100 Mile House, BC

Hi there. Yes, I am safe and sound. Apart from losing my jacket in Calgary airport I had a pretty good day on the 24th as I flew to Abbotsford, BC. It was the first time so many people were waiting for me at the airport. Well, I guess, four people is a lot to me.

We spent the first two days in Chilliwack which is close to the coast then we drove to my sister’s place, 100 Mile House. I thought that Riviere-Beaudette was a nowhere village, well 100 Mile House is truly a nowhere town in a real hole. Hmmm, well, valley sounds better maybe. 100 Mile House is just so far away from other towns it feels like I’m in a far west movie. Well, maybe not that bad.

Anyways, I’ve been enjoying my trip a lot. It’s really nice to see the West of my country again and realize how different Quebec is from the other provinces. It reminds me of my two years spent in Saskatchewan so much. Safeway, Seven Eleven, Husky and co. It’s good to rest and do little to nothing. I desperately needed that.

Corinne and I are planning on climbing a hill. Well, it’s kinda big. It should take a few hours to climb up and we’ll see how the snow slows us down. Hey, I’m wanting to shave my head.

British Columbia

I am leaving for BC tomorrow morning (24th) and should be in Abbotsford around supper time (Québec time). I am not looking forward to traveling by myself again … hmmm I never actually flew or bused with anybody! But I guess that’s okay. I’m looking forward to do something different, be in the West again, see my sister, be silly and be away from Montréal.

I wish you all a merry Christmas time.

“Rejoice, rejoice, Immanuel has come to thee…”

“Heureux, levez, les yeux au ciel, voici venir Emmanuel…”

Disturbing

The small organic, vegetarian restaurant where we meet for Bible study with university Christians is quite an interesting place. It’s like a medium-size house with several large rooms where second-hand couches, chairs and tables are found. The music played is always changing, going from Elvis to some Indian melodies and the art displayed on the walls is always changing, this week there are photographs taken from other countries, sometimes they have paintings to sell and other strange stuff. So my two friends and I sat at a table with our organic root beer and fresh orange juice to read and think about a passage in James.

When we were towards the end of our study, a girl came from behind and seemed quite disturbed. She spoke with difficulty as if she had trouble putting her thoughts together. With an anger or rage I can’t really described, she looked at us in the eyes and throwing my friend’s belongings in the air, she said something like, “I hate people …. I hate people who…” and then she stopped, looking as if she was going to cry. I seriously thought that she had been listening to our conversations on faith and works according to James just behind the wall and did not agree with our beliefs. That was not the case. One of us started asking her questions, because we couldn’t figure out what she really meant. I won’t tell you everything she said because she contradicted herself and so did not make sense at all. She was loud and at one point she even insulted my friend. At other times though, she was quiet and reserved. We were “discussing” on love and we asked her if she had any friends or family, but she said she hated everyone, even her and then said the opposite later on. We invited her to sit with us, but she refused at first because she said we wouldn’t want to be her friend, we asked her why, but she wouldn’t answer, later on she asked us if we’d be her friend and for sure we said yes. I can’t remember when, but she sat down at one point. My friend noticed she needed to blow her nose and so gave her a tissue. Finally one of us asked her if she was on drugs, what she had taken. The girl stood up and left, throwing her used tissue at my friend and left.

Quite disturbing. But oh, so sad. Obviously she was on drugs and our conversations were leading nowhere, no matter the love and care that we showed her. I don’t know why this happened. We prayed for her but, what else could we have done.

It was interesting to listen to her even though she did not make sense. Her words seemed to me to be coming from her heart and she was overwhelmed with anger, bitterness and guilt that was inside of her. Satan holds people captive. Let us pray.

Random things about today

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.

La Gare Centrale

Two situations happened to me yesterday. Both were somewhat similar, but my attitude was really different in each of them.

1. I worked from 10 to 5. We always stay an hour or so after the store closes to clean up and etc. It was 6:30 and we were done, standing around waiting for our supervisor to get out of her office and lock up and let us leave. We waited until 7:15. The supervisor was doing some paper work and we had to wait for her.

2. I picked up my friend from the train station and her train was supposed to get to Montréal at 11:55pm. It was delayed and delayed again. Finally she arrived around 12:50am.

In both situations I had to wait. But my attitude was very different. In situation 1 I got frustrated. Why did we had to wait so long, locked up in the building, waiting for the supervisor to be done some paper work? I didn’t feel it was right. I had no clue when we’d be able to leave and I wanted to leave. In situation 2, the board was telling us the departure times and the arrival times, so I was told when I should start to “hope” for my friend to come. I didn’t mind to wait a whole hour for her, I didn’t get frustrated or upset. I just sat there and read.

At the train station I liked to look at the people. A certain lady was obviously upset because the train was delayed. She was walking all around, moving quickly and sighing. She tried to find comfort in talking about the situation to some strangers. A family was getting their camera ready to catch the first sights of their daughter. They were ready and waited in expectation. And there was me. Watching them. I wondered about the coming of Jesus Christ. I was reading about it actually and as I looked around, I realized that people were waiting for loved ones. Now what’s my atitude when it comes to wait for Christ to return? Am I frustrated? Am I getting my camera ready? Am I joyfully expecting Him? Hmmm.

2 days in Canada

Hey.

So tonight I was pretty tired. Not that I worked a lot in the afternoon, but it’s just the fact of starting a new job that is somewhat stressful. THE thing that really made me feel lost was this situation:

On Sunday, my supervisor asked me twice if I preferred speaking English. I told her I didn’t mind but that French was probably better since it’s my mother tongue. I thought that the lady maybe felt better speaking English, I had no clue. So today, at the end of my shift, my supervisor said to me, “I feel that you don’t understand me when I speak to you in French.” My lower jaw was ready to fall to the floor. I seriously think there is a problem here. Then I told her again that I understood French perfectly: “It’s my first language!” So I told her, I don’t mind speaking English, it’s all up to you, if you feel more comfortable in English, then please, use that language. She told me she was better in French then in English. And then, she started speaking English to me. I kept answering in French, I couldn’t hide my smile. I just thought it was non-sense!

Tonight was the GBUC again. I really did not feel like going, I was just tired. But eh, I still left at 6:30. While I was waiting at metro station a guy came to me and asked me if he was on the right line. And yes, he was on the right line. We then started to chat and he told me that he had just moved to Canada from Irak and today was his second day in the country! Crazy. He told me he was living at a Catholic church for now, we talked about the three main religions in Irak and how the Christians are treated in his country. So anyways, we kept chatting in the metro until I had to get out. What’s neat is that I had the opportunity to tell him that I was a Christian and I was going to a Christian meeting with university people. He asked me if he could go to church with me sometime, like tomorrow. Was I to say no? C’mon. So I left him my phone number and we’ll see if he calls. I thought it was just a neat little opportunity. He told me he has almost become a Christian because he sees how Christians respect eachother…. interesting.

Please, do not worry about me! I can easily picture my mom telling me I shouldn’t leave my phone number to strangers or trust people or even worse: meet up with them! I simply could not refuse to bring him to church, c’mon. I think that if we ever go to church together, I’ll try to bring a friend with me. So you can pray for him. I don’t remember his name, it sounded way to Arabic to my ears, but pray for him.

a few random things

Saturday my two roomies-to-be and I went paint shopping. We sort of knew what we wanted for colors, but you know how they have hundreds of shades of the same color… yeah. So it took a little while. I really didn’t know what color to paint my room and I felt like leaving it white. It’d be cheaper! But we already had a 45% off on our paint and the landlord is going to pay with us so my roomies pushed me to paint my room. I seriously didn’t care about the paint color so I told them we should take the left over from the different colors we’re using for the different rooms (we’ve got… 4 different colors in all) in MY room. Esther had the idea of painting STRIPES! So depending on how much paint will be left and what color, my room will have white, blue, green, yellow and orange stipes… Very colorful eh.

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Saturday night I went to my dad’s church to bring something there. When I came back the metro stopped at Villa-Maria and wouldn’t leave the station anymore. There was an accident on the orange line somewhere. After three different messages, the actual operator took the mic and told us to “Allez en surface, évacuez” (Go ‘in surface’, evacuate). Ok then. Dozens and dozens and dozens of people evacuated (is that a word?) the metro station and we all waited in line for bus 24 that was going to lead us… somewhere. Finally the bus came and it was packed. It was not going in the direction I needed to go, but eh there was nothing else I could do for a free ride. When we were around McGill metro I recognized the area and so got out and took te metro from there to St-Henri. Oh by that time, the metro was working again. So instead of getting home in 30 minutes, it took about 1:30.

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Hello! So here’s my new tag.

You can imagine how proud I am to wear it.

Today I spent my first four hours at Value Village. I read stuff for about two hours and then I helped out putting clothes on hangers. Very fun I must say. Hmm. I’m being sarcastic here. Oh yeah, did I tell you? I work at Value Village now. I don’t like to say that. It sounds too… humble. People are all very nice to me. I’m looking forward to the time I’ll know how everything works though.

Poverty?

Tonight was the GBUC d’été (university and cegep people getting together for singing, fellowship, discussions, bible studies…) anyways, tonight we talked about the issue of poverty here in Québec, well more here in Montréal and a wee bit on poverty in the rest of the world.

We had some good discussions about poverty, what it means, the reasons for it and such. I relunctantly wrote “good” discussions because to me it was not so good. From a non-Christian point of view, we probably had good discussions. But from a Christian point of view, I really wonder how good our time was. I mean, everything we talked about was “good” but we didn’t talk about the real reason for poverty: it’s a spiritual problem, well that’s what I believe. Apart for a few comments in te beginning, we did not talk about what Christians are called to do about poverty in our neighborhoods, in the world. We didn’t talk about God’s first goal: to bring glory to Himself and free people from sin’s curse. The solutions that were given us were good and praiseworthy, but I’m afrid that too often, we work hard on providing for physical needs of the poor while what they truly need is peace with God. It is true that when someone’s dying of thirst, we should give him some water and not start telling the person about the Gospel. We all know that.

Anyways, I was sad that we as Christians did not talk about the greatest need of human beings, salvation in Jesus Christ. I know that our discussions were not on “spiritual” poverty but it seems to me that we can’t put the Gospel on one side and feeding the hungry on the other (as Christians) we’re all seeking the Kingdom of God, and this means obedience to God, this means helping the widow and the fatherless, this means telling people about Christ. I don’t know if you understand my point of view, but Christians’ motivation for helping people and being good should always be based on a desire to see God’s standards be applied and to spread the Good News. I just thought that our motivation in talking about poverty was simply to do something about it, learn how we can help, that’s humanistic motivations. It didn’t seem that we talked about poverty because we longed to see God glorified and people saved.

I think that there is a danger that our good intentions to help the poor become what it is: good intentions. A lot of missionary agencies in the past, were implanted in many countries, to help the poor, provide schools and hospitals. All these things were good, but the thing is that overtime, these missionaries’ first focus was not to bring the Gospel anymore, but simply to help the poor and provide education. I think it is more than important that our actions to help the poor be motivated with Jesus’ motivations and be salted with the Gospel. That it’d be in our hearts to see people coming to Christ.

Ah, and I have so much to say about thhe way we view poverty here and our responsibility to our brothers and sisters in the East! We should help the poor at home first, this is true, don’t take me wrong. But anyways, if you were at the GBUC meeting you probably think I got it all wrong. Please let me know how you think and how I can clarify to you what I believe.

Ok, if you were at the GBUC meeting, please know that I, by no means, think anything bad about you, I seriously don’t! But I just think that it’s sort of ironic that after talking about poverty, the usual “let’s go for coffee” was out. I felt like telling people that we should put aside the money we would have used for a coffee and help someone in need with it. But as usual, I didn’t say a word.

Apart from that, the little ice-breaker was a lot of fun. (…) And I hear a voice saying inside of Jess’ head “Ya right Gabe”.

It’s in the air

Hello there.

Seven days ago, at this time of the day I was taking my last meal at the house of my grandparents. I then took all my stuff, tightly packed in my luggage and bags and took the Beaudry metro up to St-Henri. A 15-minute ride depending on how good the transfers go. I have, since then, lived in the St-Henri quarter. It’s been a very different life living around here with people (I got used to living by myself and was quite comfortable with that idea, but I’m enjoying being around people here just as well). It’s not my own little place and I don’t have my own dresser and desk and room. It’s hard to believe but I do all my teaching prep. sitting at the kitchen table with my (thanks dad) laptop. It’s kind of funny to get my printer out of its (original!) box eveytime I want to print something out. So life has been different, but I’m glad I get to experience living here.

It’s neat to get to live in different areas of Montréal. Well, I know I haven’t seen very much of the island at all, but it’s interesting to see the differences in between Downtown and St-Henri. For sure, it’s obvious you might be thinking. But for a little girl like me, it’s fun to see.

Downtown, you see a lot of stuff you don’t want to see. You’re surounded by restaurants, coffee shops, bars, stores of all kinds, beggars (begging for money, for your signature, and all sorts of other things). You see a lot of people with a lot of money and that is where you see the “fashion” concentration. I was personally sick of the way people dressed. Not because it was not appropriate, but simply because, I don’t know, it’s just not … not nice. I don’t know how to translate my feeling.

St-Henri is poorer. Mostly residential with a few shops here and there, but mostly for stuff like doing your laundry, small libraries and little reataurants. Lots of families. People seem to enjoy life because they don’t have anything better to do. They use their ressources and that’s it. People have BBQ’s on Saturdays when it’s nice and invite family and friends, people play tennis and basketball in the parks and that’s the beginning of summer for them. I think this portrays “les Québécois” better than what you see Downtown. Well, it all comes down to the same anyways: the pursuit of our own hapiness to our best and for some they have little ressources, that they only difference.

Anyways, that was an update on me and on the life here in Montréal.

We’ve been everywhere

Hey!

So Sunday afternoon, my two roomates-to-be and I hung out on the Island. We didn’t really have anything specific to do, so we sort of wandered all around the map. We checked different paint stores to find recycled paint, ate poutine, bought Nacho Libre for 5$ and had a slush with caffeine in it… Montreal just opened three new metro stations that go up to the Laval island. We thought we sould go up to Laval just … just for fun. So we started at Angrigon and … 45 minutes later, arrived at Montmorency (Laval). We took pictures of every station we passed by. Here’s my friend’s photo “montage” accompanied by Johny Cash… Oh, when you see me with the yellow tongue, well it’s my slush. I know, SO interesting eh.

And here’s… my roomies-to-be and I being immature in the empty wagon.