My Weekend in Winnipeg

My weekend in Winnipeg was tons of fun. When I arrived at the airport I came down the escalator to the baggage area, looking for Laura as I came down and as I went through the gate I was attacked by my Aunt Irene. I saw her at the last minute and then I was being hugged. It startled me because I wasn't expecting to see her. Apparently my cousin Ashley was on the same flight. We didn't recognize each other...we even entered the plane one infront of the other!! Craziness! My Uncle Jim (Irene's husband), Uncle Herbie and Aunt Peggy (Ashley's parents) were there too. Laura was there and I eventually spotted her...she looked frightened....I would be too, my family is loud. So Laura was introduced to my family.

Friday night Laura and I went to a coffee seminar at Starbucks, well we made it there for the last 5 minutes anyway. Then we went to my cousin Brendan's house where I am moving to and I got another look at my room. He's letting me paint my room orange!!! It's going to be a mellow cantelope colour. I'm stoked about that. We then met some people for a late supper at Pizza Hut and went home.

Saturday was the day of Sherri's wedding. We were running a little late, we didn't realize it took longer than an hour to get to Morden...oops. Well we finally found the church and thought that it was pretty quiet outside. I had to pee so I ran into the church and low and behold the ceremony was well underway so I peeked through the window and saw that the pastor had just said, "You may now kiss the bride"!!!!!!!!!!! We watched the rest of the ceremony through the windows in the doors. We had the time of the ceremony wrong. It was mostly my fault and I felt really bad. We were standing out in the lobby feeling really awkward when Sherri and Jeff came out of the hall we were standing there and we were the first to congratulate them with tears and hugs...Sher was crying. She said she did ok until coming out. We stayed for the reception and then Vicki came with us back to Winnipeg and we ate leftover pizza and played Scrabble. Goodtimes.

Laura and I did lots of other things and they were all good. My flight home was a bit of a fiasco but what to do? My plane to Grande Prairie was about 5 hours late and when I finally got to GP at 2:30am they had misplaced my luggage:( I got it the next day though so all is well. Oh by the way I move in 6 days!!!!!! YAHOO!

DAY NINE In Israel

Day nine was an interesting day, a kind of disappointing day, and a totally amazing day as well. On the night we arrived in Israel we all signed up for specific project that were going to take place on Day nine so today was the day. I had signed up to go to the Melabev Senior Care Center. The seniors who go to Melabev go during the day returning home in the afternoon and all of them have some form of mild dementia. While there we played word games with them, Markus and Johannes played the violin and guitar, we sang a few songs and then they shared with us the welcoming of the Shabbat. Most of us had not participated in it before and it was really cool to get to share that with them.

When we were finished there we headed to Ben Yehuda Street where we had lunch and did some shopping. So this is where the disappointing time comes in. Lisa and I were shopping and we lost track of time so we were a few minutes late getting to the meeting point so that we could go to the next place which was the Hineni Terrorist Survivor Center. We were going to meet with two victims of terrorist attacks and they were going to share their stories. I really wanted to go and was frustrated and upset with myself for missing it. The funny part is that Lisa and I hung around instead of going back to the hotel because we knew that the bus was leaving from Ben Yehuda at 4pm. We waited for the bus and then got on with everyone and no one noticed that we had not been there!

In the evening we went to the The King of Kings Young Adults Worship service called "Deep End". This is where the totally amazing part comes in...The worship service was awesome. Each service they have a message that they portray through music, video, stories, and scripture. The music was excellent and was in both English and Hebrew. I love going to services in other languages because you can experience the presence of God even though you don't fully understand what is being said...it really puts your life and the "importance" of North America into perspective if you know what I mean.

During the service God really spoke to me about a lot of things. He reaffirmed my move to Winnipeg and my goal of being a missionary. He also birthed new dreams in my heart which I had never thought of before, gave me answers to things that I had been struggling with, and He talked to me about personal things.

On of those personal things was that I had developed a small crush on one of the guys on the tour. I wasn't sure what to do with it, if anything. Now for those of you who know me well know that I'm not one to emote very many personal emotions, nothing that would make me vulnerable so when God spoke ever so clearly to me and told me to tell him I was shocked but I knew that I now had to do it. I still can't believe that I did. When we got back to the hotel I confided in Lisa as to my plan, she thought I was crazy. I told her I was going to do it the next day. I also informed my roommate, Andrea of what I was going to do and she thought it was crazy. I guess you'll have to find out what happened on DAY TEN;)

THREE MORE DAYS OF WORK...

Until I leave to go to Sherri's wedding. I'm excited to go not only because it's Sherri's wedding but because I get to see Laura P-atterson and Miss Vicki! Being in Grande Prairie for four months without seeing any of my friends has been hard. I'm going to be in Winnipeg for 5 whole days...5 busy days that is. I'm going to my cousin Brendan's house to check out my room:) and I'm going to try and meet with the District Manager of Starbucks in Winnipeg so we can discuss my transfer to a store there. I also hear that the Folk Festival is on:) Yeah! It'll be a mini holiday. Good Times.

For The Picture Junkies

The tour that I was on in Israel was with Grafted which is the Young Adults section of International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. If you'd like to see more pics of the tour you can click on the title of this blog and it will take you to the site.

DAY 8

Sorry that's it has been awhile since I wrote anything about Israel. Life has been busy and doesn't look like it's going to slow down any time soon so I thought that I'd make time today to write some more...and I got a phone call from my sister.

We spent the eighth day in the Old City. In the morning we were divided into groups and went to the homes of elderly and disabled people and cleaned for them. I got to see a lot of the Old City that day that I hadn't seen yet because the houses we went to were pretty far from where we started out. The picture below is the team that I was with.
We all met back and went for lunch. I was with Lisa and some others and we went to the Jewish Quarter to eat. After lunch we had some time to practice our skits, dances, songs and what not as we were putting on a children's event that afternoon in the Arab Quarter. Our theme was the Wise man and the Foolish man. We did the skit of the Three Little Pigs but we had to change it to the The Little Monkeys with a lion because pigs are not kosher (just ask Craig) and they don't have wolves there. After we were finished we had a kind of carnival for the kids. There was face painting, balloon animals, juggling, drum playing and lots of candy. They all had a wonderful time as did we.

A.J. the Lion was Dustin, one of the Canadian guys. He did a good job, so good the lion scared a lot of the kids.

Lisa doing some face and arm painting. All the kids wanted to have their names written on them as well as have their face decorated.

Later that night we had some free time to go about the city and explore. A group of us went to Ben Yehuda Street were Lisa and I decided to go for "coffee" at Cafe Hillel. Everyone else carried on and we met up with them later at the hotel.