SOON™

What an eventful and productive 10 days I spent in Vancouver! I come back with awesome news and great anticipation; hopefully you can find as much excitement as I can, haha.

When I got to Vancouver, I was somewhat nervous about the whole situation. I know that usually when I go to stay over with the cousins, it means fun and games. For the first couple days, I had to really bring home my preparation for the summer camp talks. I was so stoked that my four sermons were really coming together and really bringing the theme to the place that would hit home for the church. When I look at it now, it somewhat amazes me the way God put this series together for me. One of my struggles at first was that, while the four sermons needed to be distinct sermons, they also needed to be linked together in the specific theme for the weekend. For most of my prep work, I had four distinctions, but I didn't find many opportunities to join them together to help gain a bigger and broader understanding of the theme.

So we went off to a pretty sweet resort (mostly awesome if you're in the bigger numbers of your age) called Cedar Springs. It was a Christian resort/retreat centre that felt like it was Narnia, mostly because of where it is and how hidden the place is relative to how the highways and roads worked in that part of Washington. The site was pretty cool, but it didn't offer too many opportunities for the youth to run around and play games/activities. Their food was also fantastic for it being camp food. I was actually somewhat disappointed when Ps. Joe told me that the food there was actually on the lower end of some of the nearby resorts and what they offered - I really thought the food was great, just to find out that there's even better food!

At the end of the day, I think I did a good job with the series. There was probably one where I struggled a bit because I decided to join the group for a morning hike, thinking that it would be a nice casual walk, but turned out to be exhausting and destroying of my confidence. One girl even fell going down a steep part and got some scrapes. So I was slightly shaken before the talk. However, I think I recovered alright and then gave a couple pretty good sermons to cap it off. All in all, the  experience was incredible. I just wish I would've been prepared for how tired I would've been after. I knew I had to meet with two churches on Monday and Wednesday, so I didn't have time to be tired, but throughout the rest of my time in Vancouver, I was beyond out of it. I almost did my hair with toothpaste. Yeah.

With the seamless transition into the topic of visiting churches, I've been invited by both of them to candidate as a potential pastor. Meeting with both churches was awesome. It was so nice to be able to meet them and hear where they are and where they need to go. Thinking about the potential of working in either of those environments has me all jittery with excitement!

So there is one of the churches that I really want. If that one doesn't work out, I'll be extremely disappointed because I don't know if the other church will be as good of a match as the first one. What will happen, then, is that I'll pick one church to candidate at first. If I like it enough, I'll take the job. If there are some things that aren't lining up, then I'll candidate at the second church as well, then make the decision.

My guess is that this process will take a month or so once I start, so when I go to Vancouver again, it could mean that I'm there for good! I am so excited; you could not believe how excited I am!

So that's that. My dream will be fulfilled soon! I'm totally looking forward to the fun and the challenges I will face when I can finally arrive at where God told me to go five years ago when his call for me to go into ministry met me in my prayers.