Last day at work!

I can't believe it's my last day as intern at Grindstone church! It's crazy how quickly this day has come around. It's been an intense time here, yet September 6th (when I arrived in Toronto) somehow feels like yesterday. What an amazing experience it's been! And I'm so grateful for getting the chance to come all the way out here to Canada to be part of this church. Thanks to Mark Bonam for sorting it all out for me! As the 'worship arts' intern i'm amazed at how much they integrated me into the team; they kept me so involved even though i'm young and not trained! Working so much with Eli, the worship pastor, has been awesome. I've learnt so much and feel this year has led me to a great place in my journey as a disciple of Christ.

The Hammer...

So last night I got back from an amazing five day mission trip in the Hammer (Hamilton!) which is where i'm living here in Canada. Yes you are reading that right, a 5 day mission trip in my 'back yard'.

When you're serving abroad you leave the place. When it's in your own city it's pretty intense as you carry on seeing the same places and the same people even after the mission trip has 'finished'.

I really did find that as we helped out at different shelters, soup kitchens and community centres we kept seeing the same people. It's quite odd walking down the street each day and seeing people that you gave food to, and who opened up to you, the night before but now finding that walking past them with brief eye contact is no longer enough.

Some people's honesty and lack of embarrassment/caring about what others thought of them was refreshing and a lesson to me. It makes me laugh but I'm starting to think that I know some of these people on the streets more than I know people I've had years of 'civilised' conversation with! This makes me think that to some extent politeness can actually stunt relationships.

So i'm back at work feeling kinda drained and challenged but finding it hard not to smile when I think of what God is doing here in the Hammer.
:-)

E.P recording-Lay those beats down my friend!

Ah guys! So far today has been amazing. Adrian, the session drummer I mentioned in the last post, is in recording drums for my 4 song E.P.

We've got through two songs so far and we're just taking lunch at the moment. After lunch we'll finish tracking the last two songs and should be out by 6 ready for dinner!

It's a lot of fun doing all this!

E.P on the way!

So i've been spending some time writing new material for recording here in Canada. I'm a lucky man. By the time I leave i'll have a four song E.P fully recorded and produced.

Recently Eli has been picking up some new gear for the studio (Allan&Heath ZED 16, Avalon pre-amp, SSL Alpha channel strip pre-amp) which is all sounding great. We've recorded some scratch tracks (acoustic guitars and vocals) and either this Friday or next we'll be having Adrian, a session drummer Eli knows, in to record some drum parts. As Adrian's a friend of Eli he's doing it on the cheap for me. What a nice guy!

This year has really humbled me. With all the things going on there's no way I could have pulled this off by myself. It really is all down to our amazing God and the generosity of others.

The weekend that changed the world

Well not quite the weekend that changed the world, but still...there was so much happening!

On Friday night and all day Saturday I was at the TrueCity annual conference here in Hamilton. TrueCity is a group of churches in Hamilton working together throughout the year to bless the city. This weekend there was worship, workshops, teaching and discussions. On the Saturday afternoon I went to an amazing discussion group about church planting. It was great to talk to people who had lots of years experience in mission and church planting work.

Saturday evening I went straight to a leaving party for the pastor of Grindstone and his family. He's moving on to another church after 8 years of amazing work at Grindstone.

On Sunday it was the usual church stuff in the morning, then in the evening it was SCRUM. This is a church meeting which happens a couple of times a year to discuss happenings in the church. It was pretty intense as there had been lots of changes here at Grindstone (which I may post about at some point). And I had the pleasure of leading a couple of songs at the beginning to calm down any congregants with hot heads coming into the meeting!

I admire pastor Dave and the elders. They were getting grilled by some people and yet still held it together to give solid, calm answers. It will be quite a few years till I could hold myself in a situation like that.

On a slightly different note. HOW GOOD IS THIS PICTURE!

Snow Flake 2009...

What an awesome weekend. On Saturday I was down at Niagara falls for the second time. This time it was for a conference called 'Snow Flake' and not for the 'maid in the mist'! Snow Flake is an annual weekend youth retreat with teaching, worship and lots of other fun stuff. Several people from Grindstone were involved in planning and leading the weekend so it was great to head down for the day and see how it was all going.

The weekend was titled 'Snow Flake 2009-SHIFT' with the theme of the weekend being shifts and changes in life. Great idea for a theme, however, having a big red t-shirt with SHIFT on it can be easily mis-read! When I got offered one for free though I wasn't gonna turn it down!

The location was obviously amazing. From the conference centre you could see both Niagara falls and the Canadian falls. Everyone there took no notice, of course, as if it was the local corner shop or something like that. Oh Canadians!

(That's the Canadian falls in the background)

Time to head back to Canada...

Well it's been a great trip back home to the UK. I came back about a week ago and was meant to fly out today but we (me and a friend of mine from Canada) missed our flight because of the aweful weather conditions. Luckily we've been able to book a flight out for tomorrow night though.

We spent this past weekend at carotty and had a great time as you can see below..well I did anyway!

Royal Botanical Gardens...

I just got back from a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens, a short bus journey from where i'm staying here in Canada.

I ended up going on a long walk through some woodland flood planes which are looked after by the RBG. It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny day as i'm sure you can see from the pictures!

It's only $8 for an adult to get into the RBG so it's very cheap! And it happens to be the biggest gardens in Canada so it's definitely worth a visit.

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.

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!

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.