Post Easter Reflections

I think my tiredness is setting in. I was unable to tell just a short bit ago but now I’m feeling tired and still sitting in the Vancouver airport awaiting my soon to depart flight. I feel better though seeing at least four small children around me also waiting for flights all of who are obviously exhausted. Last complaint then I’ll move onto more exciting things: I’ve been sitting way too much since Tuesday at 6am. And my beloved shoulder bags, well they will have limited airport travel time with me now… backpack all the way. I must be starting to get old or at least my bones have prematurely aged on me. And in an attempt to not spread out on the floor I have managed to sit “criss cross apple sauce“ on this chair that has become my temporary home!

Maundy Thursday @ Cathedral

Easter. Yay – Easter has come!!! Yahoo, the Lord is Risen!! Holy Week was amazing and very full as it can only be. And I made it to my first ever Maundy Thursday service, loved it of course! Now I have too many ideas for future Holy Weeks/services going through my mind (not uncommon at all!). We had a course over Monday – Wednesday of the week “The 3 Mary’s”, I enjoyed each session and learned lots. Things went well and somehow I managed to make it though alongside school and many other preparations.

Fifteen young people gathered together on Saturday night to attend the 9pm Easter Vigil service and then spent the night at the Cathedral. It was a night with no sleep, I didn’t even get my pillow out of the office! We had a massive Easter egg hunt around 1am with glow-in-the-dark eggs alongside all things chocolate themed. Folks played games and watched a movie. Around 3am I gave up on the topic of sleep, made tea and sat in the chapel for a bit. We left the Cathedral around 4:30am to attend the Sunrise service on the beach. It was freezing out but the moon was beautiful and full and the service lovely. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite services.

Glow-in-the-dark Easter Eggs!

By the time we got to Denny’s for breakfast the youth were close to collapsing into sleep in their breakfast! I attended the 10am Easter service at the Cathedral and then headed out to Savona. Joined the community there fore their 4pm service and then spent the evening with the family – it was so wonderful to be together.

All in all everything went well and we all eventually got home and to sleep. I heard the Easter Resurrection story four times in twelve hours and heard something different/new each time. One can’t get tired of the Resurrection story! Joy, joy, joy, joy!! And much, much celebration! I love Easter.

New Life

Signs and smells of New Life and the Resurrection are being experienced and beginning to surround us all.

Happy Easter!

Youth Group Sleepover (sleep optional!)

It's time for me to go to bed. So, why am I still up then? Well, I'm determined to get into a level of a schedule that resembles a routine of "normalcy" (whatever that might look like). And going to bed at 7:30pm will not help with the process. So I shall find ways for a few more hours to pass.

We had our first youth group sleepover last night. Fourteen youth from Kamloops and Savona and a nice mixture of Anglican and Lutherans. It was so calm and relaxed compared to the many other sleepovers I've done over the years. We ate lots of food, played countless games (Highly recommend Apples to Apples!), spent some time in quiet/personal reflection as we explored some Spiritual Practices, watched a movie as folks drifted off to sleep, slept (or as in my case... didn't sleep!), woke up in time to clean-up, enjoy breakfast and attend the worship service. 

I for some reason let the group stay up later then I ever have before... I think it was because they were so calm. Everyone just went with the flow of things and were all very engaged in the different activities that were happening. 

We were community. We are community. There was laughter, there was fellowship, there was joy. God was and is with us. 

And I'm now fully convinced that two-year-olds love me. Or at least they trust me. And it's not just the two-year-olds that I've know for years And of course, I'm not complaining!! 

And now I sit here trying to stay awake, watching a movie, enjoying the quiet, preparing myself for the start of classes tomorrow. January is good. I am ever grateful that January has arrived and productivity and routine are coming back into my life. Here we go again, another semester!

Advent Week Two: Peace

Advent Wreath Week Two

"The God of peace grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen."


I sat here in my living room Sunday night late into the evening on a lovely eve of Advent Week two. I was filled with peace and a sense of calmness. I wrote in my journal and I just sat in the glow of the many lit candles and the decorated tree. I stared into the dark and into the light, back and forth, back and forth. 


I love the night. I love the solitude and the silence. I love that time seems to slow down and I feel like I have time to breath and am at peace at the very last. The night is my down time, it is the time when I reflect on the day and all that I have learned and been part of. 


Tonight I sit here thinking how amazing it is that a group of young people this (Monday) evening at Youth Group made 56 handmade Christmas Cards for our friends at the Kamloops Seniors Village. How amazing is that? For two hours we worked on this project and there was a deep calmness within the group and within the space. God was there with us.


I am waiting, not so patiently, to light all the candles in the Advent Wreath. Advent is about expectant waiting and yet I so much want to be able to light all five candles. As I wait this Advent season I will be practicing patience - all good things will come and the celebration will be beautiful!


As I prepare for bed I remember a line from our Evening Prayer Service: 

"Preserve us, O God, waking, 

and guard us sleeping; 

that awake we may watch with Christ, 

and asleep we may rest in peace." 

*Quotes from Eucharistic Prayers, Services of the Word and Night Prayers: Supplementary to the Book of Alternative Services. ABC Publishing. Online here page 46.

Only in Youth Ministry

My roommate and I got talking this past weekend about the upcoming youth group gathering on Monday night. This week the youth were challenged to build some kind of protection around an egg so that when dropped from the top of a ladder it had a chance of not breaking. We got talking before hand and eventually came up with the idea to make a large container of jello and have our egg dropped into it. And we carried out this crazy plan. Hours and hours of making jello... our fridge was filled with jello. This was possibly one of the craziest things I had ever agreed to carry out!

I spent Sunday night picturing it all going wrong. I could see the egg hitting the jello and bouncing onto the floor - reaching it's pending death. I was imagining jello and egg everywhere. I was filled with uncertainty and the many imaginative conclusions that I had come up with during the night. And the next day - my only thought (beyond this is crazy) was "how are we disposing of this massive amount of jello afterward?" (Still to be determined!)

What did I learn on Monday night? That the youth I work with are very good "protection" builders... none of their eggs broke. Okay, I probably allowed way too many supplies and way too much time - but we had fun in the building process! And the jello... all turned out well. The egg was surrounded by the jello and protected from breaking. It was the coolest thing ever and I am still amazed that it actually worked! The egg bounced and then was kind of suctioned in...

View the video here (and I promise, we didn't eat the jello afterwards!):

Fear Factor!

Yep, it was Fear Factor week at youth group on Friday, all I can say is gross and ew! Did I participate, nope; did I leave the room at times in fear of vomiting, yep! I still can't believe what some of them ate, it amazed me. There were the ones who ate nothing, or who smelled it and ran away, and in the end it was lots of fun. We had spam, roasted eel (I'm told it tastes like smoked salmon...), raw eggs, clams, escargot, liver sausage, curry paste on crackers, curried mustard leaves (looks like runny green stuff...), and a blended up Happy Meal from McDonalds.  I think there were at least two people who got it all down, personally it all scared me. I don't think we'll need to do this event for a few more years, after all, too much of a good thing is never good! :o)

We had a youth service on Sunday evening, it also happened to be my first service as a Lay Minister of Word and Sacrament. It went really well, the youth did the readings, prayers of the people, part of the sermon, the songs, and helped with communion. It was so nice to have so many young people with us for the evening, and since I'm still young... us young people

did it all! I didn't freak out like I anticipated I would, we let it be what it was, and had a joyous time together. Being the one leading the service and standing behind the altar triggered a feeling of fascination within me, it was being a part of the service in a different way. (Picture of the Fear Factor survivors ----->)

The sun has been shinning over the last few days, I think spring might actually be on its way, I'm so excited! Although I'm starting to see grey clouds and some wind once again, I can only hope that it blow right over. Well, rain is nice for a short period of time... 

I am entering the last three weeks of school and then exams, I can't wait to be done, but at the same time realize how many assignments there still is to finish, including a ten page research paper on "teens and sex" that must be finished before I leave for the weekend. I'm off to Winnipeg for the Primates World Relief and Development Funds Youth Council meeting this weekend, hopefully it's not too cold, and hopefully I don't get lost. (If you don't hear from me for awhile please come find me!)

Bulletin Boards

I enjoy making bulletin boards at the church. Making them with youth, by myself, making them themed and not themed, complicated and easy. And always colorful!! So, recently we have done a lot of "new" bulletin board displays. On the large board in the Sunday school/youth room (well, hall) we made one themed around Martin Luther King Day, we talked about how we should all treat one another equally, how things were different years ago, and all that stuff. And my brilliant brain decided that one of my favorite poems would attach to this theme and make a fabulous bulletin board display! The poem goes like this: "We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are dull, some have weird names, some are more popular than others - but they all have to learn to live in the same box." So, I spent my week coloring massive crayons (I loved it), we made an amazing crayon box at youth group, and some Martin Luther King activities to go all around it. It was fabulous!

Then yesterday we talked about loving our neighbors and did a bulletin board around that. You know, we had to get into this whole Valentines Day theme somehow. So, we brainstormed who are neighbors are and how we can show love to them. 

Decorated it all with a whole bunch of wonderful foam hearts, and put it upstairs on the bulletin board, I've never done anything with the board upstairs, so we'll see what the congregation thinks of it all. We ended our evening together with a game that involved racing for candy, it is one of the only days that I easily get away with feeding the youth candy, it was tons of fun. Deana made cupcakes for us all, they were so tasty, we pretty much just had a great time together!

Last week I wasn't at youth group because the British Columbia and Yukon Anglican Youth Movement's Council was meeting in Burnaby. So the Leadership Team did the meeting and they did some artistic responses to two Psalms. Psalm 96 and 121 - they did a great job and we now have some poster board sized artwork along the wall by the stairwell. 

I think I'm done doing bulletin board stuff until spring comes - when a new array of ideas enter in my brain, ideas that I of course must do something with! Excitement!!