Little Bethel

I was meant to be skiing today but there's been a sudden heat wave so it was cancelled. I was pretty disappointed but on second thoughts I'm glad it didnt' go ahead as i'd have missed something very special.

This morning I went to 'Little Bethel' church in Hamilton (the couple i'm staying with, Matt and Roz, go there). It's a small church with God's Spirit at work there in moving ways. During the sung worship people started dancing around the church. Bear in mind that this small community consists of doctors, drug addicts, poor single people, well off families, mentally disabled people, and even Clark and Dorothy Pinnock (Clark Pinnock is a world renown theologian) are members there. At that point it just hit home about what The Church should be like. At that moment the 'doctors' weren't judging the 'druggies'. And the 'poor' people weren't judging the 'well-off' families. Everyone was just bound together in worship. It almost seemed like those labels I just gave people no longer existed and we were all just Children of God.

It really was inspiring meeting Clark and his wife Dorothy after the service. They both are members of the congregation and are NOT paid by Little Bethel so they could easily leave to find a more glamorous church. But instead they choose to be part of this small, unpredictable, real, God-loving community. The image of Clark Pinnock taking a schizophrenic guy to get some coffee at the front of church during the message won't leave my mind for a long time. Where one man falls down, another helps him.

The service wasn't slick at all. They used acetate sheets for the lyrics. People clapped on the wrong beats. People sung out of tune. There were interuptions, questions and comments, in the service. There was even a break an hour into the service so people could grab a biscuit and a hot drink!

Despite all that the love there, for each other and for God, gave me a renewed hope for restoration here and now.

Christmas, a new house and an ATV!

Wow. What a few days! I've had a really great Christmas over here. On Christmas eve I got picked up by a family I knew from back in England and I've been staying with them for the past couple of days. I was blown away on Christmas day as this family had bought me loads of presents! It was SO nice of them. That night we went over to the neighbours house to watch a movie and even they had got me presents! Everyone's generosity really did blow me away.

On boxing day we moved into this family's new house (which is massive!). Most of the stuff had already been moved so it just invovled moving a few things. Much of the day was spent playing Halo on their 60inch TV with surround sound! It was great! :-D

(apparently you can never get close enough to the screen!)

Their neighbours seem nice. They have an Italien couple on one side who let me and Rob (the son who's my age from the family I was staying with) take their ATV out. It was a lot of fun with ice everywhere!

I've definately missed being at home with family, especially when I spoke to them on Christmas day and heard all of my cousins and everyone in the background! But this family I stayed with are pretty much my family as well, so I had a great time and am really grateful for that.

New home

Difference between Canada and England(/UK). Part 2- The shops

It's almost Christmas and as I've been shopping I thought I'd do my second post on differences between England (/UK) and Canada.

In the UK the price you see on the label of a product in a shop is generally the price you'll pay for the product. So you see a nice pair of trousers (pants) for £25, and you pay £25 at the till. Here, however, the price listed doesn't include tax. This means trousers (pants) costing $20 will end up being $23 or something. This can be a pain. Especially if you go to the till with a $20 note to pay for those trousers (pants) and find you don't have any more money on you!

Personally, I like seeing a price tag and paying what's on it.

Snow Day!

So today is my first snow day in Canada! A snow day is when all schools are closed becasue of the weather and most people can't get to work either. (I'm off work today)

As I got up this morning Roz and Meaghan (two of the people i'm living with) asked me if I wanted to go with them to the park to take the dogs for a walk, of course I said yes and it was awesome! There's SO much snow! It was hard to see what was going on at times as there's a bit of a blizzard going on! We ran around, threw snowballs and I made my first snow angel since I've been here in Canada! There's about 10cm of snow on the ground at the moment and it's said to build up more throughout the day. It's hard to see outside because the wind is blowing snow everywhere! Can't wait to go skiiing!

Recording

Yesterday I was in the studio recording a song that I wrote with a couple of guys from the band i'm in. It went really well and i'm pleased with how it's coming together. It's a steep learning curve as Eli's teaching me how to record and produce stuff but i'm enjoying it. I'll be back in there later on today to carry on with it.

Difference between Canada and UK. Part 1- The people

I thought I'd start a series of thoughts on the differences I find between Canada and the UK so here's my first one.

I was in Hamilton last night waiting for a bus when two plain clothed police officers, as I found out a few minutes later, came up to me and asked me whether I was called Jon, and whether I had I.D. They said they were searching for an English guy and someone had heard my accent and reported me! They were so nice even though I had no I.D on me. People in Canada are (generally) much more friendly and willing to talk as I found that same night talking to a guy I met at the bus stop.

Another example from that same night was when I wasn't sure exactly what bus to catch so I asked a bus driver as he pulled into the stop. He said his shift was finishing and that if I get on the bus at the next stop he'd show me where to go. And on the buses here as you get on there's no glass or anything between you and the driver, just a seat where the bus driver sits. Not like in London where there's a big plastic and glass block between you and the driver.

People in London tend to keep themselves to themselves a lot more than here. It's nice to be out and about and just be able to talk to people as if you knew them already.

Song titles, music and mandolins!

Song titles are rather irritating here in Canada. In Britain (quite arrogantly) we re-name most worship songs to be the first line of the song. So, for example, in Canada 'Over all the Earth' is called 'Reign in me' and 'Give thanks to the Lord' is called 'Forever'. So a few times i've said I don't know a certain song only to find out I do, but under a different name!

Anyway!

On Friday night I went to see Life in Sound (my friend's band who I saw on Thursday night as well) do an acoustic show. It sounded great but I forgot to bring my camera! Doh! Others took pictures though so i'll just grab some pictures off them from it.

I have another busy week leading into the weekend where me and some friends have a show at the Freeway cafe in Hamilton. We're still trying to think up a name for the band! I happen to be playing Mandolin on a couple of the songs so I have borrowed one off a friend. I absolutely love playing it! I may pick one up when I'm back in the UK after my time here!

I'm leading worship at the youth group, Elevate, tonight with a friend which'll be good and then it's back to work tomorrow.

Life in Sound

So last night I was in Toronto seeing a friend's band play (check out www.myspace.com/lifeinsoundmusic) at the opera house. Six of us from Grindstone went and it was intense. I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures to put up but I'll make sure I bring it to their next gig!

In case anyone's interested the songs I did last Sunday at church were

Made to worship [Bb]
Unchanging [E]
Centre [E]
Enough [G]
O come all ye faithful [G]
Kingdom Come [G]

I asure you that my next blog will be a rant about song titles out here. All will be revealed.

Toronto, meetings and a Christmas party!

I've had a great but tiring week. On tuesday night me and a couple of guys from the office went to Toronto to see N. T. Wright speak at St Paul's then back there the next moring seeing him speak again. He's a great speaker who really knows his stuff so was great to be there for it.

The rest of the week was pretty busy with staff meetings and preparation for Sunday (I'm leading worship).

Last night I was at the Grindstone Christmas party which was a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to Boston Pizza and then back to a friend's place. It ended up being a late one but what a great night!

As you can see from the picture below, we're having a bit of British weather at the moment!

Love wins

So I'm currently living in Hamilton, a city in Ontario on the edge of lake Ontario, about 40 minutes drive from Toronto. It's a great city with lots going on but there's also lots of poverty. Almost 20% of Hamilton's population, or 95, 650 out of 504, 559 residents, live in households with incomes below the poverty line*. So that means that when i'm walking down the street going to buy some new clothes, music, or more food, 1 IN EVERY 5 people I walk past could be living in poverty. And these figures DON'T include poeple who are 'wealthy' but face the poverty of no friends, broken relationships, dying relatives, the list goes on.

There are so many people (some christian, some not), however, doing incredible work for the people of Hamilton. Just this Saturday as a church we went to help out at the Eva Rothwell (http://www.mohawkcollege.ca/external/robertland/about.html) which is a community centre doing fantastic stuff. Turns out the guy who runs the place, Don MacVicar, got awared Hamilton's citizen of the year.

So as I get involved in different projects during my time here I don't want to forget that things are being restored: beauty in the broken.

Let's face it. Love wins.



*These stats I found class you as in poverty if you earn less money than the Low-Income-Cutt-Off rate which is the average cost of BASIC necessities (food, clothing, housing) + 20%. A family of three, for example, their LICO is $26,396 = £14,161 for the year.

SNOW!

Wow. I mean wow. Lunchtime today=no sign of snow. Leaving work today=snow. It's dark now so the picture I took didn't come out very well but you get the idea! This is only a few hours of, apparently, light snow.

Hamilton...

So I needed to buy a couple of things this morning and since it's my day off I thought i'd have a wander around and get to know the place a bit as well. Whilst doing so I happened to stumble uppon what i'd say is the best shop in the world! It was a massive shop run by this one old guy and it had everything in! It was like a massive garage sale in a shop! It was like an old second hand style shop. The guy who runs it said that he has double the ammount of stuff there but has no where to put it! And my parents think we have a lot of stuff in our garage!

Outside the place I stumbled upon a beast of a machine which i'd love to get (see picture below!) which would help me get around easier! It's $450 though so not so sure!

Where i'm staying is really nice. I have the whole basement to myself with en-suit bathroom so there's plenty of space!

I think i'm gonna like living here Hamilton.

Last morning in waterdown!

So it's my last morning in waterdown as i'm moving to Hamilton this afternoon. I packed up my stuff last night and i'll be going out for brekkie in a bit with some friends. Waterdown has been good to me but i'm looking forward to living in the city!

Hasta Luego amigos!

Last week in waterdown

So it's Monday (my day-off) and i've had a great weekend. I really enjoyed leading worship on Sunday, I taught 'God of Justice' and it seemed to go down well.

For those interested I did:

Open the eyes of my heart [E]
Holy, Holy, Holy (Lift up his name) [E]
Faithful Forever [F]
Gof of Justice [F]
Be Thou my Vision [E]

With the service being straightforward musically it allowed me to focus in on God and not think about the band.


This is my last week in Waterdown before I move to Hamilton (15th Nov). It's been great here but i'm looking forward to moving into the city. I'll be able to see more live music and be more independant (there's no public transport in Waterdown so I have to get lifts everywhere!).

The weekend is here

Well it's Friday afternoon and i'll be done at work in a bit. It's been a busy week with working on the Philosophy Of Ministry document (an extensive series of articles we're producing on baically everything about Grindstone), market research, songwriting and preparing for Sunday (I'm leading worship).

Once out of the office i'll be off to the gym as it's my last day of a free week's pass...i'll hopefully get it extended!

Tonight i'm off to a friend's party which'll be a laugh :-)

It looks to be a good weekend.

The Freeway

I've just had a great weekend. Saturday night was the highlight. I went to see my good friends Joe and John Moran play at the freeway cafe in Hamilton (http://www.frwy.ca/) at a live music night. They sounded great and decided to call themselves 'Don from London'! Nice one guys ;-)

Afterwards I went for a jam with all the musicians long into the night/morning. There was voices, guitars, a bass guitar, a mandolin, violins, a djembe and various other percussive instruments! What a night!

Update

Hey guys,

Most of my updates while i'm here in Canada have been through facebook...SOOO I thought i'd start up a blog so that those without facebook could keep an eye on what i'm up to :-)

To start with here's the guitar i'll be using on Sunday in band. It's a Gibson Les Paul Classic (which is pretty much same as the 'Standard' but with different pickups). It's rather nice.