Term Break

Well, it is term break now so I am home. I was going to be going to Bow Island with a friend, but because of the money situation I decided against it. That's a good thing to since I got sick. My roommate was sick this past week and I think that I got what she had. I had a fever a couple days ago and whenever I walked around or anything I felt like throwing up. I'm a bit better now but not quite there. This break has been pretty uneventful. I was planning on going to the city one day but because of being sick I didn't. I went up to Subway on Saturday with a friend which was fun. That's about the extent of my break. Probably going to rent some movies today. Just need to get the energy to drive the half block to Shell lol.

Anyway. About time I wrote a bit about the Missions Trip. It was a really good time. I was really looking forward to it because for awhile I had been interested in doing things with Urban Ministrys and stuff..never had before but there was still an interest. That's why I was excited about this. And it was an amazing time. There's such a stereotype about homeless people. I hadn't really had that stereotype because I knew that my uncle is homeless, but yet in a way I expected different. One day we got into groups and did an urban plunge. Each group had $15 and we were supposed to find people to take out and buy some food for and talk to them. I thought that it would be no problem to find someone. Everyone that we talked to though had just eaten or wasn't hungry or had to get to work. That really surprised me just because so often homeless people get associated with being hungry all the time. That's not the case though. That was really quite surprising. The best time for me during this trip was probably street church. I went with some people to the Drop In Center and they had a truck across the street from it with a cross in the back of it and a microphone and this one guy talked for such a long time just going strong and eventually some of us went across the street and talked to some people that were waiting for buses to go to some shelters. This one guy that I talked to for a bit had come out from somewhere in the Maritimes awhile back, and even though he was homeless and really had nothing he said that he couldn't be happier and he still had such a strong faith in God. That was really neat to see that just because these people aren't the most fortunate, it doesn't always affect their relationship with God. Just before we left the Drop-in Center I tried to find my uncle. We had been there earlier in the day serving food, and I tried to track him down, but I had no luck. So Lisa (my team leader) came with me to talk to this one guy to see if they could find him. So they did and a couple of minutes later he came down and we went inside to talk for a bit then we had to leave because they were closing up. So then we went outside and talked a little bit more. I was really quite nervous about seeing him just because I didn't know how I would handle it and because I didn't know if he would want to see me seeing him like that. It was really good though. I enjoyed my team to. There are many people on the team that I haven't really talked to much since the trip, but still. One thing about the trip that was really good for me and really challenged me was how much I had to open up. On the way up to Calgary we had to go around and say what God has been teaching us. Something that God is always teaching me is to open up to people and to be more trusting, because that is two things that I always have problems with. That was definetly a challenge this week. One night at the church that we were staying at there was about 8 or so of us from the team and we went around and shared our testimonies. That was hard because that involves me opening up about the hard times in my life, which I don't like to do. It was good though. It's starting to get easier to open up to people at school, and I like that. Anyway the whole week made me realize something. I would really love to do something with Urban Missions in my life. I loved going to the places and serving food and talking to all of the people..it was just an amazing time for me, and I could see myself doing that for a career.

Anyway onto other stuff. Been seeing a bunch of movies lately and I need to make 3 recommendations. First one is if you want to see a clean funny movie see Night at the Museum..some people think that it's stupid but personally I enjoyed it. Second, if you want to see a scary movie, see the Messengers. That is a good movie! Thirdly, Pursuit of Happyness. See it. That is a very good movie. So funny story to go along with that movie. There was 9 of us that went in to see it the other day and one of them was Caezar. Now because it is Black History Month he has been wearing some traditional African clothes. So we went to Starbucks before this movie to waste some time and he picked up a very strong accent. He was talking to everyone like that, including some strangers and the people working there. We ended up pretending that he was out visiting for awhile from Africa and it was his first time to Canada. He went to the bathroom at one point and came out talking about how blessed we all are to have all of that because they have nothing like that in Africa and so on. It was really funny. Then at the theater there was 2 people there, one of which had a mowhawk. So Caezar went up to him and was asking him why his hair looked like that and so on. It was very funny, and I must say that I was impressed at how nice they were about it. So there were many other funny things that was said/done that I don't feel like writing out. So the next day a friend of mine wrote a blog on it that really made me think. That blog was about how people fake. It is so true. There's so many people that are hurting, just you would never know because they fake happiness. Everyone does it at some point. It is sad. Imagine how much easier this world would be if everyone could just be themselves, and if they were feeling a certain way they would show it. If you're sad, hiding the fact that you're sad about something isn't going to help. You usually just end up bottling it up then and it seems to get so much worse then. Just show to people that you're sad, talk to someone about it, let people in to help you. I know that I am bad for this. If something is bugging me, or if something happened to really make me sad, I really don't show it. I don't like people to know how I am really feeling. That's not good though. I really need to work on that. Another part on that blog was about how we treat outsiders. People that are different than us, we treat different. Even without meaning to. Me and Keith were talking quite a bit to Caezar in Starbucks and playing along with the whole thing, but what I realized after, without even meaning to, we were talking different to him. We used a different tone, like he wouldn't understand if we didn't. That wasn't part of the acting, at least not for me. It's not even people from different places that we treat different though. Pretty much anyone that is outside of the "social norm" gets treated differently. This isn't a blog to get into what the "social norm" is because that's just something that goes in circles. But really, anyone who is reading this, next time you come into contact someone who is different than you pay atttention to how you talk to them and how you treat them. You may be surprised.