No title?

When I was in secondary school, it seemed to me and I heard people talk about two Christian “ways”. Some Christians are more like evangelists and others are there to strengthen the believers. I always thought that I was more like a “strengthener” than an evangelist. I spent four years of my life in two different Bible schools, either as a student or on the staff and while I was there I really enjoyed myself and felt like there was no other place I wanted to be. I loved being in a Bible college setting, with believers and being able to minister to them and through them. I always felt like I couldn’t live my life in a secular work somewhere, go to church once or twice a week and etc. But at the same time, after a year and half or so spent at a Bible college, I felt a great need to get out into the “real” world and bring the Good News to people.

It’s been more than a month now that I’ve been living the life that I always thought couldn’t live: get up, work, come home, do the things I need to do, go to church on Sunday morning. For sure it’s “liveable”. But my reality is hitting me more and more and it frustrates me greatly. I don’t feel fulfilled at all. For sure I need to live and put money aside for university, but even going to university often seems like a long term project and wonder what better things I could be doing for God’s Kingdom right now. I know that God’s ways are different from my ways and I believe He’s called me to university, but it doesn’t mean I love the path I am on. When I was teaching ESL to the Muslim ladies, what I cared and prayed the most about was not that they learn English, but that they’d get to know God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. I miss the challenge I had and the great burden that I had. I didn’t care if it was frustrating sometimes, I was “ministering” somehow to the ladies. It hurts me even more when two of them came to my work last week to see how I was doing. Like there’s more that could be done with the ladies they’re still wanting to see me. I’m not involved in anything right now and I miss that. I feel like I’m going with the flow without giving a thought to my ways. I actually am, but what I realize is frustrating.

So anyways, I’m a bit down. I see so little opportunities at work to share the Gospel. I should go make my lunch for tomorrow.

Prayer Request

Could you pray for me?

I have a French exam to write on Thursday the 26th.

It’s the French exam all teachers in Québec must pass in order to be teachers, no matter the subject matter they teach.

I’m pretty bad with written French and have been “studying” but I really need God’s help on Thursday morning.

Thank you.

ahhhhh Work

Sunday night is soon going to be turned into a Monday morning. For a lot of us that means one thing: Work. I have the privilege to have a job and so I am getting up too, tomorrow morning. I’ll eat breakfast and do all the things I need to do and then I’ll take the metro and then walk for about 8 minutes to the store I work at. It’ll be around 3pm when I’ll say good0bye to my co-workers and finally leave and go home. I’ll repeat the same thing on Tuesday, although, I’ll be leaving a little later then 3. Does that sound like your routine too? Maybe, partially.

After watching a movie tonight, my roomie’s first words were these: “I don’t want to go to work” I felt the same. Now I’m wondering, “Why do we need to feel that way?” It’s true that work is not as pleasant as God first designed it, but serious, I think it’s very discouraging to realize that so many people have little satisfaction with their jobs and have no desire to go there.

I don’t feel like going to work, but I really would like to have a change of attitude. I think it’s starting in some ways. I would like my job to be part of my life, not just a parenthesis during my day. I feel like when I go to work, I’m just pressing “pause” on the video of my life and when I come home I press “record” again. As if it was not important, temporary, not part of my real life, as if I don’t want to include it. But the thing is, work is real and is a big part of my life right now. So how can I ensure that it becomes important and pleasant? The only thing I can think of right now is pretty simple: I need to see my job as a great opportunity to bring Jesus into the lives of people around me, opportunity to uphold God’s standards, opportunity to display Jesus’ attitude. I want this to be exciting. I don’t want to think so much about the work (although, I want to accomplish my tasks well) but about Jesus.

You may not think it’s so exciting. You may think there’s no opportunity for you to bring Jesus at work. Well, I’m sure there are some ways somehow. I think I need to pray more seriously about my job and how I can reflect God’s character and love, how I can share Jesus. Because really, God holds the world into His palm (well I mean, His hand…) and the lives of my employers and co-workers, He’s given me this job, this life of mine is all about Him being glorified and treasured. So, why should I only see work as an oppornity to make money so I can buy food and etc.? God is my Provider… so He probably has a greater purpose to giving me a job at Value Village.

Here are my roomies…

This is Gabe (well, me I mean) and Rachel …

Me and Esther…

Hmm… maybe Esther won’t like that picture very much, so here’s an other one.

 Here’s a video that Rachel took as we tried to get to the metro station after the fireworks were over… quite an experience.

10 hour shift

I MUST go to bed because I finished working at 11:05pm and I need to leave for work aroud 8:15 tomorrow and it’s currently 12:20am. But before I go…

Usually when I have my lunch at work, I go outside just to get a break from the music that is ever playing. But I still sing the songs in my mind because they just stick there. For the very first time today, and I was very surprised, when I sat down, I had a Christian song playing in my head, “Wholly Yours” by David Crowder. And it is still in my head right now. I just thought that it was so refreshing to have something else than the music played in the store.

I obviously had the song in my head at lunch (well, it was actually supper I was taking) because I listened to it a couple of times before leaving this morning. I was doing a little down spiritually and I don’t know, God really came and changed the attitude of my heart. He had given me again this burning desire to see Him glorified. And I wondered how I could help people treasure Him more. Lots of us Christians go to church, lead simple lives, do our best to obey our Savior from a pure heart, but I wonder what is our motivation. God’s motivation for sending Jesus and save us was primarily for His own glory, so He’d be glorified, so that man would finally be able to worship Him in spirit and truth, for who He really is. Is that what we are seeking in our daily lives? To bring glory to God, to reflect His light, to bring more people to love and know Him so that they too will worship and glorify Him?

I’m not sure how to do that myself, because daily stuff is so… small and sometimes demanding that it’s hard to keep our minds focused on God. But anyways, I’ve got this blog so let me simply encourage you to take some time with God and realize that He is God and glorious, above everything else.

Church

I realize more and more how indecisive I am in life. My roomates could tell you a whole lot about that. I think that my “problem” is that at times I don’t really care about having a yellow or blue kitchen and at other times I don’t see why I should pick yellow number 492 instead of yellow 392 or yellow 12. I believe I am a perfectonist (in ceertain ways only)and I struggle choising between similar things (like color and much more) because I seek THE color, THE … yeah.

So we’re down to ONE room to paint now. And guess what? It’s my room. We aren’t sure which color…. well, I say “we” because I know for sure that I won’t be alone making the decision because I probably won’t be able to actually choose the color myself. That’s enough for colors now. I want to talk about church.

I’m looking for a church. And as I introduced this post with my new-found characteristic (well, it’s not so new), you think right if you guess that I am indecisive about a church. Why isn’t there only ONE church I could go to? There are too many churches around. Among the “good” churches, there are some that are really big (well, this is Québec, big church means no more than 300 people for me) and won’t need me for anything. Other churches are very small (30 people … ish) and would be enoucraged to have me. I don’t know why I should choose a particular church over another one. What should I be looking for in a church? To give or to get? I know that in a perfect setting, churches should be places where people give (are involved in church, relationships) and get (are taught and helped). But it seems that I always either give or get in a church. This is for sure an overgeneralzation, but still, that’s the way I feel.

Today I went to a little church. It was rather interesting. They have no musicians so they either sing acapella (only voices), and/or with a cd (serious, the congregation sings along with the French Christian bands…). I was bored by the preaching (did I say that…) I had a hard time making links with what was said and didn’t quite understood the reason for the sermon. It was a guest preacher so I shouldn’t really base myself on this morning’s experience to “like” the church or not but really, I don’t know what I should be looking for in a church. Why choose church 34 over church 567 while they’re both good churches?

And I hear you say “Gabe, maybe you should pray about that”. Thanks.

Just so you know, I added a link www.walkinginthelight.wordpress.com to my “blog roll” it’s my sister’s blog (Corinne). So if you know her and would like to know what’s up with her and her husband, just pass by.

rest

Life was busy this year, but now it’s different. It’s busy still. More than ever since we’re stumbling over boxes, work, going here and there, painting, cleaning, cooking and boxes again. I just feel like I want to sit in our livingroom and sigh, watch the sun and the trees outside and drink a tall glass of iced tea, listening to some David Crowder. I can’t believe this is my summer. All my summers so far had always felt like summer. I always was somewhere in a camp or on vacation, doing nothing. Now I’m just, doing the things I have to do and I feel there is little time to taste life. It’s hard for me to realize that most people in America live like that, all their lives. Without taking the time to sit still and appreciate what’s around. In the midst of business, no matter how “spiritual” our business can be, I feel it is our Creator’s joy to see us just rest and take pleasure in the daily little things like the sun, the wind, music, our abilties to do so many things, food, friendships, books, flowers, love, grace, mercy and most of all, Jesus our Savior. Though there seem to be little time, Oh! how good it is to savor Christ.

Passing by

Hey, so last Friday was our last ESL class. It feels good to be done, but at the same time, I really wished we could still meet twice a week for … I don’t know what for but just to continue to build our relationships. I didn’t teach for money, I saw it as a challenge, a god experience for me as an ESL teacher-to-be, but the more classes I taught, the more I felt compelled to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them. My first aim was to tell them how God loved them. Our last class went fine, but nothing very surprising happened. We had a normal class, then the break. They brought all kinds of goodies to eat and they gave me a thank you card and a little gift. Then we had little time left so I gave them certificates and a present from the church. The church (where we met for the lessons) prepared a bunch of little packages for my students. Gospel tracks and small books in Arabic. The ladies were SO thrilled simply because it was in Arabic. They seemed very happy and kept thanking me. At the end, the “more religious” lady came to me and gave me a book. It’s called “The Qur’an, the Bible and Science”. I really wonder what I’ll find when I’ll read it.

Little things:

- Before class started and I was alone with the Catholic lady, she told me that she didn’t like to talk about religious things, especially with the other ladies in our class, because som were more “fanatics” than others. She seemed to look down on them because they were “ignorant” about Jesus and didn’t seem to realize how important it was for them to know Him. She tod me that certain ladies didn’t like that we talked about Jesus at break time last class.

- I left a little later and usually I would take the bus and then the metro with some of my students. So they were already gone when I waited for the bus. One of my students was actually waiting for her husband to pick her up and when he came by, they gave me a ride to the metro station. The man was really nice. Anyways, when I got into the metro, the student I usually sit with was there! She had gone with some others to buy something and so the timing was just perfect since I was there later than usual. So we chatted about the books and gospel tracks she got, she told me how the Jews had altered and changed the Torah and the importance of faith. I could not agree with everything she said, I simply told her I belived God was great enough to preserve His Word through the ages, but eh, she obviously needs more than that to believe it. She told me that in times of trouble it’s good to have faith to hang on to. I warned her, telling her that I could have faith in many a thing but these things could be powerless to help me. The object of our faith is very important. She agreed. I really hope she’s going to think about it.

So, my journey with the ESL ladies ends here. I hope they’ll learn more about Jesus, the Son of God.

We will move, We are moving, We moved, We have moved.

Hey so we (my two roomies and I) moved into our apartment on Saturday June 30. Fun eh? We’ve been busy cleaning and painting and putting things where we think they should belong. Many friends and family helped us in many different ways like helping us move out, and/or move in, and/or stay at our place for the phone and Internet guy to come hook it up while we were gone working… Here is an interesting picture that I thought I should share.

This is… we’ll change her name for… Stephanie. We were making mashed potatoes but we had just finished painting the kitchen to the floor was covered with plastic and old sheets. The paint thingies are still on the floor and since we have no garbage can yet, Stephanie is pealing the potatoes bent over a garbage bag. At any moment, she could drop a potato in the paint. Obviously she didn’t.

Well, it’s late and the picture doesn’t want to work. I’ll try some other time.