it is complete

Once again long time no blog and I hate to break it to you but this final blog is not going to be that long. You see I have one week left of Kaleo and I do not really want to spend my time sitting here on the couch writing a blog. So I will just let you all know that I loved kaleo and all the people I met during it. It had its up and downs but I think I am closer to God because of it. I will never forget the lessons he taught me and the people I met. I hope they are all in my life forever. This blog has a minimum of one hundred and fifty words and plan on going not a single word above the minimum requirement even if it means my blog not making any sense. Good bye all readers of blog.

long time no blog

Well as you can probably tell from my title it has been a long time since I last blogged, my sincerest apologies, it’s been busy over here in Kaleo and I have been quite forgetful. Well its not like we have been doing that much over the month of February…other than the Olympics!!!!!! That’s right I was a volunteer (AKA Smurff) at the Olympics other than all the amazing work God was doing through us (which I will get to later) it was an amazing time most of us were working at Whistler Olympic Park, this is where all the Nordic events took place, so that’s ski jumping, cross country skiing and biathlon. And let me tell you Europeans love their Nordic sports… The fans there were insane waving flags and dress up and showing pride in their country. Sadly, Canada doesn’t do so well in the Nordic events which meant there wasn’t to many exciting times for most of the people working other than when we got news of Canada getting a medal. For the most part I worked down near the bottom of the hill which meant I was doing security or directing people where to go in the morning and just trying to get everyone out of the park after the events while keeping them happy. Now onto the reason why the Kaleo crew went down to the Olympics…Jesus! We started off pretty good and a lot of people got some really good conversation going with people. I got to know I security guard name Clark he had a lot of question…. I think you guys might have heard of Clark already so let me skip to the end of his story… he got a lot closer with me and some of the other Kaleos and continued asking amazing questions I can tell he is really seeking and I pray for him and I think it would be awesome if all of you guys could pray for him as well. He said stuff like he wishes he could believe what we believe but has too much of a scientific mind so he struggles with that, but I really do have hope for him. Anyway near the beginning of the trip we were doing really good and getting to know a lot of people but then we sort of hit a slump for a couple days like we were their trying to work for God but we just weren’t making any progress so one night during our chapel we prayed about it and from then on it felt like we were on fire it was so much better than it was at the beginning I think that’s because we started relying on Gods strength and power instead of our own. (wow that’s a run on sentence but you know what WHO CARES cause it’s a blog :) ) We ended off our time there in such an amazing way, we handed out cards to some of the people who we really got to know and speak with so we are still praying for them that God will harvest the seed that we planted. Well, that’s my Olympics adventure :) I have gospels coming up this week and its probably going to be the hardest class of the year so remember to keep me in your prayer. Thanks
Love you mom :)

Are you standing or sitting?

Well well well everyone I am sure you are wondering where my blog was last week, you see the thing is, I didn’t do it but I have a good excuse, I was off battle bears who were carrying sharks and throwing them at people, the town of crofton needed to be saved and I was the one they turned to. That’s my story and I am sticking to it. Last weekend I went off to go shred some more gnar (snowboard) with my youth kids it was a lot of fun and I got closer with a lot of them, I need to remember to keep them in my prayers I realized that weekend that I have kind of neglected to pray for them but they really do need the prayers. The rest of the week was pretty laid back just did homework and got prepared for the Olympics, and now were here. Ive worked the last four days and finally have today off it has been a lot of fun meeting people and having some good conversations, god has opened a door for us there and I think we are taking full advantage of that. One man I met was a little bit socially awkward but he was asking so many amazing questions about God and what we believe my heart truly goes out to this guy, if I can just affect this one guys life and no one else’s I will feel good about what I did here. I pray that I am going to be able to talk to him again and that he is going to ask some sweet questions I gave him my email I hope he sends me something soon with some questions. I feel like he is a camper at camp again, I honestly love when he asks me questions and I have the answers just pray that I would be able to give the right answers to them. The other day he started asking me about martyrdom, which isn’t exactly the talk you want to have when trying to lead someone to Christ. I had the day off today and I think I am getting sick so if you guys could all just be praying that I would stay healthy so that I can continue to work at the Olympics thanks a lot :)
matt

"I am off McDonalds" "hey could you get me a Big Mac? I can pay you back"

Well this last week in Kaleo was rather uneventful but youth on Wednesday was quite exciting, I had to lead a group al by myself, there is usually on other leader there who I help. I was really worried about it cause the kids in my group are usually crazy but they actually listened. I never expected that it would go so well; later that night me and one of the kids played the game together and I think we bonded really well which should be good for him. We also had our last day of Camp Ministry this past week it was a pretty easy coarse but I enjoyed it, I have always enjoyed going to camp, so although I knew a lot of the concepts I think it was good to have them refreshed cause I haven’t been to camp sense 2008. We are going to be going to the Olympics soon and I am pretty nervous about going not only about what I am going to be doing there for God but even just working there its going to be really busy and I am going to be really tired. My schedule has also been pretty difficult to get so I still don’t know what it is going to look like I hope I have a fair amount of breaks but I am not expecting that from what I have heard of other people’s schedules. I had to write a one page paper this week about my belief in God it was pretty cool cause I had to explain why, I never really thought of it before I just always have known God was there. I chose to use the complexity of creation, answers to prayers that I have seen, and listening to gone.

My belief in God comes from more than just one thing, firstly when I look at creation and its complexity I know that it could not have been a coincidence. Second, I have seen answers to prayer and to me, this is enough evidence that God exists. Thirdly, God speaks to people who listen and I listen. The popular scientific belief is that the world came to be in some sort of “Big Bang” and everything just sort of started working together, like the moon and the sun the oceans tides, out perfect food chain. This just does not make sense to me, I guess you could say I know God exists and is our creator because everything else to me does not make any sense.

That is just a little piece of what I wrote basically everything I said just not expanded upon. I guess the only hard part of that assignment was making it short cause there is so much any Christian could write about why they believe in God. Anyway I think I will leave you with that cause its time for me to go to bed :)

GNAR IS SPELT WITH A SILENT "G"

So this week we all went up to mount Washington to go snowboarding and skiing, it was some of the best snowboarding of my life and I am going back in two weeks with my youth group which is going to be just as fun.  At night time we would have chapels the first night we went around and told each other how we could see Christ in each other, the overall consensus for me was that I was forgiving.  I think I can agree with that but I definitely don’t want people to assume that I am just going to forgive them no matter what they do, although this is usually the case.  The second night we started by talking about name changes in the bible like Simon to Peter or Saul to Paul.  The challenge was to give each other new names people got names like Conqueror Shepard Gem and Care-Giver.  One by one everybody got a name, I kept thinking okay someone has got to give me a name soon, but that’s not how it happened.  I was the very last person to get a name, this doesn’t really bother me at all I was just surprised cause I tend to think of myself as a louder person more in the front so I thought I would get a name pretty soon.  My name ended up being “abundance” or “abundant” I’m not even that sure.  Either way it’s a pretty sweet name they gave me it because of how I live my life apparently I am abundant with life and just loving it.  I can agree with that but not all the time there is obviously times were I get upset and am not loving life but for the most part I think I am a “Half-Glass-Full” kind of person.  That chapel lasted two nights.  So for our final chapel we were challenged to confess something to God in front of everybody the whole time I was thinking about saying something but I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was confessing to the other people more than God.  Not that I think that confessing to our peers is wrong cause it is definitely biblical I just didn’t feel right doing it in such a big group.  That’s all for this week BYE BYE J

GNAR IS SPELT WITH A SILENT "G"

So this week we all went up to mount Washington to go snowboarding and skiing, it was some of the best snowboarding of my life and I am going back in two weeks with my youth group which is going to be just as fun.  At night time we would have chapels the first night we went around and told each other how we could see Christ in each other, the overall consensus for me was that I was forgiving.  I think I can agree with that but I definitely don’t want people to assume that I am just going to forgive them no matter what they do, although this is usually the case.  The second night we started by talking about name changes in the bible like Simon to Peter or Saul to Paul.  The challenge was to give each other new names people got names like Conqueror Shepard Gem and Care-Giver.  One by one everybody got a name, I kept thinking okay someone has got to give me a name soon, but that’s not how it happened.  I was the very last person to get a name, this doesn’t really bother me at all I was just surprised cause I tend to think of myself as a louder person more in the front so I thought I would get a name pretty soon.  My name ended up being “abundance” or “abundant” I’m not even that sure.  Either way it’s a pretty sweet name they gave me it because of how I live my life apparently I am abundant with life and just loving it.  I can agree with that but not all the time there is obviously times were I get upset and am not loving life but for the most part I think I am a “Half-Glass-Full” kind of person.  That chapel lasted two nights.  So for our final chapel we were challenged to confess something to God in front of everybody the whole time I was thinking about saying something but I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was confessing to the other people more than God.  Not that I think that confessing to our peers is wrong cause it is definitely biblical I just didn’t feel right doing it in such a big group.  That’s all for this week BYE BYE J

No one is here this weekend

Well everyone this was our second week in and it was a lot better than last week, only two days of class, Jim is teaching us Camp Ministry its pretty easy but I also found it really interesting we have the last couple classes next week I think. I got a lot of work that’s coming up pretty soon mostly just small stuff but there is a lot. This week in youth was a pretty rough week the kids weren’t doing a very good job at paying attention, the one kid, Colton who usually glues the rest of the group together and gets them to pay attention wasn’t able to come which just threw the rest of the night off. I have been feeling a lot better than I was last week and looking forward more to the rest of the semester than I had. Hopefully this continues. This coming week we are going to be snowboarding and skiing at Mount Washington, its going to be some long days and I hope I nobody gets hurt. God has been showing me a lot lately I’m starting to think that its more than I can handle, pray for me to be able to absorb all of this because it’s been putting a lot on my mind that I feel as though I am not being able to handle along with all the other stresses of Kaleo. I know he is showing me something even through all of this stress (with all he is showing me and all of Kaleo) I just need to find out what it is. I am really looking forward to working in the Olympics and all the sweet conversations I am going to have I pray that God will be able to speak through me when I am there, that he will give me the words to say and the right things to pray for. This past weekend all of the staff were gone and we had our “Kaleo-sitters” Tyler and Nikki both of them are pretty awesome people. We watched some snowboarding videos and had a birthday party for Emma, and I got a bunch of homework done…it was a pretty sweet weekend. I’m sorry this blog is so short but I guess I am just making up for how long the last one was lol J
- matt