Free Weekend

About 2 weeks ago there was an unusual change of events - our trip for this weekend had to be canceled because our destination site was unable to host us. For the first time in a month and a half, we weren't going to minister anywhere on the weekend!

Dustin Zupancic (Abbotsford, BC) and Jamie Bower (Airdrie, AB) well represented the creativity and humorous nature of us Canadians by setting up a weekend activity for us all to do. We would go to the major shopping mall in Concord, NH (about a 20 minute drive away) to do a photo and video scavenger hunt! The list of things we were to take pictures of or capture on video was of course impossibly long; they wanted to see what each of the groups would pick to do. I was assigned to a group with my younger brother Caleb, Jessie Smith (Michigan), Annalee O'Dell (Massachusetts) and Jessica Hamlet (Virginia). Even on a trip like this where things were meant to be light, I ended up learning and being reminded of something elementary yet valuable along the way. I quickly noticed a glaring issue of idle time spent figuring out which pictures and videos to take. Being the ever impatient one, I suggested that we at least take some pictures of the easier challenges listed on our sheet while we thought of something to do for the harder ones. What response did I get? "Chill out, relax..." I had to basically bite my tongue and just let things flow. Surprisingly, I actually didn't dwell on 'trying to win' for long, like I would have done in the past. Instead, we just ended up having a great time doing stupid stuff together, including getting two women working in a camera shop to dance with us to cellphone music (we captured that on video)!

When we were finally out of time for the hunt and gathering back at the Food Court, I knew that we definitely weren't going to win the competition, but it didn't matter anymore; I'd actually learned to *gasp* cooperate and let others have their way! Simple concept, yet amazingly difficult sometimes...

(I don't have the pictures/videos from Jessica's camera yet, I'll post some once I get them)

The other thing I figured out over the weekend was whether or not I'd be staying for the next trimester here at Streams. I've resolved that there are still some issues and strongholds I need to face and overcome with the help of covenant community, and this is the best place in the world to do that. I'm going to be here until the end of June for the next trimester, and then for the last week in June and the first week of July, some of us here will be going to Piedras Negras (Black Stones) in Mexico to do missions work. Part of the preparation for that will be in the next trimester upcoming - we will be taught Fundamental & Conversational Spanish at some point during our learning week, along with instruction on piecing together a sermon/message. Although the Mexico missions is not going to be the full 3 months like originally planned (which was disappointing), I am still quite excited to be able to do that. This is gonna be a rockin' spring...