Surfing in Tofino!!!

Hello everyone! I’m excited to once again bring you the continuing adventures of the Kaleo program!

This past week was another busy one as we headed up to Tofino and Ucluelet to go surfing! 

As far as trips go, this one was definitely one of the more talked about and anticipated by the students. The surfing trip was definitely a uniquely West Coast experience for many of the students. Where else in this country can you go surfing in five foot waves in the middle of October?

On Monday morning we pulled out nice and early and headed for the West Coast of the island. It was almost a five hour drive there, so we decided to take a little stop in MacMillan Provincial Park. This park is well-known across the world for having Cathedral Grove as part of it. Cathedral Grove houses an amazing display of West Coast Douglas Firs, which are one of the largest trees in the world. We were treated to getting to spend some time with these giants, so we were sure to take lots of pictures!

From there we headed up to Tofino and after spending some good time shopping and wandering around the tourist town, we headed to our accommodation in Ucluelet.We were so grateful for the Christ Community Church to let us spend the evenings there. The first night was spent with some good group time that included some games that definitely brought us closer together!

Tuesday morning brought us our first surf day! Before noon we headed out the Chesterman’s Beach and met our guides there. We learned all about how to stay safe while surfing (Cover your head!) and how waves worked. It was then time to go surfing! While we weren’t quite the picture of surfing videos, it was definitely apparent how we were improving through the day. While none of us were surfing barrels or doing jumps off of waves, it was great to see how many of the group were able to get up on their boards and truly experience surfing for the first time. The wave conditions were intense, and we were treated to fairly large waves. It was amazing to see how many of the students kept at it while getting pounded by wave after wave

After over four hours of good surfing we called it a day and went back to the church in Ucluelet. That evening was a little less busy than the first one, because a lot more of us were tired, so it mostly consisted of studying, eating and a group movie. We all slept well that night! (I think!)

The next morning brought us to our last day on the trip, but also allowed us for one more morning of surfing. First, we headed out into a park in Ucluelet and spent some time marveling at the large waves and spending some time with God. 

Then, we headed back out to Chesterman’s beach and got in some good morning surfing.  From there we said goodbye to our guides, brought back our board rentals and started the drive back to camp. We had to make one more stop on our way back so we made a quick stop at Coombs. Coombs is famous for it’s unique market that has goats on it’s roof. While we didn’t get to see the goats on the roof, we did buy ourselves lots of goodies to eat on the trip home.

With the surf trip over, we come to a close in our major trips for the fall. There are no more over-nighter trips until after the Christmas break, so we look forward into seeing the students shift from adventure mode to more of a study mode. These next couple weeks will test the students in having a large number of their assignments due. I have been so blessed to see these students push through tough things already. Every challenge that has been taken on has been met with willing spirits and great attitudes. We’ve already climbed mountains, sailed around the gulf islands and conquered surfing. As we head into a more academic season of the program I’m excited to see how they will take to new challenges and strive to thrive in them.

We are also excited as a number of students have taken on the opportunities to help with the Juniors retreat this weekend .As I sit here writing, 100+ 7-11 year olds are arriving here. It will be fun to see a number of our students interact with camp ministry here at Qwanoes I look forward to seeing them work with kids and contribute to this amazing camp ministry. After this finishes, we are lucky to have Dr Don Taylor arrive to teach us Old Testament literature.

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks here, and we’re excited to see what God has in store for us coming up!

Until next week,

Derek 

Camp and Youth Ministry

Hello everyone, to start this week's blog we have either a bit of good news or a bit of bad news (depending on who you're talking to). The rain has finally arrived at Camp Qwanoes, and it shows no signs of letting up for the next couple weeks. We have been so blessed to have had nothing but sun since the students got here, and we were able to keep it until after Thanksgiving. But the rain has finally arrived, and so the students are finally getting a taste of what a BC Fall/Winter is really like.

We do have a bit of exciting news to report from last week. As we were sailing on the ship, we had a boat pull up next to us and start asking questions. It turns out they were reporters from the Times Colonist, the biggest major newspaper on Vancouver Island, and they were doing a report on boats on the water. We talked to them a bit about the program and they took more pictures. Today, as we were headed to church we were treated to an unexpected surprise! We made the front cover of their Sunday edition!

While none of us got specific name mentions in the article (except for our Captain), and they didn't exactly mention the name of our program (even though I spelled it out for them), we did get nicely mentioned in the article as "college students from both Canada and the U.S." Some of us even got mentions for our pirate costumes! It was nice to see us on the cover today, and if you look closely you can see some of our jackets on the deck.

We were all really excited this past week to have our Camp and Youth ministry class on. We were lucky to have Sid Koop join us from Lethbridge, and Scott Bayley, the director of Camp Qwanoes, joined in on the teaching. We were also able to see a number of Qwanoes Interns take the course as well, so it was one of the bigger classes we will have all year!

We were so excited to have this course offered. I know the students all have really enjoyed it. The feedback has been incredibly positive and it has been mentioned how incredibly practical this course seemed for much of what is going on this year. I know the students are excited to see what they have learned translate into the ministries they are helping. It's going to be amazing to see the students practice what they have learned! The course may have ended for the week, but it will be continued later on this year, so it's not done yet!

We were also really lucky to have the Women's retreat here this weekend! Some of the students were able to serve as we had 70+ women join us from around B.C. With this weekend, the Qwanoes retreat schedule starts! In the upcoming weeks we will have numerous ages of kids and a men's retreat happening around here. The students will get to try out various areas of camp ministry, practicing what they have learned in the class. There are so many areas to serve here, from counseling to dishpit, to kitchen to maintenance, it will be exciting to see the students plug in to "camp life" here at Camp Qwanoes!

Finally for this week, with the busy schedule and non-stop pace It's been fun to see how some of the students have been relaxing around camp. Continuously looking for new ways to have fun, we've seen this manifest itself in various ways. There seems to have been one thing though that has really captured some of the students interests. We now see Slack-lining at almost every opportunity for some free time. It's been a lot of fun to see the students get braver as they cross the rope, and it now sits much higher than it did before! 

I'm off for now, the next blog post will chronicle our surf trip that starts tomorrow! Thanks everyone for reading! Please pray for our safety this next week, we are really excited to head out but could really use some prayer! This isn't Hawaii, so we are in for some cold-water surfing!

Until next time!

Derek

S.A.L.T.S. Trip 2012!

Hello again everybody! This past week was another special one in the Kaleo program as we were able to spend Monday to Friday sailing with the S.A.L.T.S. Program around the gulf islands in the Pacific Ocean. Now that we are all recovered from the constant swaying motion that plagued us for days, we figured it was time for another blog post to tell you all about it.

We boarded the Pacific Grace on Monday morning and headed out The Grace is a 138 foot long Gaff Schooner that we were lucky to board. We met our crew – Skipper, Matt, Nicki, GA and Kailey, and headed out sailing for our first day. The conditions were perfect! Our first day was spent learning our tasks and adjusting to life on the boat. 

On Tuesday we were able to do even more! With the weather conditions yet again incredible, we pulled into an island after a bit of sailing and proceeded to board the dorys to the shore (which was an adventure in and of itself!) We then spent the afternoon climbing the mountain to get a great view of the ocean and the other gulf islands. While it was a bit of a tough hike for some, the views at the end made it all worth it! 

 On Wednesday, we were treated to a few things. Firstly, we pulled into another island and were able to head to shore and explore the tidal pools. We met quite a few friends in the water there and also spent a good time slack-lining. We then did a leadership exercise that involved us blindfolded and not talking for near to an hour. We learned many things about ourselves and group communication during this exercise, and many of you might be surprised that some of our students can go an entire hour without talking! We also spent a good deal of time having fun on the ship itself, many students climbed the shrouds to the top of the boat and enjoyed some great views!

Thursday was our quieter day on board. We didn’t do any out-trips but were able to spend a good day practicing our ship duties, tying turkshead knots, and getting some reading/homework done. The day concluded in the Oak Bay harbour where we learned that the shrouds on the boats are good for jumping off of and that the Pacific Ocean is not too cold in October for a good swim!

Friday saw our last day on board as we returned home to camp. We spent the morning picking up some good speed near the Victoria harbour as we reached nearly nine knots in a big ship. It was a lot of fun to use the sails and the wind to reach such a speed. We then said our goodbyes, and slept all the way home on the bus ride.

We were so grateful for the time we spent on the Pacific Grace. It not only was a good time, it taught us many lessons that we needed to learn. From the Skipper’s leadership talks, our times of testimony, being stretched in physical tasks on the boat, or various other bonding times we had It was an incredible time of learning about ourselves and learning how to work as a team. We’ve since returned back closer as a group and grateful for all that we did. Many students have since said that they wish they could have spent more time on the boat, which was an intense, albeit wonderful, journey for all of us.

This week the students are in their second class of the year as Sid Koop joins us from Lethbridge to teach Youth and Camp Ministry. Please be in prayer as this is an incredibly good and practical course that will last over the course of the year.

Last night we were able to celebrate thanksgiving together with a big turkey dinner uniting both the camp staff and the students. For those of you who have loved ones over here, know how grateful I am that you’ve allowed your loved ones to join us this year. When I thought about what I was thankful for, the usual things came up, but I realized how thankful I was for each one of these students. The way they’ve come into the program with an expectancy for God to work and how they’ve been such a blessing to all around here.

I’m already excited to talk about next week, but I hope that I’ve been able to capture how amazing our time so far in the program has been!

Derek