<--me climbing the whiskers on the ship to the TOP! :) it was an incredible view!

So I am still alive! J So I have had a crazy awesome last week here in B.C.! Last week we left on Monday to go sailing on a 130’ schooner sail ship! It was called the Pacific Grace. We spent 5 days on a sail ship out on the Ocean! Our first day sailing was the best day we could have had out of all the days out on the Ocean! We were tilted to the side the boat and soaring through the water. The waves were so high to the boat. It was definitely incredible! We sailed Monday till Friday, sailing in the afternoons for a bit than anchoring just before dinner time for the night. The really neat thing was we all had to do night watch. This meant that each night there would be a list that would go up and it would tell us who was going to wake up at what time and go watch the ship for an hour. I had 3 shifts! The first night I had to wake up at 4am and my watch went until 5am! The purpose of this watch was to make sure the boat was not moving a whole bunch during the night. When I would go watch my partner and me would look for a landmark and keep an eye on it so we made sure by the end of our shift that we had not moved a fair bit. It was a fun opportunity to talk with people and look at the amazing stars in the middle of the Ocean! Another sweet thing on the boat was the FOOD! It was incredible! I think it’s the best cooking I have ever had (sorry mom) haha. My favorite was the first day we had hash brown. But it was mixed with vegetables and crème of broccoli sauce. Night times were the best!  Every night we would “muster” up on the deck.  That would mean we would all gather up on deck. The crew had games for us to play each night. My favorite game was we picked two people to go out of the room and they would get told that we were making up a story and they had to come back nto the room and guess it. What really went on is we had no story and when they came in and asked a question whatever word they ended in if it was even than we said yes but if it was odd we would say no. Neither people that went out of the room thought that we were making it up on the spot. One girl Deborah made her story about Greek mythology with a dragon and a sword and beef.  Another guy Jake made his story about kitchen appliances. After doing a game we would get guitars out and have a sing along. They were a mix of worship songs and secular songs that were awesome! So all in all the S.A.L.T.S trip was amazing!

  My church experience is going awesome! I attend Warmland Community Church on Sundays and I really enjoy it. This previous Sunday I helped lead Sunday School with Stevie G who is the leader. It is held across the street from the community center where church is in the fire hall which is really neat! It's sort of antique fire hall and its neat. This sunday was about God making us all unique and how in the image of God he made us all unique. We had the kids make body parts on papers such as eyes and nose and ears and arms and legs and mouths. We than had them put together a skit about what body parts don't go with the others. I had my girls line up and do a fashion show haha. They walked across the front and had ears with arms and so on. I met this girl named sarah that sort of stood out to me. She was really nice and i hope to see her at church on sunday again! This week I'm looking forward to wednesday night junior high.

So this week we have our first course. It's called spiritual formation. It's with Marv Penner which is amazing. We had our first class today which was pretty good. This week is all about forming a more personal intimate relationship with God. We get a little bit of time each day to have quiet time and write in a journal that we have for the course. Im really excited for this week to grow with God and see what he has for me in store to show me. We have some course reading to do and we are going to be reading the book of proverbs and handing in a written report about the heart by the end of october. I'm thinking starting this week i want to go on a facebook/internet fast. Just because i want to concentrate on my course and do my work and have no distractions. So i will not be on internet until friday or saturday to tell you all :).

Upcoming events:

Next week we leave tuesday-thursday to go SURFING in Tofino! Which i cannot hardly wait because it looks so gorgeous and i have always wanted to go surfing! I'm really excited for this oppurtunity!

Some things to pray for this week:

*for me to be open to what there is to learn

*to be challenged with the work

*to have discipline not going on face-book/internet for a few days

*to have an open heart to new things

thanks everyone!

Love Alivia :)