Re·bel·lion: Resistance to or defiance of tradition

Evangelizing can be a scary thing. It can also take a lot out of you. That’s why most people will do a time of intense evangelizing, but then take a break. For some people that’s their ministry, they just evangelize all the time.
For me, well…I’ve taken about a 2 year break…

It’s time to get back at it! Mostly I think evangelizing could be much more effective when you build relationships with the people you’re reaching out to. But there is a time for door to door evangelism, as well.

Because evangelism is part of the one year program for the School of Discipleship students and I live at the SoD house, this decision was pretty easy. Every first and third Sunday there is evangelism and we hope to come up with creative ways to reach out into our neighbourhood.

Today we went to Lightway Baptist Church, a church with a mission to reach out to the section of Hamilton that has a lot of high rises (which is also in the same area as the church). This area has one of the highest densities in Hamilton. Also, most of the people living in these places are immigrants and are on a low income. Our plan was to join this church in sharing the gospel with the people in these apartments and the church could do the followup. We heard some of the buildings were unlocked so that we could just go door to door inside. So at 2 we prayed and then headed out with our tracts and evangecubes*. Unfortunately, we went from one building to the next, but every one was locked. I’m sure you were all excited to hear great stories of what happened, but sadly, I have none. We were a little disappointed, but wrote down the names of the places so we could come back and pray for the people who live there.

Please pray with us (and for us), for opportunities to share the gospel with these people. For evangelizing in general, we need ideas for how to do this in the winter as it’s pretty cold sometimes and not easy to go door to door.

I just want to mention Lightway Community Baptist again. Very neat church! If you are looking for a good church, you should check it out. Or even if you just want to go visit, I’m sure you’ll be blessed. http://www.lightwaychurch.ca

Thanks for your prayers!
Treble

*

Hello again!

I promised some photos in my last post and so I thought I’d put a few up tonight. To start I’ll show you what our house looks like and what my room looks like. (This is nice for when you think of me, then you can kind of picture where I am :)

This is where I’m living. The window at the top is my room. You can also see a bit of the office on the right.

This is the main part of my room. I have a little tree. =)

Then I have this nice little nook where I can hang out!

It’s a nice room with lots of sunshine and a great view of the snowstorm today!

That’s it for now! Maybe next I’ll post some photos of my house mates and I.

:)

Hi friends,

“Where have I been?!” you ask. I know I know, you miss reading my blogs, looking at my photos, and reading about my exciting life. ;) It has been a long time since I’ve posted anything, and I think it’s safe to say my blog was pretty much dead. But, I have come to bring it back to life! I guess over the summer I wasn’t that interested in writing or maybe I thought I didn’t have anything to share… I’m not sure. Then October came and it started getting really busy at work, and then November came and it got even busier, and then December came and it got even busier. But, now that it is over I feel like writing a blog. Plus, I have started a new chapter in my life that I would like to share with you. So, I’ve got some tea, some popcorn, a blanket, and I’m ready to blog away.

As January is the start of a new year, it was the start of many new things for me too. First of all, on January 8th, I moved away from home. This was harder than I thought it would be. I’ll admit, I missed my mom quite a bit! My brothers didn’t mourn my leaving for very long. The next day Reuben kicked Dylan out of their room and moved all of Dylan’s stuff into my old room all by himself. See, he can be motivated to do stuff sometimes.

I am now living at the SoD house beside the gfa office. School of Discipleship is a program for young people ages 18 to 25 who can come to the office here and work with the staff, live in community with other students (and staff), be a part of reaching the lost, and just grow closer to Jesus. God has blessed us with two young ladies for the January class this year, our first students in Canada! And I have the awesome privilege of being one of their housemates. Barb, who is on staff at gfa, is the house “mom.” And me, well I’m her sidekick. I’m here for when I’m needed and to hopefully be a help around here. I want to be an encouragement to Barb and the girls and to be here for them.

I moved in about two weeks before Emily and Vanessa (the SoD students) moved in. As I said, it was harder than I thought. At first I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do. It’s weird still doing everything I usually do, but then can’t go home with dad at the end of the day. At the same time, I’m glad I still do everything I normally do. At least I can go to work and know what I’m doing! We depend on that a lot I think. “Knowing” what’s going to happen and how we’re going to do it. This year there will be a lot of trusting in God for things, because I don’t really know what I’m doing and the future seems pretty unknown and sometimes scary. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to move too far from home and I’m beside the office too, so I can just walk to work every day.

Other than that, my work at gfa is the same. I’m still in Donor Services answering phones, taking donations, doing sponsorships, etc. This year has started off great and we pray that God will continue it through the year. We have had some new staff come this past year, one with a family of nine children who have been a blessing to us all. As new people come into my life, some leave. Yet another one of my good friends has moved off to Texas just a couple days ago. Sometimes I wonder why God does that. It’s sad. And why Texas? Sounds like my brother is going to go there, too. But that’s his news so I’ll just tease you with that. hehe.

This post is getting super long. I hope you didn’t mind and you weren’t too bored. I’ll be uploading pictures and posting about my year at this house and the adventures that I’ll have with the girls. =)

Until then!

Treble

Reuben and I did some late night baking tonight. Best chocolate chip cookies EVER! Warm, chewy, and chocolatey. With some cold milk. Mmmm.

Many of you have been waiting along with me for the completion of my room. It is coming along and almost ready for me to move in! Here are some photos of the process.

Martin Quiroz did the drywall and I’m so thankful for him.  If he hadn’t come I wouldn’t be much closer to moving in as I was before he came.

This is the colour I chose. I had to make sure I didn’t get something too dark because there aren’t any windows to make things brighter. I think this colour will work great and I’ll have lots of lights.

Dad did the laminate flooring. He had it done pretty quick, within a couple of days. =)

Now the floor is finished and most of the trim is up! All that’s left is to put the ceiling light in, a light switch, and some outlets. Then I can move in!

I hope to put a bright lamp in there and some white Christmas lights up.

I will post more photos once I’m moved in! :)

Today we hiked up to the Devil’s Punchbowl. On Easter, go figure. But it’s a nice place to hike and there’s a big cross at the top that shines in the night. Here we are with a nice view of Stoney Creek and the lake behind us. Yay for the first real spring day!

Hi!

Last weekend I went to Ottawa with Susan. We had quite a few meetings lined up for us to share at about Gospel for Asia. I also got to share some of my experiences in India. I know a lot of you prayed for me while I was gone and I wanted to thank YOU! and also share a little bit about our trip.

First of all, I am not a speaker. I generally don’t stand up in front of people and talk at the same time. I also seem to lose the ability to read and notes are completely useless to me.  So if anything comes of these meetings, all the glory goes to God. Already I am praising Him because every meeting went very well and I was able to get my thoughts out in a way that seemed to make sense to everyone listening. I know this was because there were so many people praying for me.

We stayed at the Zollinger’s house. They are volunteers for GFA and such a wonderful family. They have had eleven kids so they have a very big house and lots of grandkids, of which there was always at least one to run and greet us at the door every time we came back from somewhere. This was honestly a home away from home.

Friday night Susan and I shared with a small group at someone’s home. It was very laid back and a good way to practice our presentations. We mainly just went through our India photos and told stories. There was definitely more interaction in this kind of setting because it was more relaxed. Even though there were only a few people, it may have been the most effective thing we did that weekend.

Saturday we visited three ministry partners and got to thank them personally for standing with us. We also got to hear their stories of how they heard about GFA and about life in general. It was very neat getting to know all of them.

I shared for five minutes at a church Sunday morning. I took the congregation to Rajasthan, India, and shared about how our group had the honour of naming a baby. I told them the story of the babies father (the pastor) and how the church got to be there. I was stressed about only having five minutes and so I was more nervous about this meeting than the rest; I was afraid I would go over the time given to me. But at the same time I was happy I only had to be up there for five minutes. I ended up going six minutes which is pretty good. Praise God!

Sunday night Susan and I shared at a youth group and Monday night I shared at another youth group. Originally this is the whole reason that I was going to Ottawa – to encourage and challenge the young people. But God obviously opened up many other doors. The kids at both youth groups were very attentive and enjoyed seeing our India photos. We took some garbage with us and gave them thirty seconds to dig through it, just to give them an idea of what someone in the slums would do every single day. We had a couple of interactive things like this to hopefully make more of an impression. They might not remember a word we said, but they’ll remember digging through garbage.

Please pray that there will be fruit from these meetings. That people would be more aware that 2.7 billion are unreached with the gospel and the word would spread of what God is doing to reach these people. Our prayer is that people would grow so close to Jesus that they wouldn’t live for this world, but for eternity. From that will come a desire to see these people reached with the love of Jesus Christ.

Thanks again for praying! I know God will use it!
Until next time,
Jessica

Last week I flew down to Florida with my friend Elizabeth. We did lots of fun things together with her family. Some days we would relax and enjoy the sun and 20 degree weather. Other days we did things like go for an airboat ride and see 6′ alligators, drive to the ocean and find cool shells, and take a stroll through downtown disney (the free part).  I feel well rested and I even have a bit of a tan. :) Here’s some photos!

Riding the airboat through alligator territory!

This here is Big John

This here is Trixie, a baby alligator.

We played pool with the boys quite a bit. I think they enjoyed beating us every single game.

Joel with a Woody made out of lego.

Sticking my feet into the ocean. That’s about as far as I got.

I got a new camera on sale and it takes pretty decent photos. It also takes panoramic shots which are lots of fun. I will show more photos later, but for now, here are some of the panoramic ones.

As you may know, pop music makes up the mainstream media these days. Music videos like Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, Love the Way You Lie by Eminem/Rihanna, and others, are in the top 10 most watched videos on youtube.

I was reading a blog of an artist, Michael Gungor, who did an analysis of pop music. How is it made? What’s the formula? He wrote out 10 steps on how you can write a pop song. I will include them now. Warning: these songs are not very creative, but you will make millions.

1. Find THE right synth patch on your Motif keyboard.  It’s pretty much the exact same patch in every hit pop song.  It’s also the same patch that they’ve been using since I was in 8^th grade.
2. Arrange this patch in a series of four chords at a tempo somewhere between 90-130 bpm.  Preferably, two of the chords should be major, and two should be minor, but any four diatonic chords should do alright as long as you repeat these four chords over and over and over.
3. Find a few effects on your Motif keyboard.  You know, the reverse cymbal swell, the big whoosh, car horns…etc and place these sounds before the first of the four chords occasionally.
4. On. The. Floor.
5. Avoid electric guitars for the most part, but if you must use them, thin the tone out to the point where it sounds like a Motif keyboard patch.
6. Come up with a few little catchy melodies.  One for the chorus, which generally starts the song, then one for the verse if it’s not rapped, and one for the bridge, if you want to have a bridge.  This part is really the only part that takes any creative initiative on your part, so you may want to spend at least 15 minutes on this section.  Autotune these melodies.
7. For lyrical content, try to keep it to one of the following categories: sex, clubs, buttocks, genitals, breaking up or alcohol.  Also, clichés from about 5-10 years ago seem to do well, as do cheesy and obscure sexual innuendos that you know are sexual, but are not sure exactly what they might mean… i.e. “I’ll melt your popcicle.”
8. Avoid using proper English whenever possible.
9. Rapping on the verses or at least having someone occasionally speak a few semi-incoherent phrases lower in the mix is very helpful.  This is called the “
   hype track” I believe.  If you are a white girl, it can be very helpful to have a black man repeat whatever you sing like one or two beats later.

10. Find attractive females to take their clothes off in your music video.

He then goes on to share some lyrics of Katy Perry’s song….

For your further enlightenment, I have attached a minor textual analysis of the third verse of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”, which is currently the 5^th best selling song on all of Itunes right now.  If you think about it, of all of the masterpieces ever recorded… Composers like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven… Artists like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, or the Beatles…  No way.  The genius.  Katy Perry.

First of all, look at how she spells “California Gurls.”  You might have expected the more common spelling of g-i-r-l-s.  But that is so cliché.  Why do you think the owners of the gas station chain “Kum and Go” decided to go with that spelling rather than a boring and typical “Come and Go”?  Because it sounds the same!  But it’s spelled differently?!  Do you get it?  This is very sophisticated stuff.

Here is the first stanza of the third verse of California Gurls:

Toned, tanned, Fit and ready
Turn it up ’cause it’s gettin’ heavy
Wild, wild Westcoast
These are the girls I love the most
I mean the ones, I mean like she’s the one
Kiss her, Touch her, Squeeze her buns

I’m not sure who wrote these lyrics, but certainly he or she is a lyrical genius.  Did you notice the way that he or she rhymed “buns” with “the one.”  It almost sounds like the same word, it’s such a good rhyme….

- Michael Gungor

Ok, enough said. Enough sarcasm. I hope you realize that we have so much more potential than this. God; creator of the beauty that you see around us; creator of music, notes, melodies, and language; gave us the ability to create. He has blessed us tremendously with the gift of making music and being able to understand it. And it’s so wasted. No, not wasted. It’s not even used! People hardly notice the ones who do try to use this gift to it’s greatest potential.

If you want to listen to some creative music, Gungor (Michael Gungor’s music) has some cool songs. Try this song …you’ll be hooked. :)