Winding Down

Hello all! My time here in Canada has come to an end. God has blessed me in so many ways it is ridiculous, but I am so filled with joy that He did. What a Mighty God we serve! So I can't remember where I left off on my last post but I will start with last week.

On Monday evening of last week I went with Josh, Lisa, and the kids to Burnaby to meet the church group that would be working with us from powerplant. It was so cool to get to be apart of powerplant since that is when I first felt a call to be involved in church planting. The group we worked with were from Washington. We had a great time meeting everyone and getting to know other church planters as well.

On Tuesday we had a family day and Sarah and Jason decided to take me to Whistler since that is one of the places I hadn't been and still wanted to go to. Along the way we stopped at Shannon Falls a huge waterfall just off the highway on the While we were there we had a picnic lunch in one of the most peaceful settings! It was marvelous! After Shannon Falls and the picnic we loaded back up and headed on to Whistler. The drive was gorgeous, absolutely breathtaking. Mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. Once we made it to Whistler we went to Whistler Village to pick up a map and to seek advice on something cool we could do. We decided to go to Olympic Village and participate in one of the tours there. Well as we started towards Olympic Village it turned into an adventure and to say the least we drove an hour on 14 kilometers of highway back and forth between Whistler and Olympic Village. Finally we made it up to Olympic Village, along the way we saw a bear right next to the road. We got out and went into the visitors center and wanted to participate in the ski jump tour but they had closed it early so Jason and I decided to shoot at the biathlon range. That was such a cool experience and I love being able to say that I shot a gun where world class athletes also shot in the Olympic games. The day was awesome!

Wednesday was a lazy morning, but in the afternoon we went and worked with the group from powerplant laying sod in the yard that the Burk team had overhauled a few weeks before. Oh my goodness what a transformation! It has been so cool to see the whole transformation and to see God work in that whole situation.

Thursday morning I went to the morning powerplant training with Josh. During the training Josh asked me to share some of my testimony of how I got plugged into powerplant and how that had led to me to this point in my life of serving with one. It was really a cool experience and was fun having someone point out that this whole process of being involved with a church plant started in 2006 with a call from the Lord to work with a powerplant, then in 2008 getting to meet Sarah and Jason who were considering church planting and connecting with them, then in 2011 finally seeing God carry that call through and me being involved with a church plant. Crazy how God carried that call all the way through!
Thursday was my last night at Kids Rock. I am going to miss the kids so much and I hope you will continue to pray for these kids and that they will continue to learn and know the love that Jesus has for them.

Friday was my last night of youth and it was so much fun. I have also had such a sweet time building relationships with some of the youth. God is at work here and I pray that these youths heart will be open to the direction the youth group is going to go.

Sunday was my last COTR service. I was with the preschool and it is so sweet knowing that they have learned from me. The biggest thing I wanted them to remember from me this summer is that Jesus Loves them SO MUCH. Each week we would give ourselves a hug and say that really loud and it was cool asking them on my last Sunday, "Who loves you so much?" and them answering "JESUS!".

God has blessed me so much over this summer and has taught me so many things.

1) Depend on Him in everything you do! I can't do it on my own and worldy things will fade away but His love is ever present.
2) Pray, Pray, and then Pray some more. Prayer is the strategy, not just part of it!

3) Meet people where they are in there life. Do life with people, don't judge. We are the church, its not about the church building we are the body of Christ and we should be going out and loving on people, being the salt and the light to this lost and dying world.

4) God will be faithful if you just give it over to Him. God has answered so many of my cries for help and pleas to keep the rain away for kids rock. Throw your hands up in surrender to Him and he will answer. Not always as we see fit but he answers!

God is good and His love endures forever! Thank you for all your prayers and continue to keep Church on the Rock in your prayers! Pray especially for Sarah and Jason's visas to come through quickly!

Pictures from Yard Overhaul with Burk Team

Beginning of the day...we had to dig up plant to relocate them later in the day

Tilling up the yard round 1 of about 7

Trimming the bushes in the backyard

Hauling off the trimmings

Noah helping getting the rocks out of the yard

Truckload of new soil that had to be spread over the whole front yard

Shoveling and smoothing the soil

The team working hard

Sports, Sports, and more Sports

Hey everyone we had a great week last week! A team from Holliday, TX came up to help us out for 10 days and man did they do a lot. The team arrived on Thursday, July 14 and got right to work helping out with Kids Rock. Two of the boys helped me with the preschoolers and they were such a blessing in keeping the kids entertained. They also helped act out the story of David and Goliath impromtu style and did an Awesome job.

On Saturday I was asked to go kayaking with the team. It was a  rainy Saturday morning but it was still amazing and so serene paddling out into the ocean surrounded by the mountains. God is amazing and this was an experience that made me reflect on Him in so many ways. While we were out in the kayaks we were able to see some of the wildlife, such as a seal and a couple of bald eagles. God was so imaginative to make the animals all so different, I loved it so much!

Sunday was of course our regular COTR service and it was so good! Josh spoke out of Matthew and the Parable of the Wedding Banquet. He is going through a series entitled "The Kingdom of Heaven" and looking at what is kingdom of heaven is like. With this sermon he focused on being prepared and having the "wedding clothes" on because when it is time for the wedding banquet if you don't have on the clothes you will be cast out.

Monday - Thursday
Starting Monday the team was in charge of running a sports camp each night from 5-7:30. Each night we started by feeding the kids a snack type meal and then the team would do a skit that portrayed a story fromt he bible. They did such a good job acting out the stories and the kids loved it. After that they divided the kids up by age and they went to different stations. The stations the team had set up were basketball, soccer, street hockey, football, and bouncy castles. The kids had so much fun learning about the sports and just getting to hang out and play. We had anywhere from 25 to 40 kids each night. God blessed this ministry and it was a HUGE success.

Friday was such a lazy day and it was much needed after such a busy week. Friday night though we had youth out at the Severinski farm. That night the game of choice was volleyball. We always have so much fun laughing and spending time together!

It was a great week and the Lord blessed it so much! I give all the glory to my Father in Heaven for all the work that is being done here in Pitt Meadows and thank Him for allowing me to be apart. Thank you all for your prayers!

Break from the Madness

I wanted to update you really quickly on what has happened since my last post and that is not much. Our last team left last Wednesday and we had a week to recooperate from the craziness. It has been nice getting to sleep in, lay around, and get caught up on some of the craft stuff I have been putting off. The Lord is at work though. Last Thursday at Kids Rock we had a smaller group of kids since the weather was rainy, but the Lord blessed our time with the kiddos and we were able to give each of them a little more attention. Friday at youth was also a blast. I see the relationships slowly being built and it is awesome to see the youth excited to be apart of our hangout time. I can't wait to see where that ministry will go with time. Sunday was the most exciting day of all though! COTR saw there first salavation! Oh how the angels rejoiced! Angelina a little girl from our co-op came and committed her life to Jesus. What a sweet testimony and answered prayer! Our next team comes today and will be doing a sports camp for the kids starting on Monday so be in prayer for that. I am ready for this next week and anticipating the work the the Lord will do! Be blessed and thank you for being faithful prayer warriors!

And the Busy Keeps on Going...

It has been a very exciting,busy, and exhausting week here in beautiful British Columbia. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were very relaxed days. I was able to get a lot of work done on the crafts that I have been assigned to, which is a great thing! Then Thursday rolled around and the madness began...

We started Thursday with a 9am meeting with the Burkburnett team at Josh and Lisa (lead planters) home to get things started off and to let the team know the rough schedule for their time here in Canada. It was a great meeting and the team was very excited to get started. After the meeting we split into two groups: one to get supplies for lunch for the team and the second to start prayer walking around the city. I went with the prayer walking group. We started at one of the parks and divided into two groups to cover more ground. This is the beginning of a really cool story so you'll want to read the whole blog entry. So I went with Lane and Eric and we started praying on Somerset Rd and worked our way around the neighborhood praying for each home and that the Lord would bless the homes we walked past and meet the needs of each person. After finishing the area we were assigned we headed back to the park were we ate lunch. After finishing up lunch we headed to another area of Pitt Meadows to do some more prayer walking. This time we split into three teams and headed out to walk in different areas from about 1:30 to 3:20ish. If you haven't ever prayer walked, it is something you should definitely do. God can reveal so many things to you when you just take the time to seek Him. After finishing up our time prayer walking, we headed back to the coop to get ready for Kids Rock and Life Group. Kids Rock went amazing and we had the most babies and preschool kids this past Thursday since I've been here. It is so cool to see God growing this ministry! This week our lesson was over Samuel and him hearing God's voice. The crafts we made were listening ears and the kids had so much fun with them! Thursday was a great day and the beginning to a great week with the Burk team!



Example of the ears we made...we modified a little!

  Friday, HAPPY CANADA DAY!!, we started off early, 7:45am to be exact. Today was going to be a busy day and we had so many events that COTR was involved in so it was great to have a team to help out. So like I said my day and 5 of the members of the Burk teams day, started at 7:45 am because COTR was setting up a booth in Pitt Meadows for the kids to shake their own homemade ice cream. The kids had so much fun, as did we. The other 5 members of the Burk team went over to Maple Ridge (the community right next to Pitt Meadows) to help with a booth there that had all kinds of crafts for kids to do to celebrate Canada Day! They said there was too much glitter for them, but it was a successful day! At 11am there was also a celebration for Canada Day here in the coop where we live. So both Josh's family, Jason's family, and I got to attend this event while the teams stayed at the booths. It was so much fun to get to hang out and enjoy the day with friends! The last event on Friday was youth. It was a fun time to get to hang out with the youth. We played basketball most of the time and it was a blast!

Team serving homemade ice cream

Shaking up the ice cream!!

Kirsi shaking the ice cream too!!

Ellie getting her biked judged for her decorations at the coop celebration...eveyone won!!

Saturday was another fairly early morning. We all met together around 9 to get ready to go do some landscaping with a guy (Jim) who him and his family started coming to COTR about 2 weeks ago and have gotten plugged in very quickly.  At 10 we met Jim at Linda's house (we were working on her yard). When I first saw the yard my initial reaction was this will take days to clean up, so we got right to work. I worked with Lane (member of Burk team) to start off with. We teamed up and were given the job of digging up plant to relocate into a flower bed later on in the day. We stated with Lane using a shovel to dig up the plants and I would pull them out of the ground and set them off on the driveway to get them out of the way. I didn't think to count how many plants we dug up but it was a lot. Luckily we didn't have to do them all with a shovel or Lane might have passed out from all the digging, Jim the main guy ended up giving us a saw that easily cut through the ground and the root system and made getting the plants out of the ground much easier. While we worked on this the other 6 members of the team worked on pulling up weeds in another flower bed, tilling up the front yard, and numerous other tasks. Needless to say we worked all day on this yard tilling up the front and back yard about 4 times in the front and at least twice in the back, trimming trees and bushes, pulling weeds, relocating plants, hauling off trash and debris, shovel mulch and moving it into the flower beds, shoveling dirt to spread over the front yard to lay sod on later on, and so many other things I can't remember. It was a long, exhausting, yet one of the most rewarding days I have experienced so far this summer. One because it ties back to the story I mentioned earlier. Just a couple days earlier I had prayer walked down that street where this yard was located, I had prayed over that home. The Lord is good, I can't say that enough and it is so amazing to see Him at work. After a long day of working you think we would be so exhausted from being out in the sun and do about 7 hrs of manul labor that all we would want to do is go to bed, but instead the team invited me to go see a movie and have appetizers with them. It was such a fun evening a a great end to a rewarding day!

Sunday, Sarah, Jason, the kids, and I got up for church in Maple Ridge. It was cool to see another church plant in action that was a little more established than COTR. I was so blessed by the service and glad that I got to be apart. Sunday evening was our normal 6:15 service. This week I was back to teaching preschool and I always enjoy getting to spend time with the little ones. This week our lesson was on Noah and the Ark. The kids do so good listening to the story and this week we made a dove as our craft, the kids of course loved it and were so excited to show their parents!

Monday I got to go sightseeing with the Burk team, who adopted me in as one of their own for the time they were here! I got to do so many neat things and loved my time hanging out with this fantastic team!

We started at Lynn Park were we went across the suspension bridge. I had already done this with the last group but it was still so much fun!

After exploring at Lynn Park for a bit we headed to Grouse Mountain. It was my favorite spot of the day! There were lots of activities to choose from lumberjack show, grizzly bear exhibit, birds in motion show, guided eco walks, but I knew I wanted to do the ziplines as soon as I saw them in the guide. Luckily Valerie (member of the Burk team) wanted to do it with me. The zipline tour was 5 different ziplines and took 2 hours to complete. It was so much fun and the views were amazing!

Our next stop of the day was at Stanley Park where we went to the aquarium. My favorite part was the Amazon Rainforest and the whale and dolphin shows.

It was a great week and God was at work! I had so much fun working and hanging out with the Burkburnett Team! They were awesome and God used them to bless me and many others here in Pitt Meadows! Thanks for adopting me in as one of the team!

Hupomone ~Enduring Patience~ Perserverance

The title for this post comes from the Sunday message that Josh taught last night. Perserverance, in the Greek: Hupomone. These words sum up this past week and what it took to get through them: Enduring Patience. I also apologize in advance for this post being so long, but I felt it all needed to be told.

The week actually started on a fun note with a trip to sight see in Vancouver. This was my first trip into Vancouver where I would get a chance to see some of the sights that the city held. We went with a family that had come from Tennessee who are partners with COTR. We started our day by going to Lynn Park to hike and walk across the suspension bridge.



One of the waterfalls at Lynn Park

Walking across the Suspension Bridge

Looking down from the Suspension Bridge

Me on the Suspension Bridge

After we crossed over the suspension bridge we hiked through the park to a bridge where there were two more waterfalls. We of course had to make a few stops along the way so we could take pictures.

Levi hiking

Levi playing peek-a-boo in a hollow tree

Levi showing me something interesting he had found



Once we finally made it to the bridge this is some the scenery. Of course pictures can't do it justice but it will give you an idea of just how gorgeous this place really is!

Looking out from the bridge

Looking out from the bridge in the opposite direction

Looking down from the bridge, this is where you could see the waterfalls

Standing on the bridge

After finishing the hike at Lynn Park we head to downtown Vancouver. We ate lunch at the market, which was a very neat experience. When then took some time to hang out on the pier before catching the sea bus and heading across the ocean to actual downtown Vancouver.

Fountain on the pier

Mountain view from pier

Some kind of contraption out in the ocean that I don't know what it is

Downtown Vancouver

Me on the pier with Downtown Vancouver in the background



 On Tuesday we were preparing to welcome another team who was coming up from Sacramento, California. I worked on getting craft things together so that the team could help me cut out parts for the crafts for the next few weeks.

On Wednesday we welcomed the team that evening by having supper together outside behind the Arrington's townhome. After supper Josh went over the schedule for the rest of the week and into the weekend. It was going to be a busy time.

On Thursday everyone went different directions. Some of the team went out to the farm to build carnival games for the block party we were throwing on Saturday and so we could use them for other events, while others on the team went out to pass out flyers to promote the block party we were hosting Saturday for the community, while still others including me stayed at the house and worked on getting crafts printed and cut out so they will be ready in advance for Kids Rock. It was nuts on my end. I was not prepared to have to print out so much and get it all cut in a single day so my mind was shot by the time we got it all done. But oh my goodness what a blessing to have teams who are willing to help so I didn't have to cut out all the parts myself. This was just the beginning of the business of the day though. We still had Kids Rock that evening. As I mentioned in the last blog I was given the responsibility over set up and take down on Kids Rock on Thursday evenings and this was my first one in action, but after a busy day up to that point my mind was going in a million and one directions and I had overlooked some of the details. The Lord still blessed the time and I give thanks to Him for the extra hands we had to help with crafts and watching over the kids. This past Thursday was the best Kids Rock night to date for me. I had so much fun with the kids and just felt a renewed joy from the Lord just from getting to love on the little ones that are in my class.

Friday was another big day. I had stayed up really late the night before finishing up getting crafts organized into ziplocks so I slept in till about 9:30 which was wonderful also because it was raining and what a soothing sound when you want to sleep. After getting up and around I wanted to go out and prayer walk and pray over the airport where we had been invited to have a booth for the kids at Pitt Meadows Aviation Day. This was a huge opportunity for COTR and I wanted to make sure it was bathed in prayer. So I set out on my walk down to the aiport which is only a few blocks away. On this walk the Lord was so good and he revealed so many things to me and one I would like to share with you. As I was walking the Lord was revealing to me that my attitude had not been like that of Christ. He revealed that I was putting on a good face and pretending to want to do the work but in my heart I was not wanting to give it my all and just struggling with some things. In most cases I would have immediately picked up the phone and called my mom and shared with her the stuggles I was experiencing, but she is serving the Lord in Africa at this time and that was not possible. Then the Lord smacked me in the face and asked me why I wasn't just giving it all to Him, the One who is always with me, who never leaves me and will never leave me. For me this was such a huge deal because I hadn't really ever realized that when at home I look for comfort in other things instead of turning them over to the Lord and since being here has taken many of the things I turned to for comfort away the Lord is still there and always will be. I know it isn't always easy trust me just a few hours later the enemy was at work again and I lost my focus and turned to worldly comforts first instead of giving it to the Lord first, but when I did He worked it out. So with this story I encourage you to seek the Lord first and to pray for me that I will do the same.

Friday evening we had youth night which is always something I look forward to. It was a fun night of fellowship with the youth. I love getting to be apart of building the relationships with these youth.

On Saturday we started the day off in a sprint trying to get everything ready for the block party at 4. I started by baking a batch of cookies to take to make sure we didn't run out in case we had a huge crowd, which we were hoping for. We started setting up around 2 and since the team and the Betts family were here to help that part went really fast. Before the block party started Sarah and I went to run a few errands since we wouldn't have any time on Sunday. We started by taking a blessing bag to Maria who had come to Sunday evening services the previous Sunday. She was so kind and invited us in to chat for a bit. It was such a meaningful stop and I am so glad I got to be apart. When we had finished with our errands, it was time for my shift inside the bouncy house at the block party. I had so much fun getting to bounce with the kids (pics will come later). It was such a successful event and the teams as a whole had so many meaningful conversations and met a lot of new people.

Sunday was the last day of the busy weekend, but it was the busiest day of all. The day started at 8:45. We had to be out at the airport by 9 so that we could get everything set up and ready to go for the event to start at 10. The day went so well and again we were able to meet so many new people and promote the church so that the name of Jesus can be spread. The kids also had tons of fun we had one of the jump houses set up, we had our carnival games, and we had a craft table set up. After a long day in the sun (from 10-4) and many meaningful conversations later we had to pack up the stuff and head to Heritage Hall were we would again unpack the trailer for Sunday evening services. In between I had just enough time to run in change clothes, freshen my mascara, and grab my bible before we were off agin. Luckily set up at Heritage Hall went really quickly and I had a few minutes to chill before the service started. Again I was off from teaching this week and was able to be apart of the service. Again it was very refreshing to get to be apart of. After the service we again broke everything down and loaded it back up into the trailer. We had perservered through the week and the Lord was good!  

Pitt Meadows Aviation Day

Our Booth

Carnival Games at airport

One of the old planes at Aviation Day