Monday, October 24, 2005

Let's Finish Catching Up

Hey there everyone! I know I didn't finish sending the rest of the Chapters from this summer's adventure. I'm going to amalgamate them into one story. So in a nutshell, after we returned from Malta we threw ourselves headlong into a week of kids’ club. There were over 50 kids that came. Most of them, actually, it was pretty much all of them except for a couple, came from low-income areas and very broken, confused families. Divorced parents, separated parents, arguing parents, teenage parents, no parents, grand-parents…you get the idea. But all of them 100% kids ready to play. We’d pick them up before 10am and drop them off around 5pm. We had 6 very long days of parks, playgrounds, songs, games, face painting, scrapped knees, and badly watered down juice. It was fantastic! You just don’t know how much difference a week at a kid’s club can make in a child’s life. Now, I never came from a background like any of them. I was very blessed with a wonderful mom and dad and even a brother. I never had to think twice about if they were going to be home when I returned, I never had to worry about if there was going to be food, I never wondered if my parents loved each other or me. Those are just a few of the things too many kids deal with by the time they’re 5 years old. But what I do know is that before I ever went to church on a regular basis (which wasn’t until my teens), I went to a kid’s club in my neighbour’s back yard for a week in the summer every year. We sang songs, heard stories, and played games. I learnt new things about God, and it always stuck with me. I don’t know where these kid’s will be 10 years from now, I don’t know where I’ll be – but I do know that that week, we could share with these kids that God loves them, and will always be there for them.

After kids week, Danny and I went to a weekend conference in Devon. It was beautiful there and the weather was great Danny and I were staying in a 2-man tent (borrowed) and we had an inflatable mattress to put in it (also borrowed). Sounds perfect, right? Well, the people that brought us the mattress forgot to bring the caps for it so no air would stay inside. But that didn’t stop us! We’re Canadians – get the duct tape! We fashioned ourselves a couple of caps that would have made MacGyver proud. However, once the mattress was fully inflated, we found it was too big for the tent. We let the air out and slept on the ground, which was just fine.

The conference was very interesting. There were numerous speakers, all of them doctors, professors, authors and all with education in the sciences. Everything from biology to math. At first glance, I thought, “Yeesh, it’s going to be one of those weekends.” But it wasn’t like that at all. Much of the focus was on creation and evolution. I came away from it feeling not only encouraged about the reliability of the Bible and creation, but also so impressed by how incredible our universe is – how much more incredible must our creator be? So often we believe what we are told or taught, and the things that are being taught today as truth should be put under the microscope – especially by Christians. I really believe that we aren’t supposed to hide from science. I don’t believe God is scared of our questions. I believe that He’s given us not just the right, but the responsibility to ask questions about what we believe. There are answers. Maybe not all of them come right away, maybe not all of our questions will be answered, but we’ll never know if we don’t ask. Do you believe in evolution? Why or why not? Do you believe that the universe and everything in it was created by God? Why or why not?

If you want to email me back about your thoughts, feel free. I can’t promise I’ll email back in full detail, and I don’t want to start any wars about it either. I’m just putting it out there, I guess. I believe in creation as it is stated in Genesis. God + nothing + 6 days = everything. If some one were to ask you, what would you say?

Anyway, here is an interesting website www.creationmoment.com

Okay, the last chapter was about a mystery ingredient recipe. One day Danny and I found this discount grocery store and in the reduced to clear bin (which is always a bad sign, but even worse if you find one in a store full of stuff that has already been discounted) Danny found a jar of yellow chunky sauce. It had no label, but it was 5 pence (which is like 2 cents Canadian). Being the adventurous people we are, we bought it. Now we do joke about being on a missionary budget, and that we are from Canada and that Canadians eat anything – but this transcends into a whole new level. A level I don’t even know if people in trailer parks resort to. The important thing is that we both lived to tell the tale. I don’t know if it’s a good illustration about faith, or a story of taking a stupid risk. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B…

Well, this email has been huge. I hope you are all still with me! I haven’t even written anything about how LifeFORCE is going yet! We are into our second week of training and everything is going very well. We seem to have all settled in (all 9 of us) and are in the full swing of things. I’ll be writing more on that though next time. I’m sure you all need a breather. This is why I don’t preach on Sundays!

One last thing: I just want to say a huge thank you to all of you for everything. Every little email you send me back, every little prayer you say for us, all your immense patience and understanding with these massive updates and a few sparse personal notes in between, and the financial blessings – can’t forget that! Even though Danny and I are in another country, and sometimes we do feel very far away, we never have felt alone in this work. My prayer is that will return these blessings back to you in greater ways!

God bless,
~Alycia DeLong

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