Church

Last weekend, I was up at Nanoose Bay Pentecostal Camp for the first ever Young Adults Camp. This was organized by Pastor Doug Slack from my church, and it was a great success. About 60+ people were at the camp which isn't bad at all for a first time.

I went up Thursday morning with Doug to help get things set up. The weather wasn't exactly cooperating. We had torrential downpours of rain when we passed through Nanaimo. We arrived at Nanoose Bay (home of a Canadian military base complete with a torpedo test range) shortly after noon. We checked in, and opened up the lodge which was where the services would be held.

The lodge was gross because we were probably the first ones to use it in a long time. Lots of dirt, spider webs, random insects, and water from a leaky roof. We gave the room the extreme makeover and turned it into a coffee lounge. By the end, we spent 4 hours sweeping, vacuuming, moving furniture, etc.

This coffee lounge was complete with a $4800 coffee machine that Doug borrowed. In addition, we had a certified Starbucks employee running the machines during service. I don't drink coffee, so I don't quite understand why a coffee machine could be that expensive. My theory is that the thing is either made of gold, or there's magic gnomes inside the machine that makes the coffee for you. In either case, it was quite amusing watching Doug accidentally making a double strength espresso and being completely buzzed after it.

Well, I'm off to the Young Adults camp at Nanoose Bay Camp this weekend. In addition, I've been drafted as a counselor for the Kid's Camp in the following week, so I'm going to be away for 10 days.

The draft was interesting. On Monday, my Youth Pastor calls me up and asks if I could be a camp counselor for Kid's Camp because they were desperate for volunteers. Unfortunately, he knew that I was unemployed, so it's pretty hard to lie about being busy.

There was one problem though, all counselors were required to pass a criminal record check. And no, the problem isn't that I have a criminal record. The problem was that a check would require at least 5 business days before it was complete, so it was unlikely that the check could be completed before the camp started.

We were trying to figure out how we could resolve this, and then it hit me. I remembered that Yahoo had already started a background check on me in early June, so they should have some documentation showing that my background was clean. I got off the phone and contacted Yahoo about this. Then, the strangest coincidence happened.

This last weekend, I was at History Maker in Chilliwack; this is the annual youth convention for our church's district of British Columbia. Normally it's held in Kamloops, but this year it was in Chilliwack because the majority of its participants are from the lower mainland, and having it in Chilliwack would reduce the travel time.

The start of the trip was interesting. I had just gotten back from California, and my plane landed in Victoria at 12:30am because of a delayed flight by Horizon Air. I got to bed by around 2:00am. I woke up, unpacked and repacked, then we were off to History Maker. This year I was a chaperone for History Maker instead of a youth; I suddenly felt very old.

The ferry trip to the mainland was pretty slow going as ferries were arriving and departing late. We managed to catch the 5:00pm ferry. Once we got onto the otherside, the ship slowed down and waited because there was too much traffic at the terminal, so our arrival was delayed. Once we landed, the drive to Chilliwack wasn't too bad; I was expecting it to be far worse considering it was a long weekend.

When we arrived in Chilliwack and got out of the van, my first thought was.... ugh, what is that smell? There was a lot of agriculture around, so the smell of manure was very prevalent.

For the weekend, we would be sleeping at a church with no showers, so that was going to be interesting. Lets just say, washing my gargantuan head in a sink is not easy.

Anyway, onto History Maker which started on Saturday night. There were over 3,000 people at the venue. It featured bands such as Amanda Falk, Leeland, Desperation Band, and the main event, Starfield. I really liked the line-up that they had this year; good solid rock.

The speakers they had this year were really good. I really enjoyed Reggie Dabbs who preached very well, and taught us all how to be a bit more black. Out of all the speakers that I've ever heard at History Maker, Reggie was probably the best.

This year's theme was revolution, and there was a lot of talk about how we can change the world and fight injustice. Reggie talked about the Scottish revolutionaries who fought against injustice (fighting the British), and ultimately won independence for Scotland. He talked about the story after William Wallace dies (see the movie Braveheart to learn more about William Wallace). Basically, Robert The Bruce screws over William Wallace and hands him over to the British. In exchange, the British gives a bunch of land to the Bruce family. Robert The Bruce's son becomes king, and continues the fight that William Wallace started. King Robert The Bruce wishes that he had joined William Wallace instead of screwing him over.

Well, yesterday I was out paintballing with my youth group at Stormin Norman's. Before the day started, I was having a few second thoughts like.... man, its been a few years since I've last played, what if I'm not as good anymore. There was also a noobie that everyone was wanting to hunt down to settle some scores, and I thought, it would be really embarassing to get shot down by this person.

When we got to the paintball field, we surveyed our potential competition. We had a group of 10, and there was another party consisting mostly of kids and a few parents. There was also one pro paintballer who had his own gear and uniform. We got out to the field, and it was going to be a 10 vs 10 battle for the afternoon. The teams were divided and from my church group, we had myself, Pastor Doug Slack, and my brother. We also got the pro paintballer, one parent, and the rest kids. The other team had seven people from the church group, and the rest kids plus a parent. Originally, I thought the teams were going to be unbalanced because the other team had more able bodied men and women; this didn't prove to be a problem.

The scenario of the day was attack and defend. The attacker's objective is to attack the defender's base, and take down the base flag. The defender's objective is to prevent the attackers from obtaining the flag for 10 or 15 minutes.

Game 1

My team started as the defender. Our strategy was to send three people outside of the base to harass the enemy and buy everyone some time. Everyone else was tasked to defend the base. When the game started, I dashed out of the right side of the base. I stealthily got behind enemy lines, and started my attack run up a hill and took out four attackers. They never saw it coming because I was shooting them from behind. By midgame, I took out another two attackers on a hill, but then another three attackers showed up. I take another one out, but the ref tells us to stop firing. Apparently I was shooting at my own team mates. I thought this was an enemy because he was facing our base like an attacker.

This friendly fire confusion happened because by the time I took out the two attackers on the hill, they were the last of the attacking force. The rest of the defenders rushed up the hill that I was shooting at. We were shooting each other because there were no enemies left, and the referees didn't realize this, and they hadn't stopped the game. The referees are supposed to end the game when one side runs out of players. We completely dominated that game.

Play of the Day

The play of the day comes from Game 4 where Doug and I were attacking the enemy base. This is the play of the day not because of how many kills we got, but it's the strategy that was in play.

At the beginning of the game, we cleared the right side of the enemy base, and we were going to the center of the field to prepare to capture their flag.



As we went to the center of the field, I noticed that all of our attackers to the left had been eliminated, and the defenders were rushing up from the left hand side. If we didn't take them out, we would have been encircled and they'd have clear shots at us from behind. So, I rushed to the left side to hold off the enemy while Doug took on the base defenders. I managed to eliminate two defenders immediately, because they weren't expecting me. I moved further down to the left, I found another two defenders huddled behind a bunker. I couldn't pick them off, but I was keeping them pinned down, and they couldn't move against Doug.

Meanwhile, Doug entered the enemy base and neutralized the guards in the tower fort, and blew away all of the defenders, and bagged the flag for the win. The crazy thing is, the tower guys didn't even warn their teammates that someone had entered the base, and that's how Doug managed to get the element of surprise.

Anyway, the strategy was great because two of us were able to handle eight defenders. That is some serious force multipliers there.

This weekend marks my epic return to the paintball fields; I haven't been paintballing in over two years now. Unfortunately, most of my crew is either in Vancouver or is unavailable, but we'll have to do. I'm going with my church youth group to Stormin Norman's.

To prepare, I've been building endurance by running 2.8km twice a week since the middle of April. The best time so far has been 13:50 which is still about 40 seconds slower than my running times back in high school. But hey, high school was a very long time ago, and I'm getting old.

The other thing I've been doing is reviewing battle tactics, and I've come across an excellent introduction to paintball tactics. It's entitled, the "Paintball Tactics Guide". The guide uses Flash to demonstrate its key concepts, and it's very entertaining to go through, and it covers all the basics that you need to know. The guide starts with individual level tactics, then squad level, then team level. It's very well done!

For the more hardcore tactician, you can scan through the U.S. Army's Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad Training Manual. Some really good stuff in there, but it's a long read. I've been told most military tactics will work in the paintball field. Err.... minus the parts about putting up defensive barbwire, calling in airstrikes, and positioning heavy armour units for frontal strikes.

Looks like I just got booked to do sound for a huge Good Friday service at North Douglas Church for April 6 at 10:00am. There are 17 churches coming together to hold a joint service to celebrate Good Friday. The place is going to be absolutely packed out, so if you want to attend, make sure you come very early. They've also got a really good worship band coming in to do music. It should be an awesome event if it's anything like last year's Good Friday Service. If you do come, please drop by the sound board at the balcony and say hi. If you're not connected with a church, this is a pretty good opportunity to informally check out what a modern church service is like. It's very different from a lot of people's preconceptions of what church is.


Note: The church is asking for younger people to park along the road, as they want to reserve the parking lot for the elderly.

Every month, our church's young people does a random act of kindness to help people out. A popular act has been cleaning homes for single mothers, or sick individuals. Our latest act involves helping out a young family where the mother is dying, and they have three young children. On top of that, the husband is leaving the work force to take care of his wife. Overall, the situation is fairly dire.

To help out this family, our church got together to cook meals for the family because the family indicated that preparing food was a big challenge.

So, last night, we had a cook-a-thon at Adam and Sarah's. Adam made a rich Texas Chili that was slow cooked in a crockpot.

I prepared a Cashew Gai Ding Stir Fry because the family would probably enjoy some asian cuisine. The base consists of cubed celery and carrots with sliced mushrooms. On top of that, I added cubed chicken breasts which were marinated in a hoisin sauce, and I threw in some roasted cashews. Oh it was gooey and delicious.

I got to the church this morning to drop off the food, and there were quite a few dishes prepared. There were soups, casseroles, stews, pastas, and more. There was enough food there to last more than a week. Other people were already volunteering to prepare additional meals. Hopefully this helps.

Please keep this family in your prayers.