Light in the Darkness

God is faithful.

Even in the midst of our darkest times, He shows up. He calls out. He proclaims salvation to the broken and to the hopeless He makes a way.

God gave me the chance to go to Urbana 2018 last December and if I hadn't gone I don't know where I would be now. But that's a story for another time. ;P One thing though: we were studying the book of Revelation. And one session we were looking at Revelation 18 and focusing on the call in verse 4: "Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of [Babylon], my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues."" From the study and context it is not Babylon literally, so much as figuratively. To the churches Revelation was written to, Babylon was the Roman Empire and various aspects of the culture they felt compelled to compromise with in order to prosper or gain some sort of benefit, whether it was trade guild idolatry, or other things which would allow them to fit in rather than face persecution or exclusion. Reflecting on that we were called to think through what ways we compromise with the world and culture around us and how we need to repent and turn back to God and His ways (in light of who Jesus was revealed to be and His worth :P).

Anyways, in light of that thought, my interaction with my coworkers the other day has drawn me to reflect on God's graces and mercies.

We were having a board game potluck night thing at a coworker's condo. Lots of talking. Lots of food. Good times. Our boss was there too. She's the best. :D We played code names and had lots of fun. Later when people were leaving a game that had been on the table all night was brought up to be played. "Cards Against Humanity". :P It's a pretty bad game. Really not appropriate content for younger people. It's essentially an adult version of "Apples to Apples", but like, really bad, mostly sexual content. Reaaaaaaally not life-giving or enriching in any way. I knew it was bad, but I had never played, and thought, well, if no one else was going to play somethign else, I might as well play? 

I think I probably should have said no. :/ Even if it meant being a little weird, it may have been a better idea. We are called out of Babylon. Not to stand at the edges. What happened to Lot? His heart slowly was drawn to the things of Sodom and he lost his wife and everything he thought was worth pursuing. 

The grace though. One of the cards was "what makes life worth living?" and I had "The Holy Bible" in my hand. :] I didn't care that I wouldn't win that round. I had to do it. God is what makes life meaningful. Had I never read of His faithfulness and all He had done through the cross to bring me true life I don't know what I'd be doing. His faithfulness to call me out of the darkness is so much greater than I frequently see and so much more than I can imagine. I pray He uses the time I spent building relationship for His glory and even the testimony the next time when I say I'd rather not play to speak truth and love to them.

May I have eyes to see Him and ears to hear Him everyday. :]

D.Fa

Day 5 and Part of 6

Well, yesterday was fun. lol...

It started off with me leaving later than I had originally planned and being held up by my deciding which shoes to wear. lol... Waste of time, not actually important, but really, I feel way cooler when I wear Converses. I like to pretend I am cool. lol. I want to buy more cool clothes. >.> My old clothes are all big and lame and ya......... Not important. The only thing is that I didn't buy anything to wear in winter when I was in EA, so there is nothing new to wear when it gets cold.

That's not important.

I had one class and one lab. I don't understand most of what we are learning in Phys Chem... I do not know how to integrate. >.> My friend KG was just nodding along the whole time during class though. This is making me think he is way smarter than I usually think he is.

My lab was pretty boring. Just the lab manual, normal procedures, a hilarious video on lab safety and we were done two hours early.

Between the class and lab I had two meetings scheduled. They both fell through though and will have to be rescheduled. I was really looking forward to the second of those two meetings. He pretty much filled out everything on the survey, so it would have been a very interesting conversation.

After the lab finished I went home and had a large lunch.

CW had repaired my bike! You see, I was looking forward to riding my bike in the summer, warm weather and the warm breeze, just flying down bike paths. Looking cool, feeling free, having fun. Green grass, white clouds, blue skies, birds tweeting, cicadas humming. Summer in all it's greatness. But I had a popped inner tube and CW was gone until September and I've been busy and he's been busy. Either way, the weather has shifted. It's like summer in Eastmain again... CW says it's like summer in the Yukon. >.> That's not summer.

So, we biked back to campus for 'the event formerly called weekly meeting'. A bunch of people went to ACF this week though. They should really not be on the same night. lol. (ACF = Asian Christian Fellowship) I got to meet another group of excited first years and some second years too. We had a talk about the Spirit filled life. It was good. We were in a funny room though. lol

After we went to Oasis and played some board games. We (JS, MC, DB, AL and I with some other onlookers) played a game called 'Killer Bunnies'. It is pretty hilarious, but a little hard to understand at first. The rule book is pretty funny too. You have to get the magic carrot. There are 12 carrots and you don't know which one is the magic one until the end of the game, so for a long time you are trying to kill the other bunnies, get carrots and keep your bunnies alive until all 12 have been collected. Then you find out who the winner is! I got 5 carrots. I won! Yay! It was a long game though. lol.

Biked home and I think I went to bed. Oh, anime first, then bed. lol. Also dinner.

This morning I had my second driving lesson. It went way better than the first one. No real reason though. xP I haven't really been in a car very much since the first one and that was like 3 weeks ago or something. lol It was good.

Ya, so that's it so far.

Ttyl.

D.Fa

PS. Latvia! w00t!

Day 1, Kinda.

So, today, this morning, I finished moving all my stuff to my new house. Well, most of it was there already and it has not been a work in progress, I just needed to move the stuff I have been using lately and commit to the move. In any case I moved the stuff.

Also, I wasn't really there today. lol. Frosh orientation from 9:15 to 5pm. Then I bussed home (lol) and started organizing my room as I ate free cookies. lol. Then we had three RISK matches. I won the first one. I caused the second victory. I was erased from the match despite my loyal alliance to DZ and so he won. That took most of the night. Well, ya, pretty much all of it except the brief instant noodle dinner.

I signed up to be a frosh mentor. That means meeting with at least three first years at least three times this semester. I don't want to be minimalist on this task though. I want to actually help them. The thing is that I don't actually know anything about University. lol. I know how to get around it, but I don't know basically anything about University life... >.> Gotta study up on that too... lol.

Ttyl. I gotta sleep so I can go to school early on a Saturday morning and help the new kids move in. >.> (I may have to do this on Sunday too..?)

D.Fa

If You Were Stuck in a Tree With 5 Lobsters, What Would You Do..?

It's so nice being done with all my assignments. lol.

In an hour, for an hour is Earth hour, ie turn the lights off for an hour to save the environment or whatever. I remember two years ago it was a Saturday and we had YF during Earth hour and we just prayed on the stage in the old building. We prayed for boldness. I remember that. I remember CC was there and her friend. Those were the first people I remember being there. I could name off the rest of the YF, but, nah... lol.

Tonight I'm going to sing worship songs with guitar and read the Bible and just have an hour with God. I'm gonna print out some lyrics sheets using RL's computer and ya. I've got to hurry up, but ya. I'm excited.

Many people I know don't like all these 'trendy' 'raising awareness' things like not buying gas on a day to make them lower the prices. Also some people don't like environmental fads and I agreeable admit conservation biology is very biased. Save the seals, they're cute. Kill all the crazy joint-legged bug-face monsters that eat bunnies. I digress. I will use my hour for God.

Also, Quelf is an amazingly fun game. If you get the chance to, play it, and if you want to play it, you should suggest it. By the way, I don't think Chickens can catch rabbies, mosquitos don't kill you, plasmodium vivax does, sharks don't actually kill very many people and I'm sure most of the taxis in New York aren't moving fast enough to kill anyone. That just leaves poisonous snakes which are indeed quite bad for you.

Ya. *shifty eyes*

Ttyl.

D.Fa

PS I just ate a bag of french fries. McDonald's dipping sauces are okay.

BLOCKUS ga Hoshii!!!

So, ya.

Today after church was the YA christmas party thing. We ate some food. Then the main event happened: the 5$ gift exchange. It got so intense.

There were like 20 people involved in this exchange. but there were only so many covetted gifts. These included : Blockus (so fun. its a board game), a free starbucks drink (any size, any drink), two pillows. That is all. xP. And Everyone wanted Blockus so badly. so badly! also everyone had something else that they wanted individually (I wanted the chopsticks!!!!) On top of this fact there is also the fact that a board game is played with more than one person and that a number of people lived in the same house. So on every round (one person would choose to either open a new gift or steal a previously opened gift) once blockus was stolen the intense trading game began (you could only steal the item once per round and no steal backs). There were alliances back and forth. But you could only have so many people helping you because only people who had chosen a gift so far could steal once stolen from. So we had to wait until our other roomate had started. We would swipe it, they would trade then swipe it, we would trade then swipe it like 20 steals in a turn.... Then because we couldn't lose to them we got like another few guys on our alliance although one was never really helping us, one was only interested in helping his girlfriend and another guy just wanted the pillows. In the end the game went to KP who is the girlfriend of my housemate and also lives with the girls, so its like everyone won. xPPPP All that time and stealing for nothing... xP I got my chopsticks, he got his pillows, she got the starbucks. Everyone (pretty much) got what they wanted. I can't believe we forgot to ask AL to steal for us. xP (LOL.... I just remembered what I told her about why we couldn't trust her, which is not why we didn't. xP) CW was last so he couldn't help.

I understand if you havn't been following that complex explaination... xP

I then made mashed potatoes.

We ate a lot of food.

We saw the Ottawa Christian Chorale's "Unending Song". They were pretty good.

I now have a box spring under my 3 mattresses... xP So high. I HAVE TO jump to get into bed.. xP

My thumb is still bugging me, but not as much...

My moustache is amazing. xPPPP

Ttyl.

D.Fa

First Impressions

"Hey AL, do you know what it's like to be a YA..? Neither do I, but it seems like a lot of fun. I also don't have a girlfriend."

So ya... If this post ends up at my blog it will be the first to have done so from my phone.

Anyways, today after church I went to T&T with some YA. They were buying food for a hot pot at H(?)'s house. JS bought so many pakages of instant noodles...

T&T was less crowded, more chinese and a tiny bit less cool then I thought it would be. I had never gone before, but a bunch of people I know were practically taking family vacations there when it first opened. I had wanted to go for a while, but its kinda in the middle of nowhere... So, ya...

YA always seems to be having so much fun. Like Friday they went to McDonalds and played Risk at 11pm. They are always having meals together and just going out for Pho or something after church. I've been invited before but always end up having work or something...

I'm really looking forward to my first YA night.

D.Fa

P.S. So, Apparently I still have to edit it after I send it otherwise it looks funny and stuff...

Predestined Fate

"Hey AL, I don't know if you know what happened, but I'm sorry for not saying anything before leaving. I don't have a girlfriend, but don't worry, I'll have a cool scar soon."

So, ya. today was cool.

In class we made sushi and got our final marks.

Then my dad and I went to look at laptops and netbooks.

Then I procrastinated and started filling out an OSAP application.

Then I went to worship practice. I wasn't scheduled this week, I was filling in for JL. I really like singing worship songs with everyone.

So, ya. Practice ended early, so me and RL explored the church. The attic appears to be empty, but the ladder wasn't tall enough.

Then we played Settler's of Catan for a bit, until YF started. Then we talked about westfest and prayed. Then we divided up the tasks for stuff we could do today to prepare.

I volunteered to help lift heavy things.

So, we were going to move the pingpong tables from upstairs to the gym downstairs. On that funny, like, 6 step set of stairs I was helping HO move one of the pingpong tables, when like the bottom kinda fell off and one side kinda hit my eyebrow.

I felt something dripping from my eyebrow, so I put my hand on it. *shiver* It was blood. So, I put the table down. By now I felt like I do when I start fainting... When this happens, lying down always keeps me conscious, so I lied down with my feet up. This helped. Also, I kept my hand on the "wound" like they do in anime to keep bleeding minimal. I mean it was dripping *shiver* and it dripped on my glasses once.

H(?) and JS were attempting to give me first aid, ie with a pretty useless first aid kit and very little experience doing it. They were icing my eyebrow with a lime crush freezie. lol.

Pastor DB called my parents and my dad was on the way.

I hadn't had anything to eat since "lunch" at like 11:30, when we made sushi.

Once before I had gone for a flu shot in the morning without having breakfast. I kinda started fainting I think. They were like giving me juice to get my blood sugar up or something. So, after I told JS and H(?) that I hadn't had lunch, they went to the kitchen to get me some food. JS found "crackers" which were actually cookies. I then remembered that stuff and asked if there was any juice.

I ended up being apparently force fed freezies by JS. He was like stuffing them in my mouth. lol.

The alcohol wipes weren't that bad. I didn't really feel that much from my eyebrow to begin with...

So, ya. Paster DB was making jokes about scars.

So, ya. Thanks JS and H(?) for taking care of me. You guys are awesome! I hope I'm that cool when I'm a YA.

When I got home I ate spaghetti and watched Reborn.

My bio essay is due on Monday... but I have more time tommorow then I normally would, so it should be possible to finish it.

So, ya.

D.Fa

Okay, during the summer I watched this anime "Moyashimon" because of a recomendation by W(?) who was also taking reach ahead gr. 12 advanced functions. The anime is about, like, this guy who can see microbes and goes to Tokyo Agricultural University or something. At the end of every real episode is a small "Microbe Theatre" which is a short episode with oryzae as the main character. It's a really cool show!!! Enjoy Episode 1 of Microbe Theatre! It's a really cool show!!!