Josh's Kaleo Updates

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.