Canada

Every evening for hours, my friends in Canada get together, eat food, talk, and hang out for hours. Many of us met through IHOP, or did an internship with Shawn Bolz and Whitedove ministries. We seem to spend our time listening to Chuck Missler or Neville Johnson sermons and comparing iPod teaching contents. We can sit around and talk about mysteries like Quantum Physics and the nature of light and sound, or chat about what we're going to do with our lives.

These are people in whose presence I've had heavenly encounters, with whom I've lived in intern housing, driven across the country and travelled to Israel and around the world. People who have encouraged me to not give up, prophecied over me, rebuked me, and loved me even when I'm stupid.

Tonight I’m in Billings, Montana. I was hoping to get a little farther today, on my drive from Alberta to Kansas City, but Montana is a big state!  I've stopped in a nice Motel 8 to soak in the bathtub and rest my weary muscles.  Never plan a 27 hour roadtrip for the day after a skitrip. Bad timing.

I had once considered that the memories made from this, my first real to Canada will be forever connected with my general opinion of the nation of Canada, for good or for bad; that opinion of an entire nation rests on the success or failure of this trip.  Now I can say that I LOVE Canada, because I've had such an amazing time. 

This morning interns prayed over me in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, and I didn’t pull out of town until around noon. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to leave, and I actually started crying when I walked out the door.  I've been in this small resort town a couple hours from Calgary for 2 months helping out a local church with an young adult internship, having left much of my life in Kansas City on hold. During this time, some of my favorite people have come together from all parts of the US and Canada for what has felt like an extended winter break with all your favorite college friends. It's right out of a Sara Groves song,

"And I wish all the people I love the most could gather in one place, and know each other and love each other well.  And I wish we could all go camping and lay beneath the stars with nothing to do and stories to tell."

It's been too cold to go camping, but we did go skiing yestserday, at Lake Louise outside of Banff, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies.  It was so beautiful!

When it comes to skiing, I looked great! Borrowing ski equipment can definitely add to your prestige if borrowed from the right people. Thankfully, I know the right people. Unfortunately, borrowed professional ski equipment did not assist in the actual “skiing” part. That does require some presonal ability, that I apparently have not.  I made the green run last for something like three hours, and now have, um, memories to last a lifetime. It’s not that I didn’t understand the concept skiing, because I do. I know how to ski, it’s just the actual skiing part that I trip up on. It's purely psychological. I don’t like going fast, at all. And when I begin to pick up speed, I do a kamakaze fall. Ouch.

Anyway after three hours of attempted skiing, and only a muffin for breakfast from Tim Hortons, I had a drop in blood sugar on the hill and started shaking. At that point a few other fears became more prominent than my fear of speed. Those fears are:

1.Fear of being always remembered by these my greatest 8 friends, as the most pathetic girl skier ever.  Unfortunately that is now true.

2. Fear of humiliation if I had to get the ski patrol to get me off this mountain on a snowmobile reserved for people who break bones.

3. Fear of the sun going down and me still being up here, and getting attatched by wolves, in the dark.

So, after analysing the options, I realized I had to get down, so I booked it down the mountain shaking like a diabetic, b-lined to the bratworst, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the lodge enjoying hot toddies, and the mountain scenery.