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.