Josh's Kaleo Updates

Well Folks it's been a great couple of months since I got here in September and I just want to thank you for all the prayers you've given me through out this year ever since I started my facebook group at the start of the summer. This last week has been a very strange week but things are starting to get back into a "normal" measure. I'm not going to get into the detail of it because it's something that we have to work on together as a Kaleo community but I will ask for some prayer for it because it can make or break our community.

Starting a week ago we did our guys overnight trip and we went out to mystic beach for some fun times. So we had some great guy bonding time there. The negative of that was that I chose to fall into a wave instead of into the sand when I lost my footing on one of the logs and got completely drenched. Here's a thought, lets take 13 young adults to a beach in December and give them free reign to do whatever they want to do for a day, fun fun fun, you can just guess what happened.

After exciting times at the beach we returned home for a crazy ending youth group at Warmland. well that's exactly what it was, and now i'm missing about 50-1oo strands of hair because now the boys are pulling my hair as well, oh joy. Still it was a great youth group and I had tons of fun hanging out with the boys in our small group. Before the night started our group prayed and I'm thinking that because of that extra prayer we got more out of our boys and I'm looking forward to the new year and those boys because their walk with God is just starting and I'm excited to see where they are going in the near future.

Then came the talent show. I'm sure if you guys have looked at the Kaleo blog then you would have seen some of the crazy skits we had. My skit consisted of teaching the Kaleo students the art of hugging and how to properly hug another guy or a girl who is just a friend. I did not teach the girlfriend hug because that would be awkward. Anyways this had been a great week and although Kaleo is awesome I am looking forward to going home and seeing everyone while I'm there.

So prayer week has come to a close and i'm going to have to say that I have grown so much this week. From the moment I first stepped into the prayer room to the last time I said "Amen" in there was a complete growing experience. About half way through the week I shared my testimony with the Kaleo group and I don't think I've ever been that honest with someone before. Nothing got left out and I completly opened up my heart into this family. I didn't know what the response was going to be from the group here but I was shocked when Jim told everyone to say how they could relate to me story. So many hurting people, people that I love that have stuggled and are stuggling through such hard times. I thank God everyday for the people here and the way they treat me like a little brother.

Anyways this was such an awesome week for me in that prayer room. The first couple of times I walked in there I felt the presence of God so strongly that I couldn't hold back my emotions and just started going off into different things. One second I was mad, the next sad, the next happy, but all the time joyful to know that the God of the universe was listening to everything I had to say and was responding in ways I can't even imagine. One of my prayers was that someone who was here at Kaleo would share their testimony and that it would break everyones hearts enough to have us all come around as a family. Wow did God answer my prayer! 2 of the girls shared their testimonies on 2 different days and completely shattered any pride left in anyone and we all came around as a great family. I know i've shared this several times now but I love this family so much and i'm thrilled to see how the rest of the year is going to go.

Now aside from Kaleo there was also a lot going on at Warmland this week. We finished our series called H2O and had a huge celebration to try and tell more people in the community of Crofton about the message Christ has for them. Also Youth this week was awesome because I was not attacked! the girls that normally steal my hat and pull my hair were not there so I had a very peaceful and relaxing Wednesday. Also on Sunday we had our last H2O morning service and it ended off great. We spent alot of time focusing on the message of the Church being a family and how it accepts everyone like they are a brother or sister, or the fact that churchs should do that. Overall this week was amazing and i'm going into my next class fine and refreshed.

So reading break is over and I've returned to Qwanoes and back to my Kaleo family. This week was more of a relaxed week with not much going on. My visit back to Ladner and T-Town was fun and quite eventful. I'll start with Sunday night last week. I atteneded DSF (which is short for Deep Spirited Friends) it's kind of a deeper service put on by South Delta Baptist Church. And while I was there I suprised everyone with not only my presence but also my haircut. It was weird because almost no one reconised me. After DSF I went for what use to be my churchly thing of going to Tim Hortons and chilled with a bunch of my friends over a nice cup of coffee.

Then Monday came around and I enjoyed doing what I do best...PLAYING VIDEO GAMES! I got my chance once again to sit down in front of my T.V. and play some xbox games and had fun mindlessly entertaining myself for hours. It's weird though because now that I'm back at camp I noticed how much time I had wasted playing video games and I don't really have that urge to play anymore. Weird how life changes like that.

Anyways Tuesday was a day of homework so I'm going to skip ahead to Wednesday. Wednesday was another day of homework for the morning but by the afternoon I was ready to go and visit my old youth group (then get pulled into helping). So I visited the Senior Highs and had a great time hanging with them for a while and saw how awesome the youth group is going with the people that moved up into the lead role at the church. Then I went over and helped the Junior Highs and when I did so I was greeted by several kids who really missed me and was almost overwhelmed with craziness (still less then the warmland youth). So that was the day on Wednesday but then the night got crazy.

Wednesday night consisted of 3 Timmies runs in one night so that should say what my night was like. First I visited Bev my "sister" and we hung out at Timmies for about an hour, then I headed home and when Benjy arrived at 11:00 pm we got in the car and blasted U2 on our way to stand in a line up to wait for the new World Of Warcraft game to come out. After about an hour of waiting the store's computer glitched and we went across the street to Wal-mart and got it in 5 minutes (so we wasted an hour in the line). After that we decided that we need to listen to more U2 so we drove out to Langley to visit Benjy's girlfriend at 1:30 in the morning. After getting scared of throwing rocks against her window we called her and then were out with 3 people on our 3rd timmies run. Then at 3 in the morning it was time to return to T-town and drop off Benjy and then head home to play my new game until 5:30 am. Talk about a long night.

Finally, it was Thurday and the day to return back to camp. WORSE FERRY RIDE OF MY LIFE! 3 and a half hours! I'm not going to be going home for a while after that ferry ride. So i'm back at camp and ready to have some great fun in our 24/7 prayer week where basicly there is one room that at least one person has to be in at all times. So if you guys could pray for me as I go through this week in talking to God because I've been in there once now and I can already feel the power of Christ working in me.

So the last week before my first trip back to Ladner has gone by and i'm going to have to say that it was an amazing week. In my last post I talked about our caving trip so i'll start on what we did on Tuesday. Getting away from the camp we again broke off into our 2 groups and this time I headed into Victoria. We headed downtown with full backpacks of food and clothes for the homeless people in Victoria. This trip was such an eye opening experience for me. Being the sheltered kid living in a fairly clean area, I've always been scared of downtown Vancouver because of the homeless people there. But going down to Victoria and talking to the homeless i've found that alot of them are not drug dealers and are just dealing with other life issues. Our small group was me, Ben and Kylie and I think we did really good for the akwardness we all found talking to random people on the street. It was surprising how many of the homeless people were rasied in Ontario and slowly made their way out here to B.C. working their way across Canada.

Aside from the homeless bit at the start of the week we had alot of time to hang out as a Kaleo team during this week because their wasn't much else to do this week. Because of my broken computer (which is now gone yay new Macbook!) I spent alot of my time down in the computer lab instead of in my room and got to talk to most of the Kaleo students alot more. Mir and Fish were hanging out in the computer lab alot and I got to talk to them. The group at Kaleo is slowly growing on me and now that i'm here at home, I miss them (yeah I know it's only been like a day).

Also this week I helped out with warmland again and was blown away this week at the amount that the kids payed attention in our small group. Sure the kids were still running around and not paying attention but when it came to the important questions, they were sitting there and answering them. There was one boy this week, his name is Zander and I've never seen a boy so open to learning about Christ before. I just pray that God will show himself to Zander in a huge way sometime in the near future.

Since my computer screwed up last week I was unable to post my pictures but now that I have my Macbook, here are my photos.

So Kaleo continues to chug along one day at a time. But because this is Camp Qwanoes everyday decided that it wants to be on camp time and end up feeling like 2 or 3 days. one example of this was this weekend with the Juniors retreat. wow talk about a lot of work! I had a great time having an amazing cabin and having some really deep talks with my cabin. The fact that I had Benjy Starr as my Co-Counselor was a blessing because of the fact that i've been so out of contact with T-town lately that it seems like people are starting to drift away. But thats ok, before I came to Kaleo I understood that this would happen and I prepared for it. But even though it was only a weekend the time I spent with my camp friends felt like a camp week.

I also had another crazy week at Warmland youth. This week first looked like I would not have to deal with the craziness because when the girls saw that my hair was gone they seemed to leave me alone...for a time. About half and hour of peace I was once again getting attacked by a larger group of about 8 girls. The pain of being known....but no the less youth was still tons of fun and we had a good message and we seem to be starting to get through to the kids.

Aside from Qwanoes and Warmland work, this week the Kaleo team went to S.A.L.T.s in Victoria to help them to get the ships ready for the winter. While there I managed to get to know the group I went with on the first day a lot closer and I really started to feel part of the group. This feeling of becoming accepted started an entire new chapter in Kaleo for me.

So I should probably start to explain the title of this post. Starting about 3 weeks ago I started to deal with some of my pride issues. In doing so I came to the understanding that the best way to deal with pride would be to become completely broken. So over the last few weeks God took me to this place where I felt comfortable and safe. Then God "punted me off the mountian" (as Jon would say it). Everyday I started to go out and listen to Linkin Park and just scream at God. Day after day I just went out and blamed God for all the hurt that he was putting in my life, forgetting that I asked for that pain. Then a couple days ago, God broke me to the point where I was almost ready to call it quits with my faith. I broke completely and felt completely lost and felt like I could turn no where. Then after a long talk with another Kaleo student and some very long prayer I felt like I could do no more and went to sleep. Then God answered every trust prayer that I have ever asked. He showed me that the reason why I am so confused about God's trust is because I'm too focused in on just one thing and not the big picture. Now because God has shown me this great truth, I can focus on applying that truth and dealt with other things in my life that need some focus. I think one of the new songs from Anberlin puts it clear on how I'm feeling: "I can finally breathe, suddenly alive, I can finally move, cause I realize".

Oh and the reason why this is so late is because I did not want to post while I was in the middle of that Brokenness.

There is the awesome crew of the Pacific Grace.