Kaleo coming to an end...

Bitter sweet feeling...

I LOVE YOU KALEO SO MUCH!!!

I say bitter sweet because im sad that everyone is leaving and parting their seperate ways, but im excited for the new adventure and chapter of life and applying all the things this year of what I have learned to new things. 

So I sit here in awe, thinking WOW...8 months...how does it go by so so so fast? As i look back at the year I am amazed of what I did and what was accomplished. My heart has been changed and I have been ruined for the ordinary. ( i think i said that right lol). I want my life to be more than just living it. I want to live it to the fullest and persevere through everything, not on my own strength but God's for I cannot do it on my own. I would be foolish to think that I could. This year has been the most challenging and life changing year that I could have ever prayed for. When I came into this year that was my prayer to be challenged and changed. God defenatley heard me and made that happen. I have learned so much about what being a believer in Christ is and living my life for him. I always said that I believed in God before but my actions lacked numerous times. I have been challenged this year with what does it mean to actually believe and follow God? How is my life reflecting his love and overflowing grace. The verse that really helped me along this year is found in:

Psalms 23

¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

 ² He makes me lie down in green pastures, 

       he leads me beside quiet waters,

 ³ he restores my soul. 

       He guides me in paths of righteousness 

       for his name's sake.

 ⁴ Even though I walk 

       through the valley of the shadow of death, 

       I will fear no evil, 

       for you are with me; 

       your rod and your staff, 

       they comfort me.

 ⁵ You prepare a table before me 

       in the presence of my enemies. 

       You anoint my head with oil; 

       my cup overflows.

 ⁶ Surely goodness and love will follow me 

       all the days of my life, 

       and I will dwell in the house of the LORD 

       forever.

This verse has been my year. It has so much meaning behind it and it has been dear to my heart all year. Every time I need encouragement I turn to this verse and I feel God so much in this verse. God has been very evident this year with many circumstances that have went on. He promises us that no matter what he is with us in every thing. He will restore your soul and leads us onto his paths he has for us. It makes me wonder how people cannot believe in a God that is so great and so mighty. He is creator of all, he made this earth and the beautiful animals and all that is within. The bible talks about so many healings and has so many good stories in it. Lately when I have turned to read the bible, I randomly start reading something and each time the past week or so God has always led me to read the things that are on my heart that day and it is so evident that he knows my heart so well. Kaleo has been a year of being molded and transformed. The incredible people that I was surrounded with all year really impacted me and the support that came out of all of them is so crazy. I feel like everyone here is a huge big family to me! We all have went through so much together and experienced lots of incredible journeys through each person's story told. We have laughed, cried, talked, stayed up ALL night writing papers (which was insane but so much fun) and we have grown together as a community. 

Some of the things we have done together...

classes :P ; white water kayaking, surfing, sailing, snowboarding, skiing, hiked up a mountain and conqurreed! ; caving, we split up around the world to go to: Vancouver, India, NYC, horseshoeing, swimming, hockey, volleyball, monday night worships, Missions Fest, prayed

oh man the list could go on with all the little things we did as well...

It's is just crazy looking back and seeing how much we have experienced and done this year!!

Even though Kaleo that this is a farewell for now, I know one day I will see you all again. Tomorrow well technically today we graduate aaah! This was such an incredible chapter of my life this year and I know it was in God's plan that this is where I was suppose to be. 

lots on the mind...

INDIA 2009

I'm in the midst of all those little kids with a green toque on :) I just came back from India and it was definitely an incredible time. It is hard to sum up my experience in just writing it down. There are so many things that happened that I experienced that are so hard to put in words. mmmmm so WOW...so I don't even know where to start. India was incredible. SO many things that I saw shook my world. I am forever changed. My experience in India was an unforgettable one. I got to explore around in Delhi and we made our way northern as well. We took a long train ride. I will never forget that day. I stared out the train window for hours looking at the people and their living conditions and seeing so many people wandering around in India. I have never been exposed to such poverty ever in my life. My eyes were opened so big to how fortunate and lucky I am with the smallest things that I have. As I sat on that long train ride that day I had a lot of questions come to my mind and thoughts were running through my head. Thoughts of how ungrateful as a society and people we can be for what we have. Even myself I was guilty of knowing that is how i am sometimes. It is so easy to live and go by your day to day tasks not stopping and thinking of how lucky we are. To walk the streets in India can be a scary thing. There are so many cars and people all around, every where you look there is someone either on the ground or walking around aimlessly. I really learned that there is such a bigger world out there than I really think. There is so much going on and so much poverty that yes we see on t.v. but actually seeing it with your eyes is just unbelievable. My eyes were opened so much on this trip to see things that I had never saw before. It made me have lots of questions and thoughts in my mind. How can I help the poor is one of them? Us as Christians are called to help the poor :
Deuteronomy 15:11 says,
There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

What does this mean to you? How can you help the poor? We live such comfortable lives with the basic necessities we have. When i say comfortable I mean we have clean water, hot water, beds to sleep in. There are so many poor people around the world. What can we do? 

So many people in India as i walked the streets would smile when you smiled at them. The woman most times gave smiles back and I was so cheery to give kids smiles. But if you think about it, I come back to Canada and I walk the streets and I am not as cheery like that to people as I was in India. I am a cheery person but I don't walk the streets smiling at everyone. India gave me so many questions and challenged me in many ways. My heart was also wanting to give so much love to these children we met when we were hiking. They crave so much love and attention. In India we hiked for about 6 days and the view was just breathtaking! The mountains were gorgeous and there were fields of flowers in some areas as seen in this picture below: 

We slept in the villages in these huts and it was really cool experience. It is crazy to think even though I left these villages that there is still people that live there. They are very isolated in a lot of these villages. We brought some gifts for the kids and handed them out in each of the places we visited. The kids were so happy and grateful for what we brought. We also played games with them and it brought them such joy! Everyone one of the children we played with were so precious. 

It brought such joy when we got to play games with the children and hang out with them. 

I hope that this blog post gave you a little insight on how India was for me. My heart was transformed and my eyes were opened so wide. If you have any questions feel free to ask me! I'd be happy to talk with you! Thank you for reading everyone!

Here are some photo's i included from the trip :)

 Photo by:Eric Johnson

This is the cutest baby goat I have ever seen! It was only a few days old and a few of us got to hold it when we had a lunch break on our hike we met some people! If you are looking at my arm I did not get a tattoo lol. Well I did but its washable :P

Each time we ate on the hiking trip we had to wash our dishes. There would be helpers each meal and we would wash our dishes in buckets!

Our group that went to India...

SO I guess it was blue day? I didn't get the memo haha...actually alot of people randomly wore blue and it ended up being on the same day lol

The Mountains...

We were hiking through so much snow one day! This is on of the quick shots I took on our way hiking down out of the snow. It was so beautiful the snow and such a sunny day out :) We hiked about 11 km this day, it went by fairly fast and I was kind of feeling grumpy about all the snow we were going to hike in but it ended up being so much fun and a good time and soo soo soo BEAUTIFUL! Hopefully through some of these photos you can see the beauty!

Hiking through in the early morning!

The view was breathtaking, God's creation was incredible to be surrounded by!

 photo:me

Love Alivia :) 

It's been so long!!!

INDIA 2009

Im so sorry everyone for not posting in a LONG time! India came so fast and I found myself so busy! I am going to be writing this week about what has been going on lately in the life of Alivia :) India was incredible! It definitely chang

ed my life! It was a trip that really taught me a lot and I learned lots!

Love Alivia :) 

travelling LOTS.

13 days to INDIA!!!

I choose this picture because this is a picture from a previous year of some people going to India. This little girl without even knowing her looks so precious and in her eyes she wants to be loved. I am so so so excited to be going to India in such a short short time! I can't hardly wait to see the country! It will be an unforgettable experience!

wahoo!

My week! Wowzers! Defiantly a week of lots of homework and went snowboarding on monday and had a class and drank some Duceral to prevent gastro-intestinal bacteria when we are in India lol AND I also ventured around out west! I ventured out to Saskatchewan for an event called Youth Quake. It is a youth event at the college there which my school is affiliated with. It was a long trip to go on bus but we had a splendid but driver named Brenda that was so nice and made the ride very enjoyable. I sat up front with her a few times and chatted about life and she was a joy to chat with. It took us about 2 days to get to small town of Caronport, Saskatchewan! We arrived and I stayed with a wonderful girl Olivia and Sarah. When we first got there we grabbed dinner and than the opening skit was right away. They always have each year a skit to open up the weekend. It was really well played! We than had some free time afterwards to hangout and go to some events that were going on. We than had the first session of the night. THe speaker was Jared Herd and he was there last year as well when i was there. He was really good and he spoke about some key stuff I am and was going through. The bands were Red, Britt Nicole, Downhere and tripmeter. I was not familiar with them but they were all pretty decent!

I contemplated on sharing this on my blog but I feel as though it would be good to share it...maybe you have been in the same circumstance....

So all in all I had a good weekend but I learned a great lesson out of it which was bitterness can drive your life and Anger.I struggled a lot on the weekend. I went into the weekend feeling really mad and bitter and angry with life. There were no particular reasons but my heart was heavy and I did not feel well. I was holding back and not letting people know what was going on. I was keeping distant from the group of kaleo'ers and didn't want to let people in. I thought I could handle it on my own and get through the heavy feelings of anger and being bitter. On saturday night We had a session which Jared Herd spoke and than he had talked about getting all the things out of your life that are taking over and ruling it than should not be. It really made me think. This anger and bitterness is REALLY taking a toll on my life and that is not what I want. I had a heavy heart all weekend and than we sang a song after and as I was singing i felt the tears coming. I just could not hold back I needed to let go. My tears were of pain that I needed to let go and not let it rule my life. I totally and completely just broke down. The sining ended and people started leaving as I sat there with my head down trying to hide what I was feeling. I still was hesitant on letting people know what was going on. I finally lifted my head to these two girls sitting beside me that I know. I talked with them about what was going on and just explained what I was feeling and going through. I told them I didn't like speaking to people about it because I didn't want to put that on them or make them have that burden to carry. Not saying that I should be carrying it but it's hard for me to approach people and say that something is wrong. In times of me being angry or bitter growing up I did not know how to handle it. I was use to letting it build up and eat away at me. I kept it to myself my pain and now I need to realize and am realizing that is something I need to overcome and learn that  I have someone that is so much greater and loves me so much that can take that away and carry it for me....who is God. He hears my cry and has seen me and my hurts. He can take it away if I surrender it to him. It's not easy and it won't be but it's a work in progress.

26 "in your anger do not sin" do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. 27 And do not give the devil a foothold -Ephesians 4:26-27

31 get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling, and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ forgave you.-Ephesians 4:31-32

This is a story to be told and not kept in the dark. People need to know that Bitterness and Anger can rule your life and that there is someone who is so great that can take it away and there are people that can listen to you and that want to.

So that was my weekend lesson and I hope as you read it that you too learned something.

So yea I am learning lots lately and being challenged but in a good way. God is so good and I love him lots and am very excited for what's in store next. 

some prayer requests:

-to get all my homework done i have ALOT right now.

-to get my rest

-to keep on having motivation to prepare physically for India

-that i will learn what it means to surrender

-for peace in my heart

until next time

Love Liv

New beginning.

The past week was a good but REALLY busy week. We had an exam on monday for Old Testament course that I think I did ok on. Tuesday we had one of our courses called "Theology" which is an interesting course. The teacher has some good points about different topics in the world. 

On Wednesday night all the ka

leo students that attend Warmland Youth group which are about 5 of us....led the youth night! We planned it all! The speaking, the games, the goodies...were our ideas for the night! Since it was coming up to Valentines day the topic was Love and the different kinds of Love that bo

th God and the world has come to portray. Josh spoke on the topic and we related it to in questions in small groups afterwards. Most of the girls in my small group talked about boys and how some of them didn't have a boyfriend for valentines day and had wished they would have one. Others didn't mind though. What I tried to focus and tell them is that God has a love that is greater beyond anything. You don't need a boy or man in your life to fulfill that. I went on to say that the word "I love you" is such a huge word. I think of it as a life long commitment to someone that no matter what happens, you will never leave their side. We got into a discussion about saying I love you to boys and so on. I told them that it is a word that should be cherished and only said when you really mean it. It's a huge word...more so when you get older you begin to understand how great it is towards another man in that context. In telling the girls about these significant words I began to describe how God's love is unconditional and never ending. He loves you no matter what. He made you all individually. Part of the verse we read on Wednesday was:

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in Love. But perfect Love drives out fear, because fear has to do with p

unishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

I still am trying to pick apart this verse and realize the meaning of it. I know that any type of fear can drive away lots of things and you have to be careful that fear does not drive your life. Most importantly Fear can drive a wedge between you and God. God has that perfect love to show you and help you out of times of fear. You need to turn to him to comfort you and show you his love. Our sin is also a great wedge between God and you. Out of fear can come sin,that is why is says punishment...fear is referring to sin.  Someone can sin against you or there can be something that happens that you are now fearful because of it. You have to surrender your fears to God so that he can show you his perfect love.

I ask....what does this mean for your life? How can you change the sin in your life and turn it around to be open for God's l

ove?

So yes i've went off on a ramble here. I might have learned more writing this down than I did speaking about it to my girls. Perhaps i'll share with them this week :)

Soo all in all youth went awesome! We ended then night with some capture the flag and pop n chips :)

We had girls night this week! It was tons of fun! We had lots of sweet junk good and popcorn with 

sugar!! mmm soo good! 

we had a mini dance party lol and stayed up playing truth or dare and telling stories and having an awesome time! In the morning we went for brunch at white spot and the boys ended up being there too!

On lovely Valentines Day...I got an awesome gift!!!!(L)

........

The gift of immunizations. I had to get 3 needles for my trip to India! I just about fainted. I was so so so nervous to get them. I had my friend Shannon come in with me and hold my hand. Yes I was a baby. I have them now though so I am praying that I will not get too sick while I am there! So that was most of my Valentines...we had a good brunch and I did homework most of the day...wahoo. I was happy the day was over...maybe next Valentines will not be as painful...get it? the needles lol :P

Prayer Requests:

*21 Days Until India :)

*That God continually keeps on opening up my eyes to things unseen

*The kids at Warmland Church Youth group

*For Homework to get done (it's working! im dong pretty well at managing my hmk :)

*For future decisions of what September brings for my life...

Soo that is me.

Hope your week has gone well everyone!

Love Alivia

Old Testament Awesomeness!

Beautiful Vancouver

I took this photo during missions Fest in vancouver and the mountains are gorgeous! Mmmmmmm so last week! It was a pretty good week! We had class ALL week but it was awesome! The teacher was really cool! His name was Don Taylor and we learned about the Old Testament books of the Bible and what all happened throughout those books. I had to memorize all the books! We had class outside some days and it was sweet cause it was so beautiful out! It was a very interesting class and i enjoyed it throughly. I didn't think that I would enjoy it that much.

This is me and Jesse on our lunch break between class :)

Youth group on Wednesday went well! We talked about being a hypocrite and what that means. We talked about how you could not be one and what the Bible says about it. It was a good talk with my grade  7 girls. They understood what it meant and they listened well this week. They had a few questions to ask about it and it was a sweet small group talk. Afterwards we played a game outside. Everyone had to run and hide and there was one person that would run around trying to get you and bring you back to the building to get pink ribbon and than you would have to tag people too. I ran around with the girls and had lots of fun. It was another eventful fun night of youth! This following Wednesday it is up to us the Kaleo students to plan youth group! There are 6 of us who attend Warmland. There is Paul, Josh, Amelia, Malayne, Shannon and me. It should be a fun time! I hope that we come up with sweet idea's to do it! It's all in our hands...Steve who leads it is just going to sit back and watch us lol. Does anyone have any ideas that is reading this? If so give me a shout on email and tell me :) 

One thing that I learned in church this sunday was that God is a lamp unto your feet. Lately i've been struggling with Decisions on where I should be this summer and about September of what I should go into. So many things to think about and they are HUGE things because they can predict a lot of things in your life. So in church when my pastor mentioned that God was a lamp unto your feet, something clicked in my head. It made sense in every aspect. I have been frustrated lately that God has not shown me what he wants for me and i've prayed but can't seem to have an answer on what to do. If God is a lamp unto my feet, he is only going to show me so much in front of  me as a lamp would do. If God told me all the plans he had for me and told me what I would be doing far ahead in my future than I would probably be scared or not think that is is possible. So I was glad that The pastor mentioned that this sunday and that it really caught my attention. It set my heart at ease a little bit. I still worry yes but I know i'm going to be doing something and God has something for me. It's just trusting his plan and having faith right? Faith is key to have ...believing without seeing. I'm sure of it that God will reveal it to me in time bit by bit. 

Saturday night we watched a movie! It was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade! It was an old one but i loved it! I don't think I have seen it before! It was a great movie to watch with everyone. We watched it all together and had some chips. We all recommitted to our media fast that we do here. We are encouraged to do a media fast because sometimes you can get so caught up in tv and movies that you don't spend time with the people around you and it can be anti-social. Which is totally true.  So what we all want to do here is recommit because we have only a little more time as sad as it seems together with everyone here to hangout whenever we want and we don't want to be cooped in our rooms watching a tv show or movie. So we have movie nights when we can with everyone and its a good time :D I actually really don't miss watching tv. I found when i came here that i had waisted so much time watching it at home and that there are so many things i can fill in my time to occupy it than watching tv. Ofcourse i like tv but i see it differently now that i have not been watching it lately. I defiantly miss PRISON BREAK! ahh! I like that t.v show so much! lol but yea its okayy though i will catch up on it when I have some free time back at home whenever that is that i return lol  I might be staying out here in the summer! We shall see!

Mkay well I must be off!

Thank you so much for reading this blog! I appreciate it so much everyone!

It's so awesome that I can take you along this year on the journey with me...well at-least give you some insight on it :)

I leave for India in  28 days! :O 

Things to pray for:

-That God would keep everyone going to India healthy on our trek

-that my lovely immunizations that I have to get on Valentines day will not hurt and I won't be scared lol (i can be a lil baby haha)

-That God would continue to work in my Heart and reveal this hurting broken world and my eyes would continually be open 

Love Liv :)

eyes opened.

This week was definitely a week that opened up my eyes so much to things that are unseen. 

Monday and tuesday we had a course in the morning which was Theology. I like this class it is really good and i'm enjoying it. We have it every few weeks. Wednesday was a good but busy day. There were a few things due that day and not a lot of time to do them. We had a workout and chapel that day. We also had a meeting to read a book and than I had to work on my group project. We had dinner and than I was right off to youth group to hang out with the awesome possum kids!

Youth Group!

 We talked about heaven and hell and the difference between these places. In the small groups afterwards the kids had good questions about them. Some girls in my group believed in neither. They believed in coming back as a new person and being "reborn" into the world again. Than I just thought to myself hmmm wouldn't it be cool to say though i have a purpose in this life and when i die i am going to heaven than just thinking you will live again here on earth. I would find it hard saying that i did not believe in anything. How could you not? God can bless your life richly if you follow him and live for him. I gave these girls a little insight on what I believed and yea it was good. I told them that heaven is a much better place to go and God loves each one of them so much. I'm not a bible scholar by no means lol I know a bit about the bible but yet everyday im learning new things about God and the Bible. 

Missions Fest

 Thursday we left for the ferry to Horseshoe bay on the mainland. Thursday to Saturday night we were  in vancouver. Thursday we had got a bit of free time to be around downtown vancouver or either go visit family and friends. I got to visit my cousin sarah and uncle danny which was a great surprise to see him! Also his girlfriend Patricia and my cousins boyfriend jesse came too! We had a good time together and went out for dinner! It was good to catch up and tell them about my school and how its been so great! I really enjoyed my time visiting with family! Friday brought on missions fest and I did not know what quite to expect going into it. I wasn't sure if it was going to be super boring or super fun or what. We got there and there were all these seminars to go to that we could choose from. Missions fest is a whole bunch of organizations getting together and setting up booths on their organization. Most of the booths have pamphlets about them and so on. One example is camp Qwanoes was there. They had a booth set up all about there camp. Also there was a booth set up for world vision. Many Bible college schools were there as well. The seminars were most of the people who had the booths talking about social issues and world problems and things going on that as christians we could help and they just made us aware of the things going on. One of the seminars I chose to go to was about India and how they do not have a lot of missionaries there hardly at all. This is because this country is so closed to other religions than Hinduism. I visited a lot of the booths set up the first day and got lots of information from different schools and different organizations. On saturday I really liked the seminars i went to. I went to a documentary film on India. It talked about the different caste systems that they have. How people get treated so low because they are born into a family that has a "bad reputation". It was really disturbing that humans can be so cruel to each other and treat them like dirt just because they are a different caste. It is ridiculous the caste system in my own opinion, it divides the people and is not right. 

Another seminar I attended was about the Cambodia and the disturbing sex trade that goes on there with little girls. It's disgusting and degrading for little girls to get traded when they are young in age because there family needs money. When the girls get traded they are brought to a place called "brothel" and traded any where from less than 10 dollars and up. The girls that are brought here are huge amounts. A statistic that was told to us in this seminar was that on a week night a girl has 8-10 men come in her room and abuse her sexually on on a weekend it can range from 18-25. It makes me so angry that men are doing this and abusing these helpless little girls that know nothing else. They drug the girls to get them to perform better and they soon get addicted to this drug they give them. I just can't believe this happens i was never fully aware that this was going on. This seminar really opened up my eyes to this disgusting world that we live in some places. It made me realize that even at worst of times in my life there are way worst things going on. I don't know if this calls for me living a non comfortable life because i want to do something i want to help in some way. I'm not sure it might not be this particular thing going on but in some way help something or someone. It just breaks my heart to see things going on in the world and hearing about them and being so impacted by these things. We are hidden from so many things in this world that go on that the news does not want to tell us about or does not display. 

All of this just really opened up my eyes for things unseen.

this world is corrupt and disgusting at times but it can be so beautiful. It can be so many things. just blows my mind away with so many things happening both good and evil. How can i live a comfortable life now knowing these things are happening and im doing nothing?

It's so easy to sit and do nothing about it when you are not there and you are not in it. 

I know im going to be praying for these little girls and for India and the things going on there with the division and cruelty as well with the people.

to end this on a note...im just mind blown right now with all of this its crazy.

some things to pray about:

-the sex trade going on in Cambodia

-warmland kids at my youth

-the country of India and the things going on there with people being treated horribly

-for my studies and doing homework

-for my health