The Bed Count - June

If you're not quite sure what The Bed Count is, we've decided that rather than tracking the number of places we visit, kilometers we drive, days we are here or numbers of nights we sleep in Canada, we would measure our time by counting the number of beds we have slept in. Here is the running total:

February = 6
March = 5
April = 10
May = 5
June = 6
Total = 32

Step Two

We've hit another milestone in our process towards life in Poland. We are now officially students in the Polish language and culture faculty at Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika (University of Nicolas Copernicus) in Toruń, Poland. These acceptance papers will help streamline our visa application process as we will be entering Poland on student visa's to start with.

We are now working on our visa applications and will be submitting these to the consulate at the beginning of July when we are back in the Lower Mainland.

And so, life in Poland becomes an even closer reality.

Happy Anniversary to Us

3 years ago today the rain was pouring and we were saying our "I do's" in a short ceremony surrounded (literally standing around us) by the people who know and love us best. We took some time to celebrate this milestone and kept our tradition of reviewing the last year together and setting a goal for this year.

Last year we focused on communicating in the moment. We worked hard on this and we can see some great progress in this aspect of our marriage. This year we are going to work on being more purposeful with having some fun and building memories. We're realizing that our lives can be so full, that unless we're purposeful about the things we enjoy, we'll quickly miss out on what things that are life-giving.

Here's looking forward to another year. We've said it before and we'll say it again: we're better together.

The Bed Count - May

This month we still spent a lot of time on the move, but we were able to use some key places to launch from (and not be in a different place each night). At this point in time 30 is looking like a guarantee - 40 seems maybe a little out of reach as we hope to slow down towards end of July and August. Here are the numbers:

February = 6
March = 5
April = 10
May = 5
Total = 26

Historymaker 2010 : Fearless

Historymaker (HM) is the annual youth conference for students from across British Columbia and the Yukon. We were involved in the planning and organizing of HM in May of 2008 and figured since we were in BC for this one, we'd get involved. It's not very often that we are in Canada to assist Canadians first-hand.


Admittedly, when we volunteered we were thinking that we'd help with Security or maybe set-up some chairs, but there was a need for some help on a coordination level and so we were involved in overseeing hospitality for bands and speakers (we had a lot of excellent help in this area), First Aid, Security, Parking, some of the volunteers and side stage artists, food services and Dispatch. We were able to do the bulk of the organizing via the phone and e-mail while on the road.

Over the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the May long-weekend, 3,000 students (not including their leaders) filled the Langley Events Center. We won't lie - there were long days, a lot of running around and on-the-spot problem solving, but it was awesome to see students participate in worship through music, listen to challenging speakers and learn in smaller workshop settings...not to mention eat a lot of junk food and have a lot of fun (there might have been a few buses that were "redecorated").

We both can remember our days of attending youth conventions and some of the milestones in our lives that took place there. It is great to think that we were able to be a part of this event because who knows what milestones were reached in other people's lives.

General Conference 2010

2,600 kilometers in 8 days. Here is the visual: we're driving a Plymouth Breeze, How to Learn Polish tapes (yes, an actual cassette) playing loudly, windows down, hair blowing in the wind, cooler full of V8 and nuts in the back - for almost 40 hours!

Every 2 years PAOC has a General Conference where pastors, global workers, support staff etc. come together from across Canada and around the world. This was the first one we've ever attended. For an organization that is so geographically spread-out, it is amazing how unifying a little time together can be.

This conference was in Edmonton. We shared on a Sunday morning, drove home, had lunch and then began the drive to Edmonton. It is a little overwhelming to be in a place with so many people you know, kind-of-know and might have seen before. Sometimes walking down a hall felt like running the conversational gauntlet. It was great to see friends, have some time with Matthew's dad, tackle some practical business with reps from Head Office and listen to the thoughts of our main leaders. It is surprising how sitting in services, meetings, workshops and then talking to people can be quite exhausting. We absolutely missed the directness of the Slovak language as English speakers seem to have a way of saying the same thing 4 consecutive times, but in different ways.

On the Sunday following the conference we were able to connect with a great Christian community, have lunch all together and then began the 10 hour drive back to Surrey (which we somehow did in 8.5 hours).

Overall, we got to connect and re-connect with good people and interesting thinkers, see the scope of what our organization is doing, cover some beautiful terrain and make some new Canadian memories.

Good for a Laugh and a Think

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.