Ok so it is such a Silas thing to totally avoid my 500th post by looking through my post archives for empty draft posts and accidental multiple posts. So now I’m on my 497th actual real post, it seems. And now the pressure is off and I can post about whatever I want instead of thinking about something profound or unusual to put up. I think I deliberately procrastinated this post because it would have been my 500th, but the past few days have had some interesting happenings. In the end, I’ll probably make the monumental post nothing monumental at all — just blog like it were any other entry without any fanfare or pizazz. I’m pretty weird like that.

On Thursday I decided to visit York by surprise but ended up going downtown to MEC to get my messenger bag fixed. The shoulder strap release mechanism broke when I dropped the bag at the Athletic Centre, so I needed to find resolution quick. I took advantage of the free morning and the freedom that no one was expecting me anywhere at anytime throughout the day. No expectations to let down. That is likely why I’m such a spontaneous person when it comes to daily life. If no one has any expectations of me to be somewhere at a certain time, then I won’t let anyone down.

So of course I ended up spending lots of time at MEC. It’s the only retail store that I consistently browse. As in browse and walk through all the aisles and really enjoy being inside. All other stores - supermarkets, clothing stores, malls, etc — I try my best to just go in, get what I need, and leave. MEC is one of the only stores that has satisfied me continually in its quality, its prices, and the product selection it offers. And of course in the end, I walked out with some replacement bike parts, long johns, and a couple clearance ‘biners. Oh and a new wallet. Can’t really help myself in MEC, the stuff is just so good.

After some lunch at Mamma’s Pizza and a hot chocolate to go from Starbuck’s, I hit up the public transit to get to York. It was a long ride up the Spadina subway line, but I was reading a good book (Good to Great) and I was enjoying the new environment since I had never actually taken the Spadina line. When I arrived at the C4C office in the Student Centre 2nd floor, I totally surprised Josh. There was a bunch of people from the band congregating to start a practice soon. So I joined their practice. Turns out a girl named Joyce was in the band… I was in a band with her for one MissionsFest Toronto event. I think the band consisted of Wayne, Jim, Joyce, Homing, and me.

So I went to join their practice. It was good times. That band of Andre, Josh, Joyce, Maryte, and Steve is actually really slick. If you gave them a great soundguy, a good drummer, and some more space (room, time), it could be an utterly wonderful team. As in I would bring them to my church for a Sunday and have them lead worship.

I don’t have much more to comment on except for going to the weekly meeting, surprising a few more people, having some dinner with some more peeps (met Andrew, Suvit), and discovering a bit of the York “Through the Roof” concert/service/outreach thing. After going to this Through the Roof thing, I have some mixed thoughts about it… it could be something really effective if it has an actual goal and purpose — other than to gather a bunch of Christians together for some cool music. I just don’t know if C4C really stands behind such an event (the logo of C4C was on TTF’s promotional posters), as opposed to the notion that some C4C people are involved with this event. There’s a difference there, and I think we all need to be careful when we’re putting the name of an organization behind such events. Just because some members of a club are involved with something else doesn’t necessarily entail full endorsement or support. It sounds like such an obvious statement, but sometimes the lines appear to blur when it’s in the name of unity or something like that.

Having been in London for 4 days doing a sort of informal campus exchange, I’ve learned quite a bit. A lot of this stuff I’ll be taking in and processing over the next while. Western is a unique campus with interesting needs and buttons. It seems like a campus where people rarely want to discuss spiritual matters, mainly because students have “better” things to focus on. It was probably a realistic goal for Lucas and me to share the “Knowing God Personally” booklet once between us both during 2 days. Random evangelism is difficult — students are typically studying intensely in the cafeterias, armed with laptops and protected by headphones. At least this week, most were getting ready for midterms (understandable). From my experience, Guelph campus is more open for dialogue about spiritual things; students will be more vocal about their stance, even if it is controversial or disagreeable.

A few memorable moments from these past days include the following: living, cooking, talking, reading, doing laundry, and spending time with Ben. Sharing the “Knowing God Personally” booklet with one of the big future leaders at one of the affiliate colleges through a leadership survey. Meeting lots more C4C students involved with Western C4C — Steve, Ben H, Adam Kerr, Brendan, Tim B, Ted Martin, Jon Brown, Jess Allen, Laura Rogers, Lisa, Amy, Erin, Ginny, Janelle, among others. I try to remember these names because names are important. Many of these students are considering and applying and have applied for Summer Project… which is totally awesome. Going to the cafs and sharing my faith randomly with students with Ian Edington (Queen’s), Jen Clarke, Lucas. Going to Eric’s home to shovel his car out once (we made a huge difference!), and then for a second time to talk about ministry structure, joining staff, and to see Dawn and meet Bryce. Bryce (currently 4 months old) will be one athletic boy, it seems. And Eric and Dawn are doing an awesome job of trying to figure out how to raise him in a wise and godly manner.

It was great to meet Ian Edington and Mark McDonald from Queen’s, and I hope they continue to have a great week at Western. They are wonderful guys and they are learning lots and observing lots from the strong movement there. Also, about 11 students are going to Montreal next week during their reading week for a campus exchange of sorts. That is utterly awesome! I didn’t know about it previously and I’m not sure how much of this was influenced in any way from my Campus Exchange organization, but whatever it is stemming from, they are doing an excellent thing. They’ll have lots of fun too. And that is in addition to the students from Western and Windsor who are going to Scotland next week.

The day is coming soon: My next blog post will be my 500th blog post. Five hundred… That seems absolutely crazy. I’m not one to care too much about the rate of posting, but for the most part my blogs are extensive in-depth thoughts, rather than the occasional two-liner. So 500 posts is something to be proud about, I think. Not proud that I’ve posted so many (I’m sure other people have posted way more) but instead to understand better how much this blog means to me. It is definitely significant to me. Happy Singforever Blog Birthday’s Eve!

The plan - have a great few days here in London.

The happenings so far - hanging out mainly with Ben, Jen, and with Turnbull and The Tom as they were here also. Haven’t seen too many people from Western C4C yet, but no one really knows I’m here right now. Tomorrow I will step onto campus for most of the day and hopefully I’ll get to do some evangelism and hanging with friends. I’ll be here until Wednesday evening.

The day after Valentine’s Day, the day before the last day before Reading Week. The day before my only midterm this semester - perhaps my last midterm of my life?

What is the purpose for Valentine’s Day at all? I mean, some people use it to recognize their significant other, some people use it to propose (props Ben, good choice of date, that’s not going to be too hard to forget), and some people use this date to sulk and complain about being single. If someone asks you to be their valentine, what implications does that entail? I mean, if you agreed, then would you have to do something? Love them more than you already do? I don’t think we really grasped the idea when we wrote up 30 Beetlejuice valentines for all our classmates in grade 2 and put them in the custom-made paper bag that was attached to each student’s desk. If I just randomly asked some girl to be my valentine, where would that fall in the date-courtship-marriage continuum?

Not sure there. It’s almost over my head. In some ways, I kind of view it like my birthday, or Canada Day, or any other holiday, since I don’t hold holidays with a heck of a lot of regard. Typically my birthday isn’t that big of a deal (to me) nor is celebrating the one-hundred-whateverth birthday of the founding of our humble British Commonwealth State. But of course that’s a function of understanding what is truly significant in life.

This midterm tomorrow is in “Physics, Energy, and the Environment.” I will be asked to calculate things such as the peak oil year for a given state, the amount of power that is lost in transmission from a power plant to the end user, and the amount of energy that is received by the earth’s surface at a given point due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is open-book and I haven’t really studied much yet.

Today a whole bunch of people from York visited for the day. It is their reading week this week, so Amac brought a bunch to Guelph to do some random evangelism and to check out our campus. Unfortunately it was quite last minute and students at Guelph are quite busy due to midterms and such. Anyways, these Yorkies had the chance to understand more about what’s going on here; they joined us for our noonish-time prayer, chilled in our club’s office, sat at our Chinese Jesus Film table. Amac and I were able to spend some time talking about our different campuses and stuff for next year. The time of turnover is definitely an interesting one. I wonder how many other campus clubs actually begin doing leadership turnover in the middle of February. I was glad for the York students to have a chance to get a glimpse of what we do, even if it was just a snippet. Hopefully they can come back one Friday to come to one of our weekly meetings. Wait, some of them did it last semester. Um, hopefully more can come sometime this year.

Well just so we all know, there are a lot of students going on Spring Break Project from Guelph. Last year, it was five students: Shelly Chen, Trevor Andres, Lauren Parks Andres, Andrew Turnbull, and Leah Penner. This year we have: Drew Campbell, Tyler Donnan, Emily Ferrier, Alan Kwan, Colin Miles, Jesskah Farquharson, Ryder Cnossen to Scotland; and Elizabeth Boom, Trevor Andres, and Lauren Parks Andres to Panama. 5 has become 10. And 10 maybe will become… 20 next year? We aren’t even counting summer project yet. That is to come… Please pray for these students as they fly out to different parts of the world to make a huge difference on university campuses there.

Beth have a great time in Scotland. Take a photo in a tea shop perhaps. And to anyone else going on a project soon: photos of the culture and the the touristy things are very good to have. So don’t worry if there’s no projecteers in the photo, that’s ok. It’s very useful still.