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!)