Done away with

I felt quite good about my trip to my job tonight. I never work on Wednesdays (actually I’m down to one day a week because of my internship) but I paid them a visit.

Saturday November 24, 2007 will be my last day at VV. And I rejoice. It’s been a long long while I’m thinking of quiting. And especially these days as I am busy with my internship. I was just tired of giving all my Saturdays to my job, tired of the threats when I asked to cut down my hours, tired to be treated as a kid, tired to have just enough time for school, tired of the people who dislike their job there.

I’ll be looking for something better in 2008. I’m taking a break from working and will be concentrating on university and internship stuff, then I’ll fly to BC… and 2008 will be there.

“Noticings”

Two things.

My two sisters gave me a beta fish a few months ago. I asked my nephew Caelan (who’s 3) how I should name it. He only said a word that I didn’t understand, so I asked his brother (well, my nephew as well) what he’d said. Brothers are good to translate eachother’s thoughts it seems. Iain told me that Caelan had said, “Bourgogne” (burgundy). So we called the fish “Bourgogne” for a month or so. The thing though, is that they used to have a fish like mine, so Caelan probably just remembered the name of his fish looking at mine. So I had another name in mind, “Bétrave” (beet). Well, I’ve noticed something quite interesting in Bétrave’s behavior the other day.

You see, I am a busy person. And… even though Bétrave’s water needed to be changed, I … well, did homework instead, or, you know, things that needed to be done. I just had no time. For at least one and a half weeks I let Bétrave live in a dirty environment. And on top of that, I started skipping his meals. After a little while of this miserable life of his, I noticed that each time I’d come over to his … square bowl (this is NOT a fish tank…) and Bétrave would be running away (hmmm, swimming away) from me, hidding under stones. He’d freak out. Poor thing (no, I am not Julie Sommer).

So a few days ago, I decided to take the time to clean up the “fish water” and put Bétrave back on top of the TV, as usual. The next time I came around to feed him, Bétrave didn’t run away, didn’t try to hide, didn’t freak out at all. He was doing great again.

So here’s my advice for parents (because I am one myself -and I am a liar too-): Make sure you feed your kids and provide them with a clean enviroment, otherwise, they’ll be prone to run away from you. Understood?

Second thing.

I’ve always had trouble sleeping well when I work the evening shift at VV. After working till 10:30pm or so, I kept waking up, half dreaming, half there, about work and etc. during the night it was never pleasant and frustrating. The other night, I worked on a homework for about 5 hours and went to bed. In the morning “I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been pleasant to me.” (Jeremiah 31:25-26). I asked myself what I had done to sleep so well (it had been a while since I’d felt so good), the answer came easily: I had worked on a homework in which I had to create a one-week lesson plan for intensive ESL students. Quite boring you may think, but I actually enjoyed doing it.

So my advice to myself: Do not work at VV for the rest of your life, you better become a teacher, you’ll sleep better.

I’m quite happy about this realization. It encourages me to keep studying. No less than 3 years to go.

Eddy

Eddy is my new friend at work. Well, he is not so new in the picture and he’s not even an employee. Eddy is a customer and he just celebrated his 72nd birthday a few weeks ago. He’s very quiet and likes to come and sit on a couch or a chair in the furniture section of the store. He sits there and watches people, look at different things like walkman’s, lamps or things like that, not so interested into buying anything. But when he does, he most of the time doesn’t even use what he bought. He gives it away. Eddy has no friends or family around. I think he’s never been married.

We met for the first time when I was putting an extension cord away, but couldn’t find where it belonged. Eddy was sitting on a chair and told me where extension cords were. We started chatting.

Ever since that day, everytime he comes by and I’m there, we chat for a few minutes. The interesting thing is that he has a keen memory. Eddy always picks up the conversation on Thursday the way we left it on Tuesday. He remembers my age and calculated that if he’d be 25 years younger and I, 25 years older, we’d be pretty much the same age. We’ve had some little good conversations. He keeps telling me that retired men like him don’t have much to do, so he spends time at the store. I don’t know why but it seems that regularly, he talks about heaven, or at lest, death and going somewhere. At one point he told me that he had a big (bad) file and so, when he gets before God, he didn’t know, but it probably wouldn’t go very well. He seemed to be okay with it, “what can I do about it anyways?” was the feeling that I got from him. He said he believed in God but didn’t go to church. I told him that people were not acceptable before God on the basis of the good they had done on earth. Going to church, praying and being a good person… these things are things we can “boast” about, but God’s standards are way too high and there is no way for us, mere sinners to meet God’s perfect requirements. That’s pretty much all I was able to tell him. I hope I can talk to him about God’s solution He gave us; Jesus Christ.

You can pray for Eddy, that God would open his heart, make him more sensitive to his spiritual state and the words he heard from me, that works and good deeds can never satisfy God’s requirements.

Jog

The air is refreshing but humid and the sky is dark as a bunch of co-workers and I leave the store. We’re are heading to the same direction: the métro. As we walk on the sidewalk, I keep looking for a clearing on the 4 lanes street. When no car is coming on either side, I jump into the street and start running toward the first light that stands as a halfway point between work and métro. I’m glad I can get to the station ahead of everybody else and maybe catch the métro before them all so I can read more of the story of the Wycliffe first Bible translators.

I’m known as the girl who runs. What I find interesting is that now, people run with me. Tonight a girl crossed the busy street before me and then I followed because it was not dangerous anymore. Then two other co-workers followed and we all ran up to the light. As I walked from the light to the métro station, I thought that it was neat that just by running every time we were done working, people actually started running with me. It’s a very little thing I know. But I thought that it would be glorious that people would look at me and want to “run with me” to know and love Jesus. That God would use me to influence them.

I’m spending time praying for them and my supervisors while working. It’s been refreshing and opening my eyes to a greater reality to pray while working and leaving Gospel tracks here and there and pray about them. I encourage you to find ways to make the Gospel message and its sharing the center of your life. You have ideas.

12:40

Good morning, it’s 12:40am. Should I go to bed? Of course. But I’m scared to turn off the music that is playing on my laptop. I came back from work it was 11:46pm and the only way to keep the Rock’n Roll music I was listening to at work, is to listen to something else. If I turn ths music off, then Rock’n Roll will be back in my head. I need batteries for my cd player I think.

Update on our Open House - We had a great time. Family and friends hung around from 2pm till… 12am on Sunday. We had lots of good food, good music, fellowship and Dutch Blitz. Thank you all for coming and even for bringing us presents! A special thanks to my the Barkers and the Frys who gave me a fish! Hopefully, it’ll live long long long.

Work - I’ve been looking for ways toshare the Gospel at work. It’s sort of difficult since I rarely spend time with other co-workers. I usually work alone and when I am with someone else, we have little time to get to anything very deep in our discussions. I had the idea of putting Gospel tracks in the bathrooms. So today I went to a Christian book store and got some tracks. It’s a delight to see the Gospel tracks disappear from the bathroom. I pray that God will use them somehow. Recently I’ve been thinking about how I entertain my thoughts, especially when I don’t need to think. I could go about my work without thinking about anything. But is it what should fill my mind? Emptiness? I decided that I wanted God to fill my thoughts at all times and be thinking about good things or reciting verses or… while I work. It’s hard. I tried to do that before in a different job and I always went astray. Today, as I was cleaning up after customers, I noticed a little Muslim boy and felt that I could pray for him and his mom. I started praying for all the people around me, all the customers that I could see, asking God to give them a desire to know the Truth, to bring Christian people around them, praying that they’d get to know the Gospel and finally worship and glorify the only God and Creator. I think I should keep this practice. It’s better than to think about nothing. I don’t know but the Muslims are always heavy on my heart.

Two bucks

Is this the proper spelling for the word? But you all know what I mean eh?

Today was Tuesday, which means that “golden age” folks got 30% off their purchase. Tuesday is always the busiest day of the week. So I’m working, in my little bubble and I hear over the music, my name: “Gabrielle au comptoir à bijoux” (Gabrielle to the jewel counter). There is always this old man with very short, white hair who wears a magnifying glass around his neck (just a little bigger than his eye) and who’s got dirty nails who comes every Tuesday. He comes to VV (the store) just for the wrist watches. He is always looking for old watches that don’t work with batteries. So here he is again, hoping to find something old. I like watching him and listening as he vents out his frustration about the fact that we have so little old watches. He talks to me about his son and how he hopes he’ll make big money with the old watches he buys for him. I ask him questions about the watches and how he knows by simply looking at them if they work or not with batteries. He finds nice looking watches and tells me they’d be nice on me. Then I show him my digital, big, black watch and I wonder what he thinks.

But anyways, when he was done looking through all the watches, he took out two bucks from his pocket and gave them to me, telling me “This is for you, buy yourself a coffee”. It was the first time a customer gave me tip and I wondered what I should do. Well, I kept it. I felt somehow special. Just by being nice and be interested in this old man’s little life, it made him want to give me something in return. It’s not that I care about money, but I’m happy he felt that way.

When I got home I put the two bucks into my little bank for Native Missionaries. I feel it is a privilege to give for God’s Kingdom, even when it is as little as two bucks.

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.

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.

honored - à la fromage.

Tranche de vie / Life Slice

So today around 4:20 I finished my last little test on the computer at Value Village. My result was automatically printed, I got up and brought the sheet to my supervisor. Actually, I wasn’t sure if the lady who’s been around me all the time was my actual supervisor, so I came to her and asked “Are you my supervisor?” and so she was. So we sat down in the office to check my test and then she got up and found a box with little golden pins. She took one and gave it to me as she explained that since I was done with the theory and succeeded, I had this special pin. I couldn’t help but smile, because it felt so cheesy. I asked her how long I was to wear it. She said I could wear it for a day or for as long as I wished. I think I’ll keep it on my little “apron” for the whole entire time I work at Value Village.

I was helping a co-worker and talking about my time at Bible School. We talked about the different denominations and she asked, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” I said, “Yeah, God is Three in One”. She told me that all that counted was to believe in the Holy Spirit, that you were fine if you did. Hmm. I had to serve a customer and then went away doing other things, but I wonder what she meant. I’ll have to ask her sometime.

Well I hope you have a good day. Please beware, I’ll probably be venting out and telling about work this summer. Although, I want to make it a point that work does not become my life.

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.