I've been gone

I've been away. And when I say away, I mean no computer of any kind and no internet. I've had lots to write about but no way to do it, aside from writing on paper and then typing it out later. But who writes on paper anymore?

This weekend I took a few of our junior high youth to a conference in Chilliwack. Overall, a good weekend. How do you really evaluate weekends like this anyway?

Included in this weekend was a van ride to Chilliwack. We topped up the van with Kelowna Alliance kids. The trip was uneventful, which is a good thing. There was a Friday night rally. My kids are not really rally kids. Oh well. We stayed at a nice place in Chilliwack for the weekend. We tried watching "Click" the movie but thankfully Maria made the call to turn it off. A pretty sick movie if you ask me. Maybe it gets better, I don't think I'll never know. Saturday brought a morning rally. After lunch, we stuffed backpacks with school supplies, toys and letters to send to Haiti. That was the favorite part of the weekend for a few of my kids. I wrote a letter and left an address. It would be cool to receive a letter. The rally that came after challenged us to think globally and socially. God keeps bringing Haiti to my mind. I don't know what that means. Maybe it is because I have been there, or because I have friends there right now, or because of this backpack project. I don't know but I wonder. We went to a WHL Hockey game in the evening and I really enjoyed it. I haven't been to a hockey game in over 8 years! Angela and I are thinking we would like to take our boys to a game. Maybe a Penticton Vikings game or a Kelowna Rockets game. See if they like it. Right now the only thing Mackenzie knows about hock is "Zamboni clean ice?"

After a decent nights sleep and a pancake breakfast, we went to our last rally. Our kids were finally called up for a game but were kinda shy that after they tried to go up and were unrecognized, they sat back down. Oh well. Their loss. We headed home and I only had to stop 3 times to wait for kids to settle down and put on their seat belt.

As for as the God factor and our kids. That is always hard to measure. Some put their hands up for some kind of commitment on Friday, but they don't want to talk about it. And the forced discussion times bombed. But both Maria and I had opportunities to hang out and chat with kids one on one which is good. And that was another good part of the weekend: having Maria along. When we first moved to Summerland, she was a youth in our youth group. Now she is a leader and an amazing one at that!

So that was the weekend. I have had lots that I have wanted to write about. I asked a lot of questions as usual. There have been some Oswald thoughts that I wanted to write about and some just life in general things, but I can rarely find the time. And often I will formulate thoughts and ideas to write about but share them with Angela and then I will no longer feel the need to write about them anymore. And I don't mind that at all cause Angela is infinitely more important to me than this blog and its readers. I'll keep writing though when I can so stay tuned.