I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been so busy, getting little sleep, waking up early, and generally trying to stay awake when I really should be awake.

Here’s the game: The first person to tell me where the top image was taken gets a point. I’ll try to make the game fair by putting images from many different places.

Semafore, found here, has their new October computer desktop calendar out. Check it out and download it in your own desktop size.

What a packed day. It sure was long. Going to morning prayer, I really have started to see the power and importance of prayer. It is integral to anybody’s lifestyle change, as well as large God-focused events. Prayer cannot be overemphasized.

At work, more of the same stuff - sorting data - occurred. It’s really difficult to continue off of where someone else left off. Kim, a graduated grad student, left for full-time work somewhere else, and she finished 4 of the 8 sites, but the other sites are very confusing for me to work through.

Meteorology lab was so fun! We plotted sounding curves, parcel curves, and dew point lines on Stuve diagrams, enabling us to see if air parcels will rise under certain conditions. Stuve diagrams also allow us to find out where the cloud begins to form (cloud bottom) and the top of the cloud.

Lastly, what an amazing time at Campus Crusade for Christ tonight. We had a prayer and praise evening, where we sang many songs to God, and we prayed multiple times for our personal lives, confessing of sins to each other, prayer for our friends and people in our spheres of influence, and for the events Crusade is involved in such as the “I Agree with Graydon” campaign and summer projects. At the end, we all put on t-shirts that say “I agree with Graydon” on them, in support of this campaign.

You know what? It’s not about Graydon. It’s not about me, or Crusade, or numbers, or anything like that. It’s all about God, that he gets the glory, honour, and praise that is due to him.

After going to morning prayer two mornings in a row now, I’m beginning to think I’ll go more often. I mean, last year, Jon, Shelly, Romesh, and I went swimming every day at 7:30. It’s not that different to go to morning prayer this year. I had morning prayer last year near the end of the winter semester with Nusha, Kristen, and Pat in residence. That was also good, and it was close by too!

I find that the morning prayer allows me to take some time to remember that God needs to be first. I can calm down before walking into work, I can close my eyes for a long period of time (without fearing that I’ll sleep in!), and I can pray and connect with God and many wonderful friends.

It seems like the “I Agree with…” campaign is going well. We are saturating it in prayer, and the posters are creating a curiosity and a stir that seems like it will move the campus. The posters were part of our original plan, but it seems like we may not be able to post as many up anymore; however, God is still capable of doing a heck of lot more even without posters.

For most of the day at work, I was parsing through data again. Slowly, but surely, I am getting through sites. It’s not really the cutting and pasting part that is making it slow, it’s more about making sure all missing data is covered by data from other nearby sites. In meteorology we learned more about clouds, stuff like the mountain effect that causes chinooks. It’s essentially that the air rises but loses a lot of the moisture, since it doesn’t rise at the dry adiabatic lapse rate, but cools faster. When it comes back down on the other side, the moisture is mostly gone and the air warms up a whole lot more as it goes down the mountain, resulting in a really warm burst or front of air. We also learned about how wind moves from high pressure areas to low pressure areas, but they don’t really, since the Coriolis effect/force/gremlin pulls winds in a counter-clockwise fashion into low pressure areas.

Our discipleship group for Crusade, ACNFOG, met up tonight. ACNFOG stands for “A Cool Name for Our Group”, which is really, a cool name for our group. We only had 4 guys in total because The Tom was feeling sick and Trevor had a midterm, but we still had a great time eating sausage rolls. Oh yeah, we also had a great time because we did a Car-DG Bible study, as we drove out in the middle of everything and picked up Paul’s car from Canadian Tire and dropped by Radio Shack. We talked and shared about the Holy Spirit mainly. It’s a sad but true fact that the Holy Spirit probably is the most shafted part of the Trinity… He gets no respect sometimes, and many people just plain misunderstand him. If only we understood him more, we would be living fuller and richer (not monetarily) lives, knowing how to lead our days and make decisions confidently.

I’m off to bed. Morning prayer again tomorrow.

So last night Shelly suggested I go to morning prayer at 7:30. At first, I was thinking mostly about what detriment it could do to my body since I work 8:30-4:30 and sometimes struggle to stay awake even with normal 7:30 wakeups! And I don’t want to be exhausted even more for work. But I thought about it a bit and just decided to set my alarm clock to 6:15 and see what would happen from there.

So indeed, I woke up at around 6:30, just bumping up my normal schedule of wakeup, washroom stuff, and breakfast, one hour. Biking to campus was a lot more relaxing, to say the least, since I wasn’t in a rush, technically. When I arrived at the Christian clubs office, there were only a few people, so I was able to get a coveted sofa spot! Shortly after many more people showed up, as they took the bus and arrived together. In all, we had over 20 people, I would estimate. We prayed for the campus, for the I Agree with Campaign, and for people in our spheres of influence. What power we felt and what humility we understood when we just mentioned out loud the names of friends we knew who need to experience God’s changing power.

Work was one fun, cold, and windy ordeal all put together. Up at the Elora Research Station, approximately 30 minutes north of Guelph, Steve, Andrew, and I took soil water samples. This was different from the past stuff I did: we used generator-driven pumps to draw water out of the rain barrels, tile drains, lysimeters, and plot wells. All bundled up in 4 layers++ of clothing, we would take bottles and just fill them up with water from tubes connected to underground devices. My job was mainly the labelling of bottles and recording of the volume of water in each bottle. That essentially took up the whole day. It’s fun to listen to Steve and Andrew outside of the office, when outrageous jokes and comments are strung out one after the other. Tell me, just how is the word “funky” used when it is describing something positive, or something negative?

After work I had the privilege of going to Malcolm and Mair’s home for dinner again. Malc picked me up at home, with Siann and Tesha accompanying him in their pajamas and winter coats. They seem to like seeing where I live, it must be a neat thing for them. Dinner wasn’t quite ready when we arrived, so I spent some time reading Chapter 7 of the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia out loud to the girls. This CS Lewis classic was my gift to their family last year for Christmas, just for your information. Mair had to remind the girls, aged 5, 7, and 3, not to climb all over me when I was reading it to them… So Tesha sat on my lap, Siann on my right, and Kylee, kind of paying attention to the story, on my left. Later at the dinner table, I was so surprised when Siann actually remembered every little detail that I was reading 20 minutes before — honestly, I couldn’t even remember myself. She has an amazing memory. The food of the night (well, the early evening) was spaghetti and sauce, and Mair’s homemade brownies for dessert. The girls, however, had grilled cheese… Kylee was a bit confused and scared to eat her grilled cheese, since there was melted marble, since normally she eats cheese UNmelted. It was funny to observe that.

Dinner was done and soon Tesha and Kylee were put to bed. I think with having me over as a guest, they were so excited and didn’t want to go to bed. Siann was allowed to stay up a bit later, and we played an intense 45 minutes (longer?) of chess. Apparently, Malcolm, a high school math teacher and chess club advisor, has Siann hooked on chess. And she’s only 7 years old! She knows how to “castle” and do other special moves — one smart girl, I must say. But soon enough, she had to go to bed and I had to be returned home, so after I wrote down the places of the game pieces (to continue another time) and a good night hug from Siann, I left with Mair for their van.

All I can say is that these girls give me so much joy and pleasure. They speak their minds, they trust me completely, they laugh all the time and constantly hum and sing music. I really love this family so much, it is hard to stay away from them for too long. Which shows why I’ve been having so much trouble making a decision about whether to stay at Grace Community Church, or go to another closer, more convenient church.

Tomorrow, I will try to go to morning prayer again.