Burning Tires...

Well, Apocolypto was gross, gruesome, and grieving, and I wish I didn't watch it now. I thought for most of the film that it would redeem itself with an amazing ending to the somewhat 'bleh' plot, but I was wrong. Mel Gibson should do a few more Lethal Weapons before he directs/produces/writes, or whatever it is he did for this one, any more movies.

So, ever since I visited Lefkara in Cyprus, a four hundred year old town with just as old buildings squished a few feet apart of each other, I have been looking for another place to try some extreme running. While we were there, I was burdened with the desire, but we were in a hurry, and no one else was very interested in jumping up and over walls and across rooftops. Now, in Lebanon, there are many half-constructed buildings, but they are hardly a few feet away from each other, and I'm sure many people here would be confused and/or upset over my running, jumping, and falling all up ons myself.

Today, however, a friend of mine and I, attempted to try some moves in some of the under construction buildings-here, three out of four buildings is under construction, and no one is constructing them any further-but we found that neither of us were very good, and ended up just looking around town, since we never really had a chance to walk around other than this one. I ended up jumping across some gap, and down through a hole, but I have yet to attempt the "Tuck and Roll" move that the professionals use when they jump off of tall to taller structure, as to not break their knees, ankles, or any other necessary body part upon impact. Someday I will be back in Lefkara, Cyprus, and I will be bouncing off those walls with no shirt on and my cheese-grater sweaty abs shining in all their glory. But until then, I'll just float along.

By the way, if anyone wants to sponsor me a thousand or two Canadian, I would love to get a laptop, so that I can keep many photos, and send emails with ease. I'm beginning to see that if traveling is going to be a part of life, especially my life, then I will probably like to have this tool, which is, although not necessary, very convenient, if that is indeed how one spells convenient.

Powdered milk...

So, the YWAM leader here just got wireless broadband, so now, provided no one is already using this laptop, which is like never, I can have somewhat fast internet whenever I want! S'right! Anyways, I still don't really know what to say. Lately I've been kind of moody, so most of my stories and interesting things will be negative, but I can still try.
We went to an orphanage (?) and hunged out with a bunch of kids for three days in a row, and now we all wish we were still there. One of them reminded me a lot of my best friend growing up, Lawrence. He was so cool this one. He had bad legs, and limped around, but he played football (soccer) anyways, and was always well behaved and listened during the sharing times. He even understood a little english and was always trying to help the others and translate what he could for us Westerners. I have a photo of him now, and I will be praying for him for a long time. Hopefully the rest of my life, and then I'll meet him again some day in heaven. There's so much hope in existence when you're a Christian. It's refreshing. I highly recommend it if you aren't one already.
I played a few worship songs for a college age group in Beirut, but of course it was after a really good guitarist played a bunch of really good Arab songs, so, I felt pretty dumb going up there with my cracking post-sickness voice and my three chorded songs. It was still fun though.
I'm getting pretty good at guitar and worship now though, and all I need to do is figure out how to use one of those pick things, and to sing spontaneously is another goal I am starting to set. It would be great to just open up to a psalm and sing it out with some nice chord progression, or even just to sing out words and phrases. I think my very last phase of guitar learning will be the actual writing of songs. I've tried a few times already, but I'm such a perfectionist during the process, that I can't tell if it's any good or not, because I automatically think it's a horrible song. And then, since I think it's horrible, I have no courage to play it for someone else and ask them what they think. It's a vicious cycle.
I say I've been moody lately because I'm having a lot of problems with all these girls and their moods and senses of humor and such. Three of them are practically best friends, and all know the same people from back home, so they are all talking about "Jane" and "Greg" and the rest of us have to just sit there and pretend that we care. I had a talk with the fourth girl though, and she actually has been feeling the same way I have in all of this relationship stuff, so we encouraged each other a lot in that talk, and promised that we would work hard at encouraging the group to get more unity and less exclusive such and such etcetera etcetera.
I'm getting really excited to come back home and move back to Alberta, but I'm promising myself that I will focus on being excited for this outreach more, and to really get out of my comfort zone for the next month, which I haven't really been doing.
The next place we are off to is "Disney Land", and we will be doing the midnight to 6am worship and intercession shift at the House of Prayer there, so I'm uber excited, and really, well, excited. The idea of doing worship all night in the middle of the place that the Bible is basically written around just pumps me up like a good warm up song before a playoff basketball game, no, thee final of a playoff tournament.
Anyways, I will have to wait for something more to happen so I can tell you all all about it. Till then!

Backgammon...

Ok, so, I'm an expert at the game that I never thought I would ever understand, and I am feeling slightly home sick, as much as that can be with a guy like me. I'm mostly just tired of the same six people for month after month after month. The o-reach, as I'm told, is going just fine, though. Lots of kids and small groups and physical labour to tide me over for a few weeks. I highly recommend Lebanon for tourism. Cheap, if you look hard. The problem is if you want a piece of bread that isn't Lebanese (Pita), or if you plan to drive anywhere yourself. Especially with the lack of bridges since the summer.
I would like to cut this entry short by saying, I don't have time to write more, and I recently cut of the head of a live chicken. Bye bye!

Bread, Tim Tams, and cement...

So, here I am in Lebanon, where there is not a loaf of North American style bread for hundreds of miles for less than five dollars a loaf ($), most bridges have been destroyed and are replaced with temporary ones, and every second building is in a state of paused construction. The great thing is that they import things from Australia some how, so I can have as many Tim Tams as I want.

So far we have done a little door-to-door gift delivering for Christmas, and I have played with a lot of kids. There are a tonne of kids. Everyone speaks Arabic, most others speak French (slightly lucky me), and most speak a little English. We have lots of people taking us around who speak Arabic though, so it hasn't been a problem yet. The internet is of course extremely slow, but that's ok I guess. As long as I can do this every once in a while.

We are going to paint the inside of a house in a few days for a family, which is kind of exciting, although I'm worried we will screw it up since we don't really know how to paint. And it's raining now, and has been since yesterday, and probably will for another day at least.

I am still at the place where I can't believe I'm actually in Lebanon, but it's slowly becoming a reality.

I will update with photos as soon as I can if I can, cause it will be a miracle if it doesn't take eight hours to load one photo. Other than that, I'm safe and sound, and hopefully I will have some amazing stories to tell soon. Bye bye

Going away...

Well, it is the second of January, and I am off in a few hours to Lebanon. I don't know how much internet there will be, but I'm asuming not much, so I will try to make my blog entries long instead of often.
Christmas was great! We ate, and ate some more, then some more. Probably similar to the amount of eating I would have done at home were I there for December, only the great thing is, that at home I eat lots all the time, but here I learned to appreciate more the value of a feast. I even called my parents for the first time, which was great, because I miss them so. All the plans we are making for my return are very exciting, and I can't wait, except for the fact that I have so much more to do while I'm here.
Apparently, if that's how you spell it, within the first week I will be pretty much in charge of a group of kids from the ages of 4 to 14, 20 or so of them, for who knows how long. If anyone has any games that they know for that age group, I would love to hear it. I only know like, Shh-dong-dong and the big knot game. Oh, and the Boston riot is pretty fun, but I'm not sure about appropriate.
The goodbyes are starting to become more permanent every time I say it, although chances are I will see these people upon my return. I already miss the youth group kids so much, and just this weekend, for the new year, we had Ashkan over, and an American who visited for like a week and a half named Jeff is still here. They have really encouraged me a lot, and it's great to finally have some different young people around to talk to. Jeff likes math, which I also enjoy, so that was great, and Ashkan is really similar in a lot of ways to me. All in all, I'm happy with the way this year ended. I also went for a quick dip in the ocean at like 1:00am on the first, it was freezing, but great.

Anyways, I guess for my last blog for maybe a while, I will just say that I miss everyone, especially you, dear reader! Thanks for being so faithful, if you have been, and if you haven't, thanks for checking it out every once in a while. There are some photos down lower if you would like to see. So, I'll talk to you all in a bit. Happy New Year!