Christmas Celebrations!

Hello again everyone! It’s been an incredible first semester and we are excited for all of you to see the growth in the students as they head out for Christmas break on Tuesday. We are going to miss all of them so much, but January will come sooner than we are expecting.

This week has been busy in terms of activities, we are gearing up for Christmas! On Tuesday we took all of the students to a Christmas tree farm in Duncan We were allowed to choose the type of tree we wanted for our lobby (Douglas fir!) and then choose our tree.

We had spent the morning making Christmas decorations so it was a lot of fun to hang each of our personalities on the tree and take pictures. I’m not sure there is much more enjoyable at Christmas time than a Christmas tree hung near the fireplace. So we’ve found it’s increased the amount of homework being done in our lobby as well as the amount of carols we have heard played around camp.

That evening we had our Qwanoes Christmas banquet and enjoyed an amazingly cooked Turkey dinner. We also dressed up and had to take lots of pictures of ourselves.

 We also enjoyed our talent show that evening. It was a special time of enjoying each other and the gifts that God has given us. While the evening was very heavy on inside jokes, we were treated to a number of memorable acts. Highlights of the night included the girls’ Carly Rae Jepsen dance, a Hawaiian Christmas Carol and a reworded Christmas carol that intended to embarrass a certain intern (Ashley). It was a wonderful, full day and we once again felt so blessed to have everyone here. I can’t imagine what this year would look like with even one student missing so we are more than grateful to God for orchestrating bringing each one here.

The next day we thought it would be wonderful to spend some time separately as both the guys and girls went off their own ways.

The guys spent some time bowling and then went back to the camp for a pizza party and video games night. 

The girls spent some time doing Zumba in town and then went back to the camp’s guest house for some cheesecake and a sleepover. It was a great time had by both genders and we are extremely grateful for how God has given us each other.

I'll wrap up here, but it's been great to have so many things to tell people about all that is going on, I'm only scratching the surface. Please ask for all the stories while they're home and you'll be treated to a number of really good ones!

We all know how much we’re going to miss all of the students, so we can only imagine how excited many of you are to have them home.

Derek

Gospels and Christmas lights!

In the midst of Gospels class, we thought to truly understand what is being learned it should come from one of the students.

So we are extremely grateful that one of our students, Rachael Allen, has written our post for this week! (Thanks Rachael!) We hope that you will be blessed in hearing a first-hand account of what is going on!

Most believers brush over the Gospels as stories about Jesus' birth, life and teachings and resurrection, and move on to much more applicable books such as the Letters of Paul. As students, we had come from this bias as well at the start of our Gospels class, taught by Wes Olmstead, a prof from Briercrest. This past week we had our largest content and significance course, 26 packages of notes and an entire lifetime worth of strengthened beliefs about our Savior. The morning after our final class, a group of us headed down to the dock and we stood in a circle looking at our great God's creation amidst the rain. As I heard the testimonies of changed hearts, lives, and theology from my classmates, there was nothing else I could do but marvel and praise God. This class has been so monumental as we learned about the history of 1st century Israel, the background of gospel texts and retraining ourselves to interpret Scripture based on what it actually says, not what our biases presume. 

A break from studying during the course was the mid-week trip to Ladysmith for the annual Christmas "Festival of Lights." It was so refreshing to laugh, play and enjoy Christmas with an entire town lit up with strings of coloured lights. The perpetual parade ran snaked through the town, ending in a finale of dazzling fireworks cascading in the night sky. It was such a needed break and reminder of the coming holiday that we were going to be spending with each other as well as back home with our families. Hooray for an eventful month, and God has blessed us immensely as we draw closer to him!

Rachael is pictured here in the front row - Green Jacket and Red Hat (Thanks Again Rachael!)

Deep in the Earth and Learning about Church

Hello Everyone! I'm thrilled to bring you another post about the adventures our Qwanoes students are going on! As I'm sure those of you with loved ones out here already know, this will be the one of the last blog posts before Christmas break. We have finally decorated the lodge with lights and now have a local Christmas radio station, so it must be nearly time!

The past week or two has been incredibly busy, but also incredibly rewarding for us here at camp. After our week of prayer ended, we went straight into our Church ministry class with Prof. David Ernst. The students really enjoyed being able to learn about our roles as Christians in the church and even debate about current Church issues. With all the discussion that happened, I am absolutely sure that we will see some good things come out of what was learned. I'm really excited to see how the students will practically apply these things in their churches at home.

We are now right in the middle of the busiest academic time of the year, and it has been so encouraging to see the students thrive in the middle of academic pressure. We are not only seeing papers drastically improve, we are also seeing students seek to be a blessing to each other and help each other through this time. Next week, the students will be taking their Gospels class with Dr. Wes Olmstead. We are sure this will be an incredibly enriching time learning and critically thinking about Jesus Christ and what role He plays in our lives.

We also had the pleasure of being able to help with the Senior High retreat two weekends ago. Many of the students, in some capacity, were able to spend some good time ministering to a number of 15-18 year olds. It was amazing to see the students building relationships and practically serving this age group. We were thrilled to see the students jump in and enjoy their time with these Senior High campers. Maybe some of them may come back and do the Kaléo program themselves some day?

Finally, we had another adventure this week! We were able to head up North and head over to Horne Lake Caves Provincial Park to go caving! (spelunking?) We all headed up and split into two groups. While one group went caving, the other got to spend some time in Parksville and Coombs Market. Coombs Market was a lot of fun, many of the students spent some time getting homework done, while others shopped in the impressively International Market for treats and Christmas gifts.

Up at the caves we spent a lot of time crawling deep into the earth, up the waterfall, and past the roof spiders. Many of the students had the excitement of squeezing through some tight spaces and spending some time in the most intense darkness they'd ever experienced. For those who haven't experienced it, there is absolutely no light deep into a cave. You could hold your hand less than an inch from your face and not be able to see anything. It was an incredible experience and one that was more than little creepy. But through this, we were able to learn a good Scriptural lesson. We were able to see what the Scriptures were talking about when it talked about darkness. We learned how truly dark darkness could be. How perfect an object lesson before the gospels class! This is what Christ came into, and this is what He has saved us from! (Not caving, the darkness)

This was our last adventure of 2012, the time has flown and we are so grateful to God for the safety He has provided us with thus far. Can you believe our next adventure will be in 2013? And that it's only a few weeks away?

Time flies when you love what you're doing!
Until next time,

Derek

In the Air and Deep in Prayer!

Hello everyone! It’s been an incredibly busy couple of weeks here in the Kaleo Program and we are more than excited to get to show you what we’ve been doing.

Nearly two weeks ago, we packed up the vans and drove North to Nanaimo where we were treated to our Monkido High Ropes Adventure. The Monkido course allowed us to zipline and walk a high ropes course over 50 feet high in the air. We did four courses and all of us made it through even the toughest course available. Most of us even practiced our tightrope skills and tried a couple of the elements no-handed! It was a lot of fun and really good for us to spend some good group time having an adventure in the midst of the academic rigor.

The Biggest highlight came when Levi decided he would try and walk across the most lengthy tightrope with no hands (but a harness of course!) Apparently, many had tried the task, but he was the first to succeed. All of his slack-lining practice has really paid off! He left the course with bragging rights and a 50% off bungee jump coupon (worth over $50!) We ended the day with a good session of Tim Tam slams (ask if you don’t know what that is!) in the Tim Horton’s parking lot in Ladysmith. The next day was spent recovering our upper body strength as we were all sore.

The next week was our Kaleo program week of prayer. We started on Monday and all took turns taking times in our “prayer room” in Pacific Woods lodge. We went for 24 hours a day making sure the room was always filled with someone in a time of focused, deliberate prayer. Most students took four different times over the course of the week. Many of them wrote up requests to pray for, and many of the students enjoyed meeting with God and spending some focused time with Him. I was incredibly encouraged by seeing how the students seemed to really enjoy the time of prayer. We kept a journal where they were encouraged to reflect on their times and leave their names so we could all see how God spent individual time with each of us. It’s been phenomenal and encouraging to read these entries. I would encourage all of you reading this to contact your loved one here and ask what they learned over the week. I think you’ll be deeply blessed.

Another highlight has come and gone by way of academic achievement. We were so excited to see the students dive into their studies and write their first research papers. With the Old Testament literature class ending, it was amazing to read so many papers thought through and worked on. There have been papers written on everything from King David to Nehemiah, and from Psalms to Malachi! We are incredibly proud of our students and are excited to see them grow even further in their academic pursuits.

In case you haven’t seen the post below, the Old Testament Video is now up! Spend some time watching it, it’s good for an embarrassing laugh on our part if nothing else!

Thanks for checking in on us!

Derek

The Old Testament Video

I teased this last week, but here is the 2013 Kaleo Program Old Testament video in all it's glory!
We are most excited to share this with all you!
Please pull up a chair and get some popcorn and enjoy our 43 minute long video starring your favorite Qwanoes student! (and also featuring Cameos by some leaders)

Fall at Camp Qwanoes

Hello Again Everyone! My apologies for the lack of updates last week, we are now in full academic swing here in the program!

Directly after the surf trip we had the opportunity to welcome a large number of 7-11 year olds to Camp Qwanoes and the students were a big part of that. It was amazing to see the way the students jumped in anywhere they were needed to serve the kids. We had some students working on our “All-Star” games team, some students working on various activities, and even some working more directly with the kids in a direct counseling role. I know the kids enjoyed having our students working with them, and it was a blessing to see the way they poured out and served even with mounds of homework that was near due.

After the Juniors retreat ended, we then welcomed Dr Don Taylor to teach the students about Old Testament Literature. I have heard so much from the students on what they’ve learned from this course. It was sensational to see the students fully grasp how important a good understanding of the Old Testament is. While our first class, Spiritual formation, was a foundational course for the students’ personal growth, learning about the Old Testament was truly foundational for their scriptural understanding. Feel free to ask any of the students what they’ve learned, I’ve done it numerous times and am always excited to hear the insight they bring to their answers!

Another highlight of the Old Testament course was a creative video project the students took on. We are currently working on getting the video up to a streaming site so we can feature it here on the blog. But let me just say that all our students are incredibly talented. Whether it was in making the movie, picking costumes out, or their awesome acting abilities, we have had a blast walking with the students through this project. They are all so talented! Stay tuned to see it!

Here’s a brief preview though...

Finally, we’ve had Halloween pass by For most, this would involve dressing up and lots of candy. But as with other things, we’ve learned that our students are a bit more “unique.” While most would dress up in costumes, we found our students celebrating by giving each other unique new hairstyles.

And yes, there was a bit of trick-or-treating also...

We have already gone on one more adventure this week, I’ll put that up in my next post. We are also currently in the midst of a number of big upcoming things. Next week is our Week of Prayer and we are two weeks away from our Church Ministry class.

Please especially be in prayer for us this next week as we are spending hours in prayer. We are expecting some big things from God and we welcome you to partner with us in this!

Thanks for reading!

Derek