Hello. Well after four long days of observation (meaning: I sat in the classroom, took notes, walked around, answered students’ questions and sat again) I finally taught. My cooperating teacher (CT) wanted me to observe for four days and I am glad they are behind me. I must say that all I learned through these days was a) The classroom routines, b) How boring the course content was to the CT, the students and myself, c) How students were immature and talked all the time, d) How my CT deals with misbehaviors. Lots of fun eh? I’m glad I’m in that school since I never really had to experience with classroom management before, it’s a good thing for me. I’m feeling a bit empty-handed when it comes to dealing with misbehaviors and I don’t necessarily agree or like my CT’s way of doing it, so it’s kind of interesting.

My first day went alright, the students were not particularly nice to me, although some were (some of them were actually hushing people saying, “Don’t spoil her first day!” I thought that was cute). What I liked most though, was to look through the door window and see another ESL teacher in the hallway looking at me with a big smile with her thumbs up “lipsaying”: “It’ll go well!”.

News News News! We just started a College and Careers group in my area (Verdun)! We were 8 people on Wednesday, but some people were “missing”. It’s nice. We’ll be going through the miracles of Jesus recorded in the gospel of Luke. It’s kind of crazy, Wednesday we were singing with a guitar, jambee, mandoline (only for a song) and the egg thingy. A girl brought her violin, crazy, I wonder about next week and how our neighbours will like us! Anyways, we’re making sure we don’t make much noise after 8 though.

Alright. Thanks for passing by. … Why do I thank you anyways?!

Thanks for choosing the topic of this post sista C’co.

I was asked what kind of new culture the youth meetings were creating. Maybe “culture” isn’t the right word but I didn’t know what other word to use. Last year we had youth meeting every other week. It was the first year our teens had a youth in their own church. Little attendence with probably only one faithful kid. This year we’ve changed the format: We meet every Friday night and once a month we exchange a Friday for a Saturday afternoon and do some kind of activity outside of the church walls. The dynamic is very different this year, there is more structure and the kids that come are for the most part older, like Secondary 5. Also some of kids seem to be excited about being there and it seems as if we’ll have more “faithfuls” this year.

Having teens coming faithfully is a big part of this new “culture”. We get to know each other and everybody is getting more and more comfortable to share personal experiences and feelings and prayer requests as we seek to put Bible studies into practice. I don’t know, we’re having a good time I think.

Also, thinking about it, I realized we were somewhat a lot of youth leaders. We’re six and there’s usually between two and 10 kids that show up at the meetings. I love that we’re six though and I wouldn’t want us to be a smaller group of leaders. There are other people interested in joining the leadership, but I thought we’d be too many. So I had an idea, why not create something like a “College & Carreer” group? Since all that there seem to be available for us to do and hang out is to do something with the youth group. I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. People seem to like the idea. I’m pretty sure it’d be something quite informal and basically just a set time for us to get together to encourage one another. I don’t know. We’ll see. I guess it would just give us a reason to meet and we need that.

Alright. I hope I answered well enough.

A culture of teens meeting up every week as brothers and sisters.

We were four as usual, sitting at our kitchen table talking about church and youth. Our stomachs were full of shepherds’ pie, beets and the eve’s doughnuts that we had to bring home from a supper at our friends’ place. After talking about the challenges and differences there is between our two churches and dreaming of uniting them, we created a tree of all the young people we knew that somehow were linked to our churches. We found a total of 36 kids from age 12 to 20. We thought it was quite crazy to be in contact with s many young people when we remembered that our churches have roughly 40 members (including children) each. We’ve seen about 40% of them coming to the youth meetings and we are wondering how we can reach the other 60%.

What is most interesting is that a big part of our contacts do not even go to church. What happens is that we make announcements at church for the youth meetings and when church is over, you always have a parent or two coming up to you, telling you s/he is separated or divorced and they have a teen or two who’s spending every other weekend with them. The teens aren’t Christians, but maybe they would like to join our youth meetings. So we write down their names and phone numbers and keep in touch.

The more I think of it and the more I feel humbled by the love these parents have for Christ. They only get to spend every other weekend with their kids and they would freely give up their precious Friday night or Saturday afternoon with them if only their kids could be with a Christian group, because they do not know Jesus.

I am really glad to see the kind of clientelle we have and really pray that more and more kids will be coming and get to know Jesus at our youth meetings.

I went to prayer meeting tonight. I guess I thought it was at 7:30 (like any good church you know…) but I when I sat down I thought I was mistaken because the pastor was giving a class on how to do evangelism with a special set of cards with drawings on them. I was almost going to ask if it was the prayer meeting but I realized that you don’t just pray at prayer meetings.

Some thoughts I had during the meeting:

1. Man, it feels as if we’re in the business of winning souls to Christ. All these tricks and… but I wonder why. Why do these people want to talk about Jesus to people?

2. Is it me or some people don’t really understand what the Gospel is all about? What does “Believing in Jesus” actually mean to you?

I am someone who really cares about motivation. I shouldn’t worry about other people’s motivation, that’s not of my business and what’s my motivation for caring so much about people’s motivation anyways? Oh well, what I mean to say is that I feel as if a lot of people want to see more and more people coming to Christ for reasons that do not necessarily glorify God or put Him first.

More people at church! They will finally have peace in their lives! She won’t go to Hell! He won’t have to struggle with that problem anymore!

To be sure these things are good and most are true, but I wonder if people are “getting saved” for the right reasons. It seems that we offer salvation because Jesus heals, feeds and mends the broken heart. People then receive salvation because they want to be healed, they want Jesus for His gifts. I don’t know, but for me, I want to see people coming to Christ so that more people can love and treasure and glorify God, not because they want to have a good, pleasant life or to have a bigger church or even, I don’t primarily care about people not going to Hell. I care about Christ being loved and magnified by sincere hearts.

People need to hear the Gospel – even the Christians. People need to be instructed in the Word. People need to read the Word. People need to know the truth and be rooted in it.

There’s something happening every other week with the Verdun youth group. It’s either on a Friday night for a Bible study or on a Saturday afternoon for anything that’s different. Today we went sledding on mount Royal. I had told the leaders it would not be as easy if we’d have a bunch of six graders with us, but we still went for the idea. It was only in the morning that the leaders realized that we were actually responsible for the kids and we were not that prepared.

We were 10 people, mostly around the age of 12 years old. We took the metro, then the bus, then we walked up the mount – well I would call it a hill, I’m sorry – with our “crazy carpets”, “black snows” and “toboggans”. The wife of the Bible study guy accompanied us, which I thought was really nice of her. She is actually teaching French in a secondary school so we had some good chats (as I want to become an ESL teacher eh). We slid down the hill many times and took lots of pictures. By the end I was pretty damp and cold, I do admit that I wasn’t dressed properly enough. Finally we left, waited for the bus forever (about 7 minutes….), I was so glad to finally be in a warm place. A church, a lady had made supper for us (well, a lady from my church and a lady from the other church) so we had a good time.

No matter how young the kids were, I kept finding myself looking at them and wondering, “Are they going to become strong men and women of God?”, “Are they going to learn to savor and love Jesus Christ so much that this world means little to them?”. So I was praying throughout the day for these kids. I don’t know how to reach out to them – I feel more comfortable with older teens. But I really pray that God will do a great work in their hearts through what’s happening with the youth group.

We started the inter youth group (comprising teens from three “churches” in the area) last October and we got used to being half teens (mostly around 16 years old and up) and half leaders at the meetings, so around, 10 people. Last night was quite different.

When we got to the church there was a mom with her 11 year-old son waiting for us . Then later on, other people dropped more 11-12-year-old kids at church. The two other leaders were really good at entertaining the kids (they were about six), teaching them how to play Dutch Blitz while we were waiting for 8 ‘o clock. In the meantime, I chatted with our Bible study guy and his and his wife who were a little unsure how to adapt the Bible study to be able to reach out to those young kids. Quite a different clientelle. We were about 19 people (counting the leaders and a mom who stayed with her kids) – lots of people! We were really happy to see such a number of kids, even though they were not in secondary school yet (highschool). To be sure the Bible study seemed quite boring to the majority of the younger kids, talking about Samson’s different lovers was… probably not what they needed to hear. But that was unexpected so, we rejoice that we had so many people and hope (well, it’s my hope anyways) that we’ll be able to split the group in two, older and younger) to be able to serve people better.

God is good.

We had our first official youth night tonight. We (two people from two evangelical churches in our area) invited the young people from our churches and friends who have no youth, to join together and create a youth. We were 12 people (minus 4 leaders and a young couple who gave the Bible study), so I was quite happy with the number of people that came.

We are wanting to do something every other week, so twice a month. Once a month we’d have a meeting at church and one a month we’d have some sort of activity outside or whatnot together. I’m praying that it’ll create bonds among the young people of our churches and help them be true worshipers of God in Jesus Christ.

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Internship is going well. I love my cooperating teacher. There are a lot of challenges ahead and I wonder where I will find the time to get everything done… but I am planning on being honest with my CT and myself and do my best, trusting God for the right ideas and etc. Yes, pray for me. I’m in this internship until Christmas… when I’ll fly to BC! Pray for my cooperating teacher!

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We had a meeting this afternoon at university just to talk about how this first week went. I don’t remember why but our supervisor started the meeting by saying something about thanking God in prayer because we were all there safe (he was obviously saying it lightly). So then a guy said, “Gabrielle can pray!” and the class laughed (not in a negative way, but just taking it lightly). I’m happy that people say things like that about me and I hope it’ll be more and more, it is such a great opportunity because I’m spending 4 years of my life with them.

8:30ish: I broke my capo.

9am: Rachel and I got to the bus stop just to realize that we were late. We simply took her car to get to church.

9:30-12ish: Church. For the first time, we were asked to choose the songs. So Rachel and I chose songs that we knew we could actually play (we’ve had a hard time playing the “Célébrons Dieu” songs (sort of French hymnal). We played on stage for the very first time, but without mics, so people, again, had a hard time following us. During the first song, a new guy that was in the church came up front and started playing on the piano, trying to play along with us, then kept on trying following us for the rest of the worship time. A little awkward, since he didn’t know the chords/notes, but eh. At the end of the service, he came up to Rachel and I and started telling us about all the great things we could do together as a worship team, he could teach us more guitar stuff and bring his music students to play with us in church. He wants to transform the whole worship part of the church and it was his first time in church! I felt like telling him to sit in church for a little and get to know the people and the church’s needs about music, and, talk to the church’s leaders about it… and make sure he is not imposing anything on us, as we’ve been planning with more people about the music team. Quite a morning. He’s really gifted though, he played at the Montreal Jazz Festival he said, and it would be neat to have him, but it was his first time in our church, so I’m hoping and praying that he’ll be guided by the church’s leaders about this and take the time to get to know the people and see for himself if he wants to go to our church for real or not.

1:30-3pm: Bought a new capo. I couldn’t buy a black one since Esther (roommate) as the black one. I felt like getting the blue one, but… Jason has one like that. Didn’t feel a white one and thought the red one was a little too bright. SO. I got the silver one. After my trip to Archambault, I went “upstairs”. That’s a rectangle hill where people play soccer, play with their dogs and etc. and that’s really close to where I live. So I went there and walked and enjoyed the NICE WIND.

Now I don’t feel like studying.

Many little things happened lately. You’re right, university has started again, it’s going pretty smooth so far. I try to make it a point to pray for my teachers.

I. I’m learning about HTML stuff right now, which is challenging for me (I didn’t know that, but ESL teachers have to know how to create “real” websites) so I purpusely sit by the HTML geek in our class and keep asking her questions. She’s really nice about it.

II. I caught a cold sometime at the end of last week. Funny thing, today when I got my school agenda, they gave me a bag and a few things inside too. I discovered Fisherman’s Friend lozenges in their little red and white paper bag!

III. I went to the alumni thingy at Parole de Vie Béthel on Saturday and had a good time. Although, we were … 1 and a half let’s say, from my 2001-2002 year.

IV. My roomate Rachel, and I played the guitar for the first time on Sunday at church. It was only for one song (because they didn’t have the cd for that song). Two men told us we should start a worship team with them (well, in French terms for sure, but it’s basically what it means) “We’re singer and you’re musicians” they said. So we already have scheduled an “introduction practice” on Sunday afternoon. Another man asked me if we knew new songs and that we should practice new stuff with him. Anyways, it seems that Rachel and I are in business. Hopefully we’ll do it because we want to serve the Body of Christ and glorify God. Not simply because we have the ability to do it. I wonder though, why people want musicians instead of singing along cds or singing a cappella. People seem to be thirsty for “real” music.

V. I am tired. I need to learn to be more humble and to be nicer to people and to be more positive and to be less negative and to use less sarcasm and to sleep more and to pray more and… I am tired.

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.