I’m no longer as sick. A day into my fever I took Tylenol, which helped lower my core body temperature and my brain temperature. My headache was reduced tremendously. Without the headache I was still quite mobile and there wasn’t much else except dehydration and tiredness. Slowly after about 5 doses of Tylenol (about 48 hours) my headache was fading, but the pain went to my stomach. I had an appetite but the food just wasn’t digesting properly. Now, I’m a lot better. I realized that as I slowly got better, I started sleeping later in the evening… as in at first I was in bed all day, then at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, and then one of the nights I was out until 12:30. I feel like it was a weird sickness because I rarely get sick like this. Usually it’s a cold or flu. It didn’t feel like any of the sickness I felt when I was in North Africa.

I moved out of the Shipley’s home after 3 days because I didn’t want to get their kids sick. Or even Chris or Lisa, at that. The girls were also quite noisy (inadvertantly) as they sang, played, ran around, and talked to each other. And cried. I would say that if I wasn’t sick, I would have been fine with all that. But being sick meant I was trying to sleep at times when they were not.

I have signed a lease! It was the first apartment that I viewed. I’m excited to move in and take some photos of it to show you. Location-wise, it’s great… when you draw a line from uOttawa to Carleton, it’s exactly at the middle of that line. It seems to be quite accessible to and from both campuses. The big selling point was the location in the Glebe. Also, it had a hidden room. Well, actually, almost two hidden rooms. I’m going to paint the walls, the landlord will replace the carpet in the living room, it looks like I’ll have to get some furniture to put in there. And I even get to have an office. I want to make the office up like a studio. That will be where I do work. It’s sweet… a fun room, a work room, and a sleep/relax room. I think I need this kind of compartmentalization.

Now today I get to drive back to Toronto to wrap things up there and get commissioned this Sunday at church.

I am sick with a fever. I am in pain. I’m learning to thank God for pain. Please pray for me to recover soon.

I got into Ottawa last night after a long day of driving from London. That was a long drive. Apples really do help you stay alert!

Congrats to Jamie and Vanessa, they have a new kid!!

Looking for a place will be fun. Calling tons of random landlords, driving the streets and just looking for signs, checking out places. Awesome… Here we go!

In retrospect, God’s timing is always right.

This past Sunday I had the chance to share a little bit during three Cantonese Services at my church. That’s right, for four minutes each, I shared at the 8:15AM, 11:30AM, and the 1:30PM. The day was probably the longest day I’ve had in a long while. Sharing at three services, going to one at 9:30AM, and then sharing at a small group at 3:30PM as well. Hardly any time, four minutes during a service. But that amount of time can do a lot.

What I shared about hardly contained anything about the ministry of Campus for Christ or my role. There were maybe two sentences about what I’m doing. Instead, the primary objective of the time was to affirm and thank the church.

You see, I’ve grown up in this church since I was born. Tons of people have built into me. My parents planted a seed of faith even from infancy. Aunties and uncles helped out in Sunday School, children’s choir, youth group, and cell groups, helping me to understand what faith is and what it entails. In the end, the decision to accept Jesus was my own choice, but I cannot forget to acknowledge the hundreds of people who have encouraged me to think, given me space to explore, allowed me to fail, taught me to discern, and displayed to me true faith. They taught me about the Bible and about Jesus and his life, his sacrifice, his resurrection, his hope.

Fundamentally, now that I am joining full-time ministry, it affirms absolutely everything the church does. Ministry towards children and youth is actually working! The examples that people have shown to me have made a difference in my life. And to move on up to Ottawa to begin full-time work there without properly affirming the church and its influence on me: that would be inherently wrong.

By thanking the church as a body and affirming its volunteers and ministry workers, I am doing a few necessary things. Firstly, I encourage people to continue helping out in the church. If they don’t know that they impact lives, they will leave and pursue other things. Secondly, I uphold the value of tithing. For one thing, financial giving to the church allows for safe, secure, beneficial and nurturing environments for its children. I am a product of those gifts. Thirdly, it encourages the church that more young adults can commit their lives to godly service. If I am taking this step of faith to do full-time Christian ministry, then others may possibly follow suit. Fourthly, God gets the glory he deserves. His work in using the church to build and train its own people is recognized as valuable, since only God can truly administer change into someone’s life. That life would be mine, in this case.

The timing of this opportunity to share in the church is also worthy of recognizing. Six months ago, I was not prepared to bless the church. Amazingly and stubbornly enough,I had the wrong attitude that I might be able to raise all the financial support without the help of my church. Quickly that attitude was corrected. But even then, I was learning mainly about myself. I was learning my limits, I was discovering how deep my calling is, and furthermore I was discovering how to communicate it. That was a self-centric time. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with that phase, I think it was important to realize who I am, and who I am not. Discovering those realities also helped me to understand who God is, most importantly.

I also think I went through a phase that I would consider material-centric. That was when I started getting comfortable with using my “vision and calling album” aka. the VACA. I also converted the VACA into a DVD for use in small house group settings. I was asking myself questions such as “am I presenting everything clearly?” and “are there other details that are essential to mention or nonessential in order to cut out?” It was probably also necessary for me to go through this time, so that I would be proficient in communicating clearly what people need to hear. And being able to communicate in the right manner (that fits my style and personality) frees me to begin the third phase.

The third phase is what I would call other-centric. At this point, I started truly understanding that ministry partner development isn’t about me. Of course, it is driven by the need for people to partner with me, but when it all comes down to reality, this is all about God and about providing other people with the opportunity to be a part of what he is doing. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if I am fully funded or not if God’s people do not know about his work. Or if they don’t know that there is a deep need on university campuses. By meeting with tons of people, I have cast that vision. I have publicized that need. And I want to continue letting more people know about that need and how we intend on meeting it.

This initial time of upstart ministry partner development is almost finished. But I don’t really want to stop. There are so many more people who don’t have a clue that God is changing the university campuses and that they can be a part of that work. I will do my best to (within my ability) take every opportunity that God provides to let more people know. During MPD I’ve been looking forward to when MPD is complete… of course it’s almost time to set out and do what I’ve been called to do. However, I’m glad that I can honestly say MPD doesn’t stop and I’m happy it doesn’t. What a relief.

Wow that is one intense episode of Heroes. So much happened that it is almost enough to redeem the previous two episodes. Everything is even more intricate and interconnected. Utterly wow.