you know how...

you never really appreciate something or someone until it's gone or at least threatened?

well i never really truly realized how much i prized my singleness and the freedom to choose until sunday.

mum calls me up for our weekly phone date, and i'm really distracted because i have a hard assignment due in about 5 hours. so i'm uh-huhing and mhmmming and straight out telling her that i needed to go. meanwhile on the other end she's telling me about vacation plans. how it'd be nice to fly out to washington state the same day that i get into new york from toronto to visit her old friend. it'd be a nice vacation she says. in my distracted state, vague visions of oceans, mountains, and trees popped so i agreed. never really been on a family summer vacation. then came the clincher.

auntie so and so wants you to meet this boy.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!

he's just like you. came from China when he was 5 or 6. can't read chinese. he's very tall.

i mean i know we've joked about setting me up and everything, but this time she's actually half serious. apparently she really does mean it when she says that she's been telling my aunties to keep an eye out. i find this half-amusing and half-disturbing. I DON'T WANT TO BE SET UP. by anyone other than God that is. it's just....ugh. and i'm only 20 for pete's sake! it'd be normal for an asian mom if my biological clock was running out, but that's not for another 15 years! and even then i don't think i would submit to it. ugh. somewhat funny and somewhat disturbing.

salvation is free, but not cheap

lately i've been very frustrated with work and with myself. i feel like i've hit a brick wall in terms of discussing spiritual things with my co-workers. it's different sharing my faith relationally than during randoms. i don't know what to say anymore, and the stuff that i do say doesn't seem to make any sense to them...or even to me sometimes. so i go around feeling like i have frogs in my throat.

i get update letters from friends, and i feel like a lukewarm christian. here they are on fire for God, and i'm ready to withdraw into my shell. i know it's not good to compare...period. there's thoughts that tell me that i'm not up to par, but honestly who is. i've struggled with legalism all my life. i've had these thoughts all my christian life. "you need to pull your act together and do more." this time though another thought counteracts it, "i can't pay the price. i can never pay the price. *panic* but Jesus has. *relief*" salvation is free, but not cheap. but there's still this gnawing feeling that i'm not giving my all, that i'm not going hard enough. maybe i'm just not being efficient.

i want to pray and goodness knows there's a billion things to pray for, but then there's all these other details that i have to look after. life is busy. project is busier. argh...

i want to share, but sometimes i do wonder if people aren't better just left to their self-deceived lives. i mean they seem to enjoy it, and they don't really want to hear about the gospel. but i suppose the focus then is on this side of eternity and not on the other. oh so easy to say, so hard to apply.

so i guess this is what stretching is, eh? it's more of an annoying push than a painful rip. i thought He'd just stretch without me doing anything, but with this prodding, i have to respond to it. oh gee.

a divine appointment with politics

saturday was a day of outreach. the 26 of us were split up into 4 teams and sent out into the city of calgary. my team was sent downtown to do some mall and street evangelism. i have to admit that it was totally out of my comfort zone as i was leading the team and had to lead out in evangelism. i would have much preferred to have followed someone. we went for two rounds of one hour and one and a half hour each with a lunch break in between to share and brief each other.

during round two i went with kathleen one of the girls that i'm discipling, and after our first conversation she led out in approaching people and initiating conversations with them. the first person that she approached was a middle aged gentleman just getting to eat his subway. in my head i sort of freaked out because he was a guy (even though we had just talked to guys)and he was older. when we explained to him what we were doing he started questioning us about which organization we were with, and that made me even more on edge. i was going "uh-oh" in my head, and was bracing myself for a hard conversation. i could feel a bit of tension, but then as soon as he found out we were christians with crusade all the tension was gone.

he was all excited about what we were doing because he was a born again christian too. then he proceeded to tell us that he was one of prime minister stephen harper's personal advisors!!! it was really encouraging to talk to him about everything that was going on at parliament hill. he told us that there's more christians involved in government now. how there's been an increase in MPs. he told us that the PM was just a regular joe like us on a journey, very down to earth, grounded, and non-elitist. we asked him for prayer requests, prayed for him, and he prayed for us. he was so enthusiastic about the ministry that crusade is doing that i asked him if he would consider joining my support team in the future if i were to join CCC staff. it was WAY cool.

the moment of truth

i am co-directing the project with dave rennalls (mac). :) please pray for wisdom and discernment for us.

rare moment

amy and i went jogging all the way up to nose hill tonight. (nose hill is the largest prairie preserve i think) when we got to the top we saw deer grazing. we were literally 30 feet away from one that just bounded across our trail. we stood there watching them watch us. they tried to smell us, but we were downwind. it was funny as they started to sniff or should i say snort at us. at first amy thought they were trying to figure us out, but then she thought there was also the possibility that they were warning us to stay away, which is a lot scarier. in the end they left us first so we turned and went back home.

horsing around

in keeping with the animal sayings from beth's blog. i really learned the definition of "keeping a short/tight rein" on something or someone. we went horseback riding this weekend on trails. at first i gave my horse at least 3 feet of rein, but it was quite the feisty horse so by the end i had shortened it to 1.5 feet to regain more control of it.

it was a really tall horse. i was so high off the ground. i thought i was going to freak out, but once i got on it didn't seem that bad. i got nervous when it started moving when we were just waiting for the others to get saddled, but that was just silly. horses are suppose to move.

i felt very epic riding on that horse in the forest. it was like i was in the Last of the Mohicans. i kept looking through the trees to see if anyone was there to ambush us. :P

trotting was extremely ticklish. i couldn't stop laughing everytime that we started trotting. i would realy like to gallop one day though. that would be so cool. just flying on top of a horse, pounding away. it would require a lot of balance. my respect for jockeys just went up that much. imagine being on a thoroughbred that's bolting out of the gates. yikes.

milestone

over the weekend i learned how to start a fire from scratch. and by scratch i mean....from embers. it was really frustrating to learn at first. i sat in front of the stove for an hour inhaling smoke, watching newspaper blazing into flame and dying just as quickly. we had no dry kindling so the logs wouldn't catch. i gave up went to sleep, and then woke up 2 hours later to try again, this time with more incentive because i was freezing. by 4am though the log inside the stove had dried up significantly so that it did catch fire. huzzah!

lessons learned:
1. dry wood is VERY important
2.perseverance pays off

my question is...if we go on a canoe trip and it pours, where are we going to get dry wood? do we lug it around? but that would mean less food. it's a catch-22. sort of. i get to paddle in the rain, but then when we set up camp we're going to sit around like wet cats. but then if it doesn't rain...it's not that challenging paddling.