Here are some pictures from Metro Kids, where I help out on Saturdays.

This is a picture of me telling the kids the creation story.

We also have fun worship times and as you can see below...

lots of fun and games too.

Excitement

Over the course of last semester, I have been praying for God to move at Summit. Today was super exciting because a few other students who are hungry to see God to move in our school started a prayer meeting. A bunch of us gathered together to pray. It was so exciting. I just feel so excited about what God is going to do.

Christmas in January

Saturday's are ministry days for me.  I drive down to Surrey (1 hour drive) to help out with Metro Kids -- a bus ministry. Anyways, today we just had a staff meeting and I did not want to drive down for it... but I did. It was awesome. Apparently, the church/people were overly generous this year in making shoe boxes for us to give away to our kids. After Christmas we had tons of boxes left over so today we went to a low income area and knocked on doors giving kids presents and inviting them to come out to kids klub. It was so awesome! I felt like Santa. The look on some of the kids and parents faces to see people knocking on their doors handing out gifts was priceless. Praise the Lord for an awesome day and the opportunity to bless people!

Joy

This past year I have been struggling with depression. I wrote about it earlier because I needed prayer but then deleted the post because I was ashamed. For those of you who were praying for me, thank you very much. Since coming back to school, I have been trying to really get my focus on God. Last night while praying I started to pray the armor of God over my life. I realized that our helmet is salvation. Helmets protect the head. I am saved so why am I allowing the enemy to shoot his darts at my mind?! I asked God to protect my mind and to renew it and to replace these depressive feelings/attitude with His joy. He has! God gave me the joy back that I have allowed satan to rob. The battle may not be over, but I know that I have God on my side and God is more powerful then the attacks of the enemy.

A Reminder...

This morning Mom and I went to get a manicure and a pedicure. The shop brought back so many memories. It was run by people from Vietnam. One of their sons was there and he reminded me so much of one of the kids from the orphanage that I worked in last year. Then, as I was getting my pedicure, I was talking to the lady doing it. She told me how she has no education and that she can't get one now because her English is not good enough, she can't afford it, and she thinks she is too old. She kept telling me how lucky I am to be able to go to school. I wanted to cry because I was reminded of just how amazingly blessed I am. Just being Canadian and living in North America we have so many priveledges that others don't have. I thank the Lord for blessing me. At the same, I hate that we live such priveleged lives while others struggle. All together today was a nice reminder to be grateful and work hard. I pray that God will use me to help others so that they have a fair chance at life too.

Reality

Many of you already know that while I was in Cambodia, I struggled with darkness. Now I can say that there was sin in my life. The sin made the darkness grow and yet the darkness made it even harder to fight temptation. I was caught in a place where I felt detached from God. The Bible makes it clear that all of us are sinners. We have a diabolical longing. This is due to the original sin where Adam and Eve went against God and ate the forbidden fruit. Even though God made the world perfect, He gave us the ability to choose for ourselves to follow Him and man chose to sin. The special part is that He still loves us. He loves us so much that He sent His Son Jesus to come into this world and pay the penalty for our sins. When we choose to follow Him, we are set free from our past sins. I am so glad that God forgives. I am so glad that He still desires to use me, despite my failures, and that I can have a personal relationship with Him. I know that there are a few of you who read this who have not chosen to follow Jesus. I just want you to know that Jesus loves you and desires you to come follow Him.

Merry Christmas!

I would just like to start by wishing everyone who reads this a merry Christmas. Thank you for your prayers...I have really felt them. This has been a wonderful Christmas.

It started with babysitting my neice. We successfully got paint everywhere...including her mom's good chair.

Then after dinner on Christmas Eve with my brother-in-law's family, my parents and I headed up to their new home for a quiet Christmas. We opened a few presents, cleaned, and relaxed. It was actually really nice. Then everyone arrived and we had a full house, snowball fights, good food, and lots of presents.

(Me, Jackie, Bobbi, Maria (my bother-in-law's mom), and my mom.)

(We discovered that Rylee really likes dada juice -- aka pop!)

(Noah and his new gecko that I brought home from Cambodia for him.)

(Mom with one of her presents -- a picture of my nephew in his hockey uniform, and my niece in her figure skating costume.)

All in all, it was really nice to spend Christmas with my family again!