s real
nice here and I’ve got a lovely mat on the
floor. It’s real good!  Anyways,
we’ve got to go and shop around the corner.
Keep on praying that God will have His way. Have a
good one!
Grace and Peace
~Brother J

Here are some pictures of my last days in Canada!

Karina was tired after the Commissioning Service, and a little sad too.


But we were able to have a nice time together...she actually stayed around for a WEEK! YAY!




We walked up to River's Edge Bible Camp to see the mountains and take pictures...and I had actually been there before as a kid! It was crazy!!


Nathan kissed the cat good bye.





Our team got to help at the BIG Foothills Alliance Church in Calgary for their service about Remembering the Persecuted Church.


Family Picture...minus Jenna who wasn't able to miss school.



But Tim and I were able to have some fun and even do some Disco moves!!

Guess what? Siberia is actually warmer than Saskatchewan right now!! Ha ha ha...

More updates to come.

Saying Stras-voo-cha to Babooshkas

Stras-voo-cha! (Hello in English!)

I can hardly believe I'm here in Krasnoyarsk, southern Siberia! God is good and has answered many of our prayers! All of our flights were on time and there wasn't much turbulance at all. Our landing in Moscow was a bit bumpy... it may have been the tarmack! We had just enough time to get from one plane to the next (the longest we waited for our flight was 45 mins in Frankfurt.) When we arrived in Moscow, we made our way through Customs without any problems or questions. We walked over to the luggage carosel and there was every single piece of our luggage! James Lesheid and Chad (SEND missionaries based in Krasnoyarsk) were waiting at the airport with taxis to take us to the domestic terminal 20 minutes away. They were flying with us back to Krasnoyarsk. We were so grateful that they were there to translate for us and help us get all of our luggage through security and the ticket agent. Our luggage was very overweight, even with Chad and James taking some of the baggage themselves. We ended up only paying 1/3 of the overweight costs.

We arrived at Krasnoyarsk airport Saturday morning at 6:00 and walked across the tarmack in -20 degree weather to meet Pasha, Paul and Molly. They had woke up early to come and pick all of us up at the airport. Along the way, some of us were able to sleep on the flights, but we as a team decided to try and stay awake until 9 pm Saturday evening, so we could get our bodies in sinc with Krasnoyarsk time. Janelle and Coralie only lasted until 6:30 pm, who both slept through the night and have been sleeping well ever since. Us guys have been waking up earlier than normal (2,3,4 am), so we're hoping our bodies adjust quickly.

Sunday morning we went to a Baptist church. James Lescheid sat behind us and translated parts of the service/sermon for us. I enjoyed the time of testimony/sharing. People of the congregation shared answers to prayer from the week. It was also Mother's Day here in Russia, so a lady from the congregation receited a lengthy poem. She was very expressive, so we "felt" and understood the meaning of the poem that way. At the very end of the service, our team was introduced and we sang "It Is Well" for the congregation. We then experienced Russian hospitality... the babooshkas pushed us guys straight to the front of the food line and made sure we had chai (tea) and sweets in our hands at all times!

Monday and Tuesday we've had time set aside to practice our material with Olga our translator. She is an amazing lady, only 2 months younger than myself. We've already begun to alter scripts to fit with Russian culture, and we've been relearning parts of our Russian songs. We've realized that we have a lot of work to do before we do our first 2 programs on Wednesday. We are very fortunate to have James L and Olga travelling with us for our entire time here in the Krasnoyarsk area. They are great resources!!

Well, our bedtime is drawing near. Janelle and Coralie will need to be alert tomorrow morning as they try out the Krasnoyarsk bus system on their own for the first time tomorrow. They're coming to the guys apartment on their own...CRAZY!

Prayer Requests from the team:
1. Adjusting and recovering from jet leg
2. School Programs - know who to talk to about coming into the schools and how to communicate gospel truths/virtues
3. Language understanding & learning of culture
4. Creative use of time as we will be travelling a lot and doing numerous programs

Spech-on-eh-noy-che (good night!)

YAY!!

HI EVERYONE!
I have now crossed the Prime Merridian!! Your today is my yesterday!! I made it to Krasnoyarsk!! Safe and sound!
More updates to come!!
Thanks for your prayers!

The Journey Begins!

Hello my faithful friends!
I will have some pictures on here soon of my last week of the training I had at VTI. Now, I am actually flying! I departed from the Calgary airport at 5:45 pm. I should arrive in Moscow some time on Saturday. CRAZY!! How am I posting this message while I am airborn? EAZY!! I have a lovely fiance who I can now get to do my dirty work...or...uhhh...who can help me out in that area! -_^ (I love you K!)
More updates to come...
Talk to you later.

There and Back again...

Well, we had a good trip. We left the training centre here about 2 weeks ago and traveled to Okatoks, Calgary, then to Prince Albert, then Nipawin. After that we went to Drumheller and Bysiker…I don’t know how to spell that… ;)

Here are some of the highlights!
Okatoks: This was a youth event, and our very first program on fall tour. We had a lot of issues with this program… Heh, the projector turned off in the middle of the songs… the laptop froze on a video…we did a song we hadn’t practiced because of a lack of communication… But anyways, everything DID work out really well. We stayed at Dan Schroeder’s place…(He’s the youth pastor). It was a great time being there as they are very very missions minded. It was really great.

Calgary: - Here we did a children’s program in Foothills Alliance Church. That is a BIG church… wowee! We stayed at the Good’s house…Melissa Good was on Karina’s team 2 years ago…
The next day we went to Rhys’ church. They meet in a community hall and it was great to see all the different cultures and peoples that met there. It’s a very ‘cultured’ church :D…This was also the first day I spoke a sermon on tour… that was scary… heh.
Oh, I had forgotten to mention. While we were there, we had a big snowstorm. So we had to drive real slow as to make sure we didn’t run over anyone. It’s absolutely crazy…the weather here in Calgary area. Weird.

After Calgary we did the … 8 hour drive I think it is, back to Prince Albert. It gave us time to listen to some of the Chronicles of Narina by C.S. Lewis on CD. That was fun. 

Prince Albert: It was great to be home again. All the guys were staying at my place and it was fun to hang out there. lol, Mom kept spoiling us there... lol, I was always full. It can get really hard to eat all the time!

While we were there we were able to tour NCEM, Northern Canada Evangelical Mission. Dad works there doing a lot of camera and computer work for Tribal Trails...come to think of it, Mom does a good deal of work there too.
Anyways, at NCEM we met up with Tim Gradin, Karina's father. He did an overview of prison ministy and the missionary work with Native people. He's the one who took us to both prisons. heh, he had previously joked about taking me to jail... ;D Mrs. R, (Howard Rensberry's wife) took us into the woman's jail. It was a really humbling experience. We did three programs in the ladies jail and 1 in the mens. They were all very well behaved and particularily attentive in the men's jail. It was a real great time we had to be with them.
On Friday we had a youth program at the Community Bible church...(Karina's church) It was fun and it was great to see so many new and old faces. There were several other groups who came out too. That was real fun. :)

Nipawin: After leaving PA, we arrived in Nipawin, my other home. We spent several days there and I was glad to hang out with Grandma and with all my classmates from last year who were attending again. There were some new people there that I knew, and some that I was able to meet for the first time. It was great! :D It was hard to leave both Nipawin and PA...

lol, on the way back to Alberta, we got ourselves lost and it probably delayed us almost a half hour. What was interesting though was that was what God had wanted for us. We showed up just in time to help a couple vehicles that had ended up in the ditch. There was ice all across the road. One huge layer. It was absolutely awful to drive on. Anyways, it was a great adventure to push out these people.


I'm running out of time... so I'll just say, ALberta was good! We had a few programs in different places for all ages and it was a real blessing to be there. We found that when we don't tape our programs we do them consistantly very well... whenever we tape them, something goes wrong. O.o Wierd.
At Coralie's place they celebrated all our team's birthday's this month. That's Coralie, Janelle and myself. It was great to be a part of another person's family get together.

And now we're home...my third home. VTI. Keep praying that God will move in the people the different places we go...and beyond for that matter. Consistanly we saw God move. It was incredible. People everywhere are so thirsty for something more than what they can get from tradition or religon...or attending church all the time. We want to go to these places to let God refresh them and revive them to do the tasks that He's given to them.
Keep on praying! God is doing amazing things!!!
Take care everyone! Go in God's grace!
~J

WE BE BACK!

We made it home... I'll fill you in on the details later!

It all started when...

Bryce found his sock that was lost but now was found...and there was much rejoicing...on his part anyways ;)
We finally made the tour to PA a few days ago... and today we are leaving again...:( We had a couple prisons that we did programs in and both went really well...Better than even our host Tim Gradin, Karina's dad, had anticipated. We had a really good time with all that and then we finished off last night with a youth event at Karina's church, the Community Bible Church. There were near 80 people and it was a great time. We were all very drained and fatigued, but the Adrenaline got us through. Don't worry we had a great sleep! :) I'm up a little earlier than some of the guys today though. I wanted to send this before we head out to Nipawin today.
Keep praying that God will do amazing things in the hearts and llves of people as we're going. I'm real excited to see what He'll do.
Take care everyone! Oh, and get this! The two girls and myself have our birthdays in November! Crazy!
Have a good one!
Go in the Grace and Peace of the Father
~J

Happy Halloweeneven

Howdy there everyone...
Tour is now underway. We're in Calgary right now for our day off. After tonight we'll be heading up to Prince Albert and Nipawin. I look forward to seeing all of you in that area again.
We had a great time in Oakatoks and at Rhys' family church. It was informal and multi-cultural... it was really great being there. I spoke my first sermon this tour at that church... it was pretty unerving at times that morning... that's for sure...
The morning of that day we looked out and there was a good 4-6 inches of snow... lol... it sure made getting to the church an adventure. God watched over us however, and we made it there safe.
I'll hopefully make another update soon. Take care everyone!
~Grace and Peace

Alas we have Survived!

We did our full length GA (General Audience) program today at Bethel CHurch. We made it! lol, I was so proud of my team! They really did their best and God let us pull it off! On top of it all, AJ's folks came down to see him here and they were able to see him do very well at Chalk and drumming... it was good. :P
To top it off we ended tonight with a good ol' game of RISK. And get this! It didn't take us any time at all! Bryce won... took the whole world, all 4 of us... in ONE TURN!!! The fifth turn. It was truely impressive.
To celebrate this occasion and the last week of our training camp, I shall post this graphic of wisdom. Enjoy. (I'd love to make it into a T-shirt someday... ^_^)

Ever have those days?

You know... the ones where you want to sit back and ponder why things are... why you feel the way you feel... why...
I had been talking with Helmuth the other day. He had made the statement that humans since the fall have not been normal.

What is normal?

So I thought about it... normal is relative. Your normality is dependant upon your perspective of what you define normal as... (ex. Normal = common Would mean normal is Chinese or at least made in China)
Therefore, I suppose from a human perspective, fallen man is 'normal' but from God's eyes it still would appear to Him 'abnormal'. There has only been one man who stayed truely normal all His life, and that was Jesus.

Normal.

~Grace and Peace

Frosty Morns...

Hello there everyone. It’s been busy at training camp…again…
That seems to be a reoccurring theme! We’ve working on getting down some dramas and new songs, puppet scripts, writing songs and scripts and Bryce and I have been working on sermons. We’ll be doing a quite a few of those this year. It can be overwhelming sometimes when everything is happening all at once. Anyways, we’ll be doing our best here. Again, if anyone wants to drop me a line, I do love emails, and thank you so much to all of you who have been keeping in touch. I really appreciate all your encouragement.
For an update for anyone wondering where exactly we are going, though this is an extremely vague list:
Fall Tour - North America…Russia – Ulan Ude, Krasnyarsk(I think that’s spelled wrong), and Moscow…England – London and elsewhere…Germany – Frankfurt (I think…), and again, elsewhere…
After that we have a break for a little more than a week and then we’re back at it until Aug.1 in North America going to churches, camps, city streets… wherever. It’s all good.

It’s been really interesting taking a course here called ‘Perspectives’. It’s all about missions, the history, the future and the present. It can be summed up with this statement: ‘Missions exists because worship doesn’t’…The purpose of missions is to give them the chance to know the God who made them so they can worship Him. (see Revelation 7:9)

Anyways, I’ve got to get back to the workforce here… Have a great day everyone.. I’ll try to keep you all updated. God bless you all!

JB from India...

JB was this guy from INdia who came to our training camp to talk to us about faith. About halfway through his hour long sermon, he set out a chair and asked if we had faith in that chair being there, not being a figment of our imagination. Naturally, we all were like, yup, that's real. That's a chair alright. And then he asked us if we believed that JB was standing in front of us. Again, naturally we all said, yeah... And then he shouted back, WRONG! He took off his shades, hat, and vest, and started to talk with a Canadian accent!!! It was Darrell, our speaker who we were told couldn't make it!!! That was wierd. We found out that he did play the part of JB accurately, as in sharing his testimony, but then we were so confused for a bit.

Just when you think you know a guy... O.o

Anyways, it's been good here. The Phillippine team is having a grand time trying to adapt to the jetlag. They did make it there safely... I don't know much more than that. These next two days are our spiritual reformation days, where we can relax a little and spend some time with God; refocussing for the second half of training camp. Please pray for us to be able to focus on God when things are easy and when they're hard, instead of the 'task'. We're called to worship God, everything else is secondary. If we give him our first place, then everything else will fall into their proper placement.

One thing that excites me this year is that the theme is STAND. That's what we need so terribly much over here in our conplacent countries. We need to draw the line and actually STAND for Christ. In our work, at school, in our community, and in our entire life. It's not a one or two day thing. We are called to recklessly abandon ourselves, completely surrendered to Himself, no matter the cost, no matter the odds, no matter what the outcome. We are His.
May the Grace and Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all...
Brother J

Well, there's that!

We did our first children's program today! It went well. It was hard, and required a lot of energy, but it all went very well. There was about 30 people... 17 kids, 6 teens and a handful of adults. It was fun and all went well, for all who were wondering. Tonight we're seeing off the 4wrd team! THey're off to the Philippines! So if anyone is ever trying to get a hold of me I'm usually here on monday... Well, this week I will... next week I shant. Anyways, have yourselves a good day! Keep prayin for all of us! We'll be needing it! O.o
Grace and Peace
J

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility

I'm not so certain about the great power thing... But I've recieved a lot of responsibility as of yesterday. I'm going to be the Team Leader of F&F63, as well as the Music Coodinator, a Puppeteer, and one of the Preachers(Bryce is the other). Bryce is the Drama Coordinator and other things... (i have the smallest list)...Rhys is a bunch of other things... Luggage guy, to creative teacher, to soundman. Coralie is our driver and ladies' advisor. It's all good. Janelle is the children's coordinator... tis a hard job. AJ is the youth guy... He's perfect for that part... He's always got a positive look on life and energy to boot! I think that's everyone... heh.
Anwyays, have a good day, I'm going to go look at the new snow that just fell last night. 3 inches! Farewell, Namarie
Grace and Peace
~J

The Infamous Training Camp

Well, I've made it through the first 2 days of training camp with only minor scratches. There are two teams here at VTI, one team, 4wrd is going to the Philippines and then there is the Friends & Followers team, which is my team. There are 6 of us now. Bryce, Reese, AJ, Jenelle, Corellie (sorry about the spelling guys) and myself. It's really been a blast so far, challenging and I know it'll get a lot more busy, but it's been really good. Thanks to all who are still praying and supporting me through this. We're really looking forward to how God is going to work. Oh, for all those wondering how my health is, primarily with my back, it's been quite exceptional. I need to work on still getting more sleep, but it's been a joy to see how God has been taking care of my back.
Right now the girls are out at a retreat, and the guys will be going on the same kind of mountain climb retreat tommorow morning. We spent today trying to build up the guys on our team. So, there was just the 4 of us and we had to accomplish tasks on obsticle courses of sorts. It was really fun and it did help build us up. The two girls on our team are the only ones on our team of six older than I. So, I'm the oldest guy, but I'm still pretty young. It's a strange feeling. Well, I'm looking forward to how God is going to move. Please pray for us!

Thank you everyone! Grace and Peace from our Lord Jesus Christ!
~James

Aug26

Twas the day of Jordan and Valean's wedding and all through the morning, everyone was sleeping, or else they were choring... being all ready for the big wedding day, but James and Karina were elsewhere that day...

That morning, we became engaged! :O THe soonest we'd be getting married is Nov next year...2007 so check back! And pray, VTI is still underway!

my email is: encaitar777@yahoo.com
if you want to chat... I'll have more info soon I hope! :D

howdy there everyone!

Well, it's the 21st of the month we refer to as July. I've been trying to prep for the coming year with VTI while I've been working at Davidner's western wear... that's kept me busy for about the last 4 weeks. It's been good there, but I don't think it's my profession... It's a great oppertunity to learn more and gain more experience. I've been trying to learn a little bit of Russian on the side... I can say goodbye hands down now, but I have a hard time with a lot of different other phrases... It's hard to make your brain look at an alphabet and reinterpret the sounds that the letters should be making... Heh, I think it's the closest you can get to Greek without learning greek! Meh, we'll see what happens...

The family all got home a little while ago from their trip to Ontario... Hey to everyone down there that I wasn't able to see this summer.... I really really wanted to be there... Perhaps I'll get to see you all soon. I miss Ontario sometimes... heh...

However, my time flies, and I must send out some more letters and some sincere thank you letters. Have a great day everyone! Keep prayin for me if you think of me. It means so much to me!!! Shalom. (peace)

A another new day...

Well, I started working at Tim Horton's this last week, six days in a row, and I found out something important... I don't think I was created to work fast food!

I had to finish there for health reasons... the long hours and stress work it's way up when you're there for a while. I found a new job I start tommorrow at a Western Clothing type store. I like the smell of leather there, and I think there is much more of an emphasis with the customer. That's the part I missed. Anyways, I am hoping that God continues to lead me in where I will work and how it will go, so I'll continue trusting Him.

Please pray for me as I continue to prepare for VTI!
~James