The team from Emmanuel Baptist Church in Sterling, CO arrived Saturday night and spent the afternoon today getting ready for Sports Camp in the Ridge. We’ve got lots of kids pre-registered so far, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun week. Because they just can’t get enough, this crew will be throwing down a quick lunch and heading downtown to serve the homeless in shelters and food pantries as soon as they finish a morning of coaching. If that’s not a full week, I don’t know what is.
I can’t tell you how cool it is that these people spend 2 days in a van just to help us be a blessing to our neighborhood. So I won’t. But, dang, it’s cool.
Al lied to our server at Montana’s and told him it was my birthday. It was mostly because he wanted the free dessert, but getting to laugh at me in a bull hat was an added bonus. Too bad for him they never brought the dessert. Haha! I need one of these to preach in. It would increase my air of authority. It would also be good for meetings, as it would make it easy to tell who has the floor. If it works, I could write a book entitled A Bible and a Bull Hat: the Essentials of Church Leadership. Speaking tours, here I come!
July is, without a doubt, the busiest month of my year, which is reflected in my lack of posts. Don’t you just hate it when actual life gets in the way?
Things may be busy, but they’re also really good. Some of my favorite people drove a long way to help us throw Familypalooza in the Ridge. We did something good for the neighborhood, I got to connect with more of my neighbors, and we all took a turn in the bounce house. How can you help but have a good day? We’ve got our second crew of volunteers coming Saturday to help us throw Sports Camp, and to volunteer downtown serving the homeless. Since I’m not likely to do much posting until August, you’ll have to entertain yourself for now with all the photos of our friends from Heart, and the adventures we had last week.
We just got a little younger. Kevin Young and his fam arrived Wednesday night, and will be here for the next couple weeks setting things up for Familypalooza. Kevin’s an old college buddy of mine, and we’ve been having some fun together questing for box-maze boxes, and then questing for Al, who came with us to get boxes and disappeared. After finding boxes and Al, we celebrated our victory with some hot Timmy Ho’s on a cool July day.
Had a good time at the show last night. It was good to connect with a cool group of kiddie-ohs who plan to be around campus next semester. They’ve raised $25,000 for charity towards orphans in Asia and aids relief in Africa in the last year, they love Jesus, and they do a slick job of mixing video, even if they haven’t figured out their shiny new Mac yet (fortunately I was there to give them some pointers). I was right about the video: it’s all on Youtube, and from the clips I saw, it’s well worth watching.
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I’m heading to the U of C tonight to catch Compassionate: a discussion between Bono and Bill Hybels on aids, Africa, and the role of the western church. My guess is that it’s pretty close to what’s on Youtube, which I haven’t watched yet, so as not to spoil the show. Even if it is, I’m still up for the event. Hangin’ on campus is always cool, and as assistant (to the) chaplain, I’m interested to meet the crowd. 8:00 pm tonight in Kinesiology 132.
I stumbled on this while Crystal and I were giving Al a tour of the campus. If you have some time after hangin’ with Bono you can join Al by the prairie chicken and try to decipher the generations of paint on the infamous rock. My guess is, if you peel off enough layers, at its core is a pebble with an advertisement for a flapper dance painted on it.
Together we put flyers on the doors of every house and condo in the Ridge in three days! Thanks to everyone who made the time to come out and help.
We’re letting people know about the summer fun we’ve planned for the neighborhood, because we’re sure that neighbors hanging out is a good thing for all of us who live in the Ridge. In an age of paranoia about strangers, the more we get to know each other, the happier we’ll all be, and the more likely we are to care for and about each other, which, when it happens, is a sign of God’s coming Kingdom.
Along the way we had plenty of adventures and met lots of interesting people. My Persian friend Al found a Persian family and an English guy who loves Iranian films. Al says his favorite Iranian film is Not Without My Daughter. Of course, he always says it the same way he says he loves 5 solid hours of door hanging, so I’m pretty sure he’s giving me crap. We ate lots of meals together, courtesy of Cerena’s hospitable kitchen, and we prayed with and for the people in our neighborhood. Of course, there were other adventures too . . .
Poor Garth. All his hard work, and I repay him by setting him up for this while he wasn’t paying any attention to what I was filming. Still, it’s pretty stinkin’ funny.
Treehugger reports that Edmonton has decided to invest $70 million in a facility that will turn municipal solid waste into biofuels. I don’t know much about energy production, but it sure sounds like a good thing to me. Making something useful from something useless and fairly disgusting sounds like a great tradeoff, especially with food based biofuels contributing to a global food shortage. The company building it claims it will reduce Alberta’s carbon footprint by upward of 6 million tonnes over 25 years, which, if the article is right, should be like taking all the cars in Rocky Ridge and Royal Oak off the road.
For the record, I really wanted to title this post Oilers to be converted to oil, but I refrained.
Lest you think my recent change in diet has left me weak and insipid, I present to you the pile of meat I helped to devour Friday night at Dave’s meat sampler. That single grill contains wild boar burgers, bison roast, lamb, bratts, chorizo, and other, smaller animals that we clubbed to death while waiting. The bison roast was dessert, by the way. Mmmm . . . . meaty.
This is Al. Al came all the way from Iran, via London, California, and Colorado, just to help us out for the summer. Since he arrived on Canada Day, we hopped the C-train downtown to catch the fireworks and all the festivities, where he’s already soaked up vast amounts of knowledge about Canada. For instance, we like fireworks. Just to make sure he had learned all he needed to, we looked up Canada Day on Wikipedia on the train ride home, and found out that the holiday formerly known is Dominion Day is a recent phenomenon of parades and fireworks celebrating an event of ambiguous origin, with great status lent it by the participation of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. But, of course, you knew all that already.
While I was introducing people to Canada, I took Steve out for his very first lunch at Timmy Ho’s. With a shirt like that, it was meant to be. Glad I could facilitate so many cultural experiences on such a great day.
