This is Not an Update

It's been too long. No I'm not kidding, it's now been so long that it's too long and I no longer care. I used to feel this heavy burden - this heavy bloggy-monkey on my back - but it's actually been so long I just gave up. It's wonderful. You should try it, in life. I'm free! Because despite how much I love to write, writing feels like work and any extra work just sounds... like work. Know what I'm saying? So when I have some spare time and I'm tired, which is always, am I like, "What do I feel like doing right now, hmm let's see, how about some work?" NO! Don't be stupid! I'm not. I'm not like that. No tired person ever says, "Please, give me some more things I don't feel up to do doing." Ask a tired person how they are doing and if they say good, they are saying good-despite-how-freaking-tired-I-am. Ask them the number one thing they wish they were doing right now and if they say something other than sleeping, A. they aren't tired enough or B. they are lying to make you happy. Both of which are nice. A is nicer. I have some good news. I've been using a sleep apnea machine for almost five months and finally, finally, I feel like it is making a difference. My world is slowly getting a teeny bit less tired. How do you measure such things? Simple. It starts with a day. A ridiculously tired day that helps me compare my not as tired days previous to this day and realize that this used to be my normal. I compare the tired I used to be to my new tired and it astounds me. How can anyone LIVE when they are that tired? Let me tell you: it's exhausting. Since then a few encouraging things have confirmed this revelation: my eyes don't ache as much as they used to and people have commented that I seem less tired and look less tired. Now getting out of bed in the morning is usually not pure torture and I am not as terrified of killing someone when I get behind the wheel. Note: not as. I am in no way where I want to be. I'm still surviving, but before I was floundering, nearly drowning, and now I am doing awkward froggy strokes. So I was Flounder from Little Mermaid before and now I am the Frog Princess. See the difference? I just like to relate everything to Disney if I can. It helps me understand. But I will keep dreaming: some day I want to do real people swimming. Some day I want to make it to the shore. (Wait, is the shore death? In which case, good news! I will for sure make that. Unless Jesus comes back. Either way I win.)

I got a new roommate. She's lovely and cute. Only one problem: she's cuter than me. Not cool. And in my own home too. Isn't any place sacred? Somehow it doesn't seem to matter when it comes to animals though. Funny, I've never resented an animal for being cuter than me. Huh. I guess they distract you so well with their cuteness that you don't actually notice that in fact it is pure subterfuge. Someone should write a book on that. It should be called, The Hypnotic Cuteness of Animals, or Beware of their Hoodoo Voodoo. On that note, I have been missing my dog like crazy. I had this nice little break where I forgot that my dog was dead - not that I didn't remember she died, just that I forgot there was something missing in my life. It was nice. Now that I've remembered that in fact my dog is dead, that in fact, my life used to be full of Kezzieness and ultimate cuteness, and now in fact it is not, it makes my life seem a little... less. When (in fact) (I like to keep things factual) the wonderful thing is that I had this amazing one-of-a-kind dog that God gave me for 17 years! When in fact (obviously), I was perfectly happy before she came along, and when she did, she increased my quality of life ten-fold and gave me more than I could ever ask for. And as much as I wish animals could live as long as humans, in a way I'm glad they can't. They are so vulnerable to all the evil in this world and I would hate to ever think of outliving her and leaving her behind. It's like the Left Behind Series only Jesus hasn't come back. Everything seems to come around to the fact (another one) that Jesus hasn't come back yet. It's almost like if He did, things would be better. Hard to say... Anyway, better that my dog only live 17 years, knowing she had a wonderful, compact little life, then extend that to 100 and know that any number of things could happen to her. Besides, animals don't need to live that long: they have nothing new to learn about what life is all about and how to live it to the fullest. They are not on a journey of self-discovery and character building. They're just here for a short trip to make our lives better and teach us how to love.

If this were an update, which it's not, I should probably let you know I've come through quite a few fruit-fly epidemics - murdering whole generations of fruit-fly families with my bare hands and feeling great about it. I know in school they teach that genocide is bad, but, like, were they thinking of fruit-flies at the time? No, they weren't. Guaranteed. However, I've really got a handle on those silverfish that were plaguing my life (I found cardboard boxes flattened under the couch that were their nesting ground and disposed of them forthwith. You should have seen all the babies I killed. Yeah. You heard me. I killed babies). And I haven't been doing anything really stupid at work lately to feel guilty about, like standing on recycling boxes to block freezing cold vents. Also we moved to the other side of the building, AKA "The Great Trek: Out of Antarctica into... THE TROPICS." Amazing that in the same, albeit, giant room you can have two completely different ecosystems. It's a small world, as they say. And I'm making friends at work, real ones, and no one is evening paying them to be my friend, they just happen to be paid to be there and I get to take advantage of the fact that they have no choice but to see me every day. It's great. I didn't post a single thing this summer and feel perfectly fine about it. But if this were an update, which it's not, I guess I better do a quick summary: my summer was good... Oh sorry, you were expecting more. Well I spent all my money before the summer started when I went to Mexico so the actual summer was uneventful. I was going to talk more about this Mexican experience of mine, however I realize it should probably be it's own blog post so I'm not going to tell you all the fantastic things I learned in Mexico right now. Instead I will write a blog post called, "All the Fantastic Things I Learned in Mexico."

Later in the summer I forced my family to go camping which was also pretty great (no one died!). I promise you they thanked me for forcing them later and I gloated lots. And then they took it back. At the end of the summer - per usual - I went to Camp Imadene and had a love-ly time: loving people and loving God and loving life. And I've been going to an amazing woman's Bible Study for quite a few months now called Ladies Night where we cry and stuff and don't even care. I even have a shirt: "I cried at Ladies Night." Most people get confused when they see this and think I had a desperate clubbing experience at 919 and don't understand why I wear the shirt with such pride. Because of this I've mostly stopped wearing it in public. Also it's a tank-top. So only my summer self has to suffer the confused stares and too-personal questions. But these women in my Ladies Night, let me tell you, these new (and many not new) friends... they are amazing. I am amazing just by being part of them. I'm serious, you come to this group and just by being in the same room you become amazing too. You could be the most annoying person on the planet - don't sweat it! We'll make an amazing woman out of you yet! And if you are a man? Too bad! You're a woman now! Embrace it! We learn about God together and talk about how wonderful He is and just generally enjoy being in His presence together and being in each other's presence, which is a lot like opening presents. Every week. And I like presents. For example, for my birthday I asked for a pony. I didn't get one (AGAIN), but I mean I'm not giving up yet. It's been 27 years of persistent birthday lists with the first item stating: PONY, so why stop now? Plus that way no one can ever say that annoying line people love to say when they can't be bothered to think what to get you for your birthday: "You're so hard to buy for." My answer is, "No I'm not. I make it real easy for you: I've asked for the same thing for 27 years. Simple. A pony." And then they say, "A pony is not a simple present." And I say, "Have you been talking to my dad? Was he saying ridiculous things again like "Faith you can't afford a pony," and "Faith, you don't have a yard" because when he says those things just say to him, "Dad, don't be a dream-buster. Sure, be a ball-buster all you want - go ahead, bust those balls, I don't care, I don't have any - but for the love of ponies, don't bust my dreams." " And that is usually the end of that conversation.

So IF I was giving you an update - what I mean is, if the entire point of this blog post was just to give you a stupid update on my life (which it's not, obviously), but even if it was - I don't know why anyone would want one, let's be honest here - it would all come down to this: I have some friends, and my mom likes me. The end.

THE END.

My Auxano family.

So Auxano is over. The only reason I know that statement is true is because we had a graduation ceremony and then everyone said goodbye and then I went home and I can't think of any other reason for all this than that Auxano must actually be over. Hard to say. The last two weeks of Auxano were great fun. We went on an amazing surf trip to Tofino. I had a lot of fun playing in a wet suit in the ocean and being trampled by waves but very, very little success with a surf board. Most of us succeeded at what we called "accidental surfing" only (when a wave shot us forward while we lay on our board without any effort on our part other than facing the right direction). Unfortunately I tired myself out playing in the waves for an hour before actually trying to surf so by the time I got out there on my sweet board, all stoked to finally know what it feels like to surf, I paddled around five times, got washed by the waves twenty times and was pretty much done with the entire sport of surfing for life. We all looked like a bunch of oompa loompas in our wet suits or beached seals when we laid down on the shore and let the waves wash over us and make molds of our bodies in the sand. The best part was when we were lying on the shore and a big wave hit us and, when it left, everyone was still there except for Steph... who had been washed up further on the beach. Eric and Brad were like two little kids that didn't want to go home. We went the next day but only half of us surfed, and once again there was Brad and Eric in the water and all of us trying to convince them to go home after hours at the beach. Instead of surfing the second day Shayla, Matt and I made friends with a squirrel and a Stellar Jay. We also found quicksand on someone's private property and had a great time sinking and struggling to get out. I mean, no we didn't. The squirrel was one of those cute little brown squirrels too, the ones getting taken over by the big grey ones. I say down with the big grey squirrels! We need to start equipping the little brown ones with defense mechanisms and warfare tactics. I say build a brown squirrel army and unleash them on the grey ones to kill them off. Now that I'm saying this it sounds a lot like a racist genocide... only for squirrels.

Tofino

Anyway moving on, the last week of Auxano was a great end to the year. We had classes in the morning on the Bible (I know, weird topic) and in the afternoon we hung out with old people. The Spring Adult Adventure camp was up for the week and we got to help out and basically hang out with the "campers" (it was hard to think of them as campers when they could all be our grandparents). We played Scrabble, croquette, boccie ball, did crafts like permanent marker on coffee cups and painted Kleenex boxes. Katie and I ran the drinks station and made lattes and organized musical bingo from the 1920's. I think they thought that we thought that this was their actual era. There was one woman there who was 99 years old so it pretty much was. I wanted to ask her what the secret to life was but I couldn't bring myself to. What if she told me it was something I didn't want to do like you have to give up sugar? I couldn't handle the responsibility of knowing the secret to life but not being able to follow through with it. I'd rather live in ignorance. I keep getting distracted. I'm watching this creepy cult movie with Nicholas Cage called "The Wicker Man" and it keeps reminding me of Auxano, it's uncanny, like they took a camera and filmed our lives there. Just kidding! So what did I gain from these past eight months? A greater knowledge of the Bible, a closer reliance on God, really good friends, lessons in humility while still knowing when to stick up for myself, lessons in grace and forgiveness, greater discretion (I know, hard to believe), learning how to live in a community... and a boyfriend.

Pretending to be surferes.

Yes, you heard me. This year was really hard. Really good, but really hard. I think it could have been a lot easier. I'm trying to figure out why. I think maybe if I was to advise someone else I would say probably don't fall for someone at camp while you're still up there. I don't know but I would think that would end up complicating things a little bit. Wait did I say fall for someone at camp? I meant to say fall for a student... that's when things get awkward. I kept asking myself, should I fall for a student? And at first I was like mmm better not but then I thought you know this Auxano business is pretty boring. Let's spice it up a bit! Of course I didn't you moron! I tried so hard not to and like usual I just had to think hard enough and will my feelings away... oh wait, no, that doesn't work. If only life was so easy and you could choose who you like and when you like them. If I was going to give anyone advice from this I would say maybe don't tell the student you like them? Just a word to the wise. Not that I did that of course. Don't be ridiculous. But just let's say the student was a friend first long before he was a student and let's just I'm not perfect and I'm actually a Big Mouth Betty (see blog post Big Mouth Betty (Debby Downer's BFF)) and did tell the student I liked him, then felt like the stupidest idiot in the world and had to tell the leader and admit that I was actually a real human girl with emotions and then live with the consequences for the rest of the year. Now you understand my problem. But no longer! Auxano is over and God is still amazing, fancy that. So, if you too do something stupid like that don't worry, I am a living testimony that after eight months of awkward, you CAN survive. And the weird thing is people will still love you (not all of them, but you win some, you lose some). You will never be the same, of course, and people will point and laugh at you and call you a cougar and people like Shayla will say "ew" every time you're together and your leader will tell you it's lucky you weren't sent home, but hey! Isn't that what life is about? Blabbering to a student about your feelings for them and living out the next six months living with them and knowing everyone knows? Isn't that...? No? Huh. I was so sure.

Good news! He liked me back.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!

The Break of Spring

The Friday before last we cleaned the camp and got ready for the crazy children who were coming for the weekend. They were Intermediate age, so grade 5-7, and slightly terrifying. I only ever cabin lead teen camps but I love children, so it's not like this should be new to me, it's just that there were so many of them, and they were everywhere. The funny thing is boys and girls at this age sound and act exactly the same - insane. They stayed up until four in the morning and then told us their crazy sugar and Cheesie induced dreams which sounded like nightmares but apparently when you are high on sugar horrible things can happen in your dreams and you will always find them funny, example your dog gets eaten by a whale. Ha ha! My dog died! I picked up an entire bag of candy wrappers and Jones soda bottles from my girls' rooms when they left. It suddenly made so much sense why they had been bouncing off the walls, literally. Despite my fear of them (and you could tell I was nervous because I was trying way too hard to be funny) they were adorable. My favorite part about that weekend was the fact that Steph and Brad were the head cooks. I don't really know how this decision came about. I think maybe Andy drew names from a hat. I really cannot think of any other reason. There were two girls in my "cabin" (we all stayed in the lodges) who weren't Christians and were terribly afraid of offending anyone for their pagan ways. They knocked on my door near the beginning of the weekend with concerned faces and said, "We don't have Bibles." I assured them it was okay. But they weren't done. "It's not that we don't believe in God, we do, we're just not Christians and don't want to offend anyone. And we don't know how to pray, are they going to ask us to pray? I just know you say 'Amen' at the end," and, "What time do we go to bed? The schedule said eleven but I thought that because it was a Christian camp we would have to go to bed at nine." I wish. So cute though.

What an exhausting weekend right? Time for a break! WRONG! YOU MUST WORK UNTIL YOU DIE! That is actually the Auxano slogan. Andy spoke at the Spring Break camp and ended up comparing camp to a prison, which the kids found hilarious. I, on the other hand, know it to be true and wept inside. The weekend came to an end and the kids left and we then had a few hours to clean the entire camp before the Youth Work Week campers came up that night. We then spent the next three days working our butts off doing projects around camp along with the campers. The Auxano students were pretty upset that the RA's got a day off and they didn't. I almost didn't take my day off on Tuesday to show my solidarity with the students, until I got some sense knocked back into me (again, literally, I'm turning over a new leaf and trying to be a very literal person) and I realized being so exhausted I hurt myself wasn't doing anyone any good. We were picking up all the branches Paul was trimming off the trees and taking them to the giant bonfire we had built to burn them. I had been fighting negative thoughts all day, one second completely miserable and hating myself and then quickly reminding myself how blessed I am in a giant bipolar cycle that would seriously make anyone question their sanity. Not me, though, obviously. Then, because I was so tired, I made the poor decision to walk underneath the lift Paul was using to cut branches. I saw the branch hanging on the lift and I thought, "Maybe I shouldn't walk under the lift in case it falls off." Then I thought, "Nah." Well it wouldn't have gone anywhere, except that Paul who has been secretly trying to murder me for decades pushed it off just as I walked under it. Hmmm. He says he didn't see me. Do I believe him? No. He's just lucky I don't sue camp. It would be really awkward though, to sue camp and then not leave because I love it too much.

We had to get up at 6:30 am on Thursday morning to head to Victoria and serve more time in an out-of-prison field trip. Jim took us to Woodwynn Farms which is a farm for homeless people, as in homeless people go to live there and farm, not that they farm homeless people, which would actually be the opposite of the reason for their existence, and we worked our butts off again turning soil and making vegetable rows. I had a bit of an emotional breakdown on the ride going up there because I was so tired. During the morning meeting we sat in on with the staff and volunteers I tried really hard and failed to act like I was happy to be there. The guy next to me kept talking about positive energy and smiling at me. Maybe he could see the negative energy poring out of my eyes. Then he did a thankfulness dance and made us all do it. They kept going around the circle saying things like, "What are you most thankful for this morning?" and "Let's describe our word for the day: Celebration." I wanted to die. Then they asked us, "In two words describe how you're feeling." One would say, "Happy and content," another would say, "Peaceful and curious." I wanted to say, "SHUT UP, EVERYONE, FOR GOODNESS SAKE, JUST... STOP TALKING." Buuuuttttt I didn't. Instead I just kept praying over and over that God would take my mood and turn it completely around. Eventually he did, but not before I nearly cried in the meeting like five times. It's not very often that happy people make me feel worse. I'm usually the one making people feel worse. I mean happy! Making people feel happy... Fortunately I wore my overalls with a plaid shirt and gum boots to Woodwynn Farms so I at least looked adorable, angry but adorable, like a little angry farm elf. I also found out pigs are disgusting creatures that actually probably should be eaten, just to put them out of their misery. I'm a vegetarian and animal activist. They are huge and ugly and could easily kill you just by sitting on you. The pigs there were 600 pounds. I was expecting to see Babe. But the other pigs ate him.

I wrote an email to the Mayor of Saanich afterwards that ended with, "I think Woodwynn Farms is doing something that could drastically change the face of Victoria for the better, even you don't care about helping people. My guess is you do. You're the freaking mayor for a reason." Only in the original I didn't say freaking. You know, cause he might not appreciate how wonderful that word is as a substitute for the f word. The next day we toured Level Ground Trading where they make their amazing coffee. The owner Stacie taught us so much I could never begin to explain it all. Plus I'm sick of hearing my own voice. Check out their website! Level Ground Coffee. They are so amazing and stand for everything that I believe in that just after one tour my new dream is to eventually work there, and I don't even like coffee. It is like a mean joke drink - it smells wonderful and then you taste it and it sucks.

Adventures in Missions, Compost and Snow-Caves

This is an awesome videoWe've had a few adventures lately and I'd like to share them. They might make you feel like you have no life, so if you tend to feel that way better not read this. I'd hate to make anyone feel the way I usually feel just looking at Facebook for five seconds.

Mission's Fest

We went to Mission's Fest three weekends ago. Most of us in Auxano are so deprived that we were more excited to go on the ferry than we were to go to an amazing Christian conference. We did have a pretty exceptional ferry ride. Brad and Eric played their guitars on the ferry deck and we sang songs and pretended we were in the Auxano band. Wait, you didn't do that guys? Oh. Awkward. Anyway, they're lying. They totally did that too. We sang and played under the overhang where the smokers and drinkers were sitting. They seemed to be enjoying it a lot, especially one guy named Kelly who was just eating it up. We were playing mostly secular songs or else Christians artists that were not overtly Christian but through conversation it got out that we were in a Christian discipleship school. Darn! And here I was trying to keep it a secret. Kelly kept inserting "Give me beer" after the line, "What do I gotta do to make you happy?" which is from the chorus of a song the boys made up about the girls. The next line is, "When everything I do just makes you snappy." The song is called PMS... As you can imagine the song did not go over very well with the girls. A couple of times Kelly almost teared up when we were singing about love and grace and Kelly's drunk cousin kept saying we were making Kelly want to go back to church even before we sang anything overtly Christian. You never know how God is going to work.

We went to a lot of seminars at Mission's Fest but the ones I was really interested in had to do with human trafficking and combating the sex trade. Gussie and I have been researching it and find we both feel a passion to do something about it. We're planning an informational night at the church we go to in Duncan to show the documentary "Nefarious" and write letters to the government. It was fun to help out a bit at the Camp Imadene booth in the exhibits room and wander around talking to people with different Christian organizations. I loved two of the speakers at the general sessions where a few hundred people had church together like it will be in Heaven: believers from every tribe, tongue and nation, and even more unusual, every denomination. One was Luis Palau who was British and hilarious and another was Ajith Fernando who was Indian and so passionate. I also loved taking naps on one of the couches up where the seminars rooms were. I even had ear plugs. At one point Brad and a few others came to where I was and were eating their lunches. Bard decided to put his cheesies on me while I was sleeping so I would wake up with them falling everywhere. Thankfully Jen took them off after he left. The last day there we were waiting for Vern, our van, and a bunch of Capenray students were playing this game called Ninja where you have to try to hit each other's hands in one move. We had started playing Ninja earlier in the year and Brad, who had never actually played before but only watched us play, decided to jump in to their game and start playing with this huge group of people watching. Probably one of the funniest things ever. Eventually four of us (not me, I suck too much at it to want to humiliate myself in front of that many people) joined in and Matt was stoked out of his mind when he won the round.

A Rocha

We were staying at the Johnston's (Eric's house) for Mission's Fest who were so nice as to host us and feed us and send us on our merry way to our next adventure: A Rocha (pronounced ah rosha), a Christian environmental stewardship centre that is all about taking care of the earth and educating others on how to do it. As an avid environmentalist and total hippy I absolutely loved it there. Going in I was really hoping it was a commune that I could secretly just join and stay there forever and everyone in Auxano would be like, "Where's Faith?" and someone would say, "She's staying behind," and they'd say, "Why?" and someone would say, "Shhhh, she's with her people now." The farm is on this old estate called Brooksdale in the boonies in Surrey, so close to the US border that my cell phone kept trying to give me roaming charges. I kept yelling at it, "Eh! I'm in Canada, you idiot!" but it didn't seem to make a difference. The estate has this great big Tudor style house and a couple other buildings and the old farm house and it looks like the classic little country manor from the 1800's. It was a present this guy bought his wife as a summer home for riding horses. Pretty nice guy I guess. I felt like I was in Pride and Prejudice and Darcy was going to come around any minute and say something that he meant one way but I took the wrong way but eventually marry him. One night before bed all the girls talked in English accents in one of our rooms and couldn't stop (it's like an addiction) and Shayla tried to tell us a story about a "magic rainbow unicorn mountain." We visited the llama, the sheeps and the chickens, but I was sad to hear they used to have pigs. I was really hoping to steal some piglets. It's probably for the best because the boys (and Steph) would just eat them. To them pigs = bacon. Apparently when llamas are brought up with sheep they think they're one of them and being the biggest of their fellow sheep (because it's actually a llama...) they guard their brothers and sisters. Stupid llamas. When we paid him a visit Steph and Shayla sang a song to him but he must have yawned more than ten times so obviously we were really boring. I tried to befriend the sheep by saying, "Baa ram ewe! Sheep be true, sheep be true!" (I literally said this many times; anyone who hadn't seen Babe didn't understand) but they weren't having it. I assumed it was a universal code of acceptance into the sheep community. Apparently not.

Our days were full of helping around the farm, learning about environmental sustainability and our relationship with creation, praying and praising the Creator and eating amazing home-grown and home-cooked food, almost all of which was vegetarian because they ate what they had, lots of veggies, bean dishes and delicious soups. I was in heaven. One day we turned compost for hours and picked carrots and ate them with the dirt still on them and Jim told a joke about a dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac who stayed up late wondering if there was a Dog and when Shayla finally got it she laughed for the longest time anyone has ever laughed at a joke. Another day we raked leaves for hours and shoveled mole hills (I get it now, the whole "don't make a mountain out of a mole hill," because mole hills are small but freaking annoying and the next day there were already a bunch of new ones. Stupid moles) and another day we replanted baby trees into bigger pots and Matt gave them really annoying voices as they were being torn from their roots and transplanted to a different land. Because of A Rocha we have new zeal for composting and the 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and have painfully tried to take on the challenge of eating meat for just one meal a day. Not me, obviously, but others.

Mt. Washington

We came back to the Auxano house just for the weekend and then headed up to Mt. Washington to this beautiful chalet owned by the Tenant family in a winter wonderland. The week up in that chalet was one of my very favorites. We were there from Monday to Thursday, hanging out together, reading I Spy books, knitting, playing Settlers, reading our Bibles, building a sweet snow-cave and every night we would have a naming ceremony (we've just been learning about the First Nations people so it seems even more fitting), names that we wanted each other to grow into. We named Eric "David, the lamb" (you have to whisper the lamb part because he doesn't like it) to grow in meekness and Jeremiah "Moses" to grow as a leader and Brad "Bear" like bearing fruit, not like the teddy kind. We named Jim "John," the disciple of Jesus, to grow in grace and Gussie "Rapunzel" ...the Disney princess, to come out of her tower, and Katie "Lucy," from the Narnia Series, to grow close with God. I've been named since but you'll have to wait for that one. It didn't matter that I couldn't go snowboarding. Only half of us did and only for a day. It was enough just to hang out. In fact, I was so happy sitting in the warm chalet looking at the snow NOT getting the crap beaten out of me down a mountain that I'm not sure I would have wanted to. The day after we arrived we went snowshoeing into the forest into the kind of place where snow-murders happen and you don't find the body until spring. Uh, sorry, that was, weird. Anyway we learned how to build a proper snow-cave that you could survive in if you were lost in the snow and had a snow fight. We didn't get to finish our snow-caves so the boys decided that they wanted to build another one back at the chalet. They worked on it for hours. In fact, I've never seen them more driven. They built benches in it that seated almost all eleven of us and a slide that came in the other side. Everyone loved I Spy so much that the next weekend when I went home to Victoria I brought back up with me all my old I Spy books from when I was a kid. Brad is now so enthralled by the Treasure Hunt edition that he has declared it to be the greatest book ever written. I didn't want to inform him that I doubted whether a list of things to find on each page, even if it did rhyme, constituted the greatest book ever "written," but I couldn't do it. I had to agree.

This is an awesome video we watched at A Rocha:

Auxano Christmas

From Left: Eric, Brad, Jen's face, Shayla (lying down), Me, Steph, Katie, Jeremiah, Matt and Gussie.

I know, I know. I'm a total slacker. It's been almost a month since I wrote a blog post and I know you have been eagerly anticipating my every word. Or not. Maybe you didn't know this about me, but there are three things I'm really good at: puzzles, slacking and not getting around to things. I'm not even very good at puzzles.

The last few weeks before Christmas break have been a lot of fun. After the Annual General Meeting at Camp, Eric and I drove down the road to where a bunch of trees had been cut down and stole one. Best way to pick a Christmas tree ever. We had to cut off the bottom and a large section of the top just to make it fit in the living room, so it looked like a tree was growing through the floor and ceiling. It would have made Charlie Brown cry. We had classes with the wonderful Pam Welle on Spiritual Formation and she taught us how important being alone with God is. God and I went for walks together and may or may not have napped together. The key idea I got from that week was that you will know that your being alone with God is affecting you by how much more loving you are to people. That week was our family Christmas party at the Rentons and we had a gift exchange made up of either funny or useful unwanted house items or something under $5. There were quite a few gifts from previous years - an old Snuggie, a Darth Vader toy - as well as some joke gifts like a board game all about cats, called, if can you believe it, Cats (when I looked inside, it had first, second and third place ribbons that said things like, "You are a cat lover!" and "You know a lot about cats!" What they should have said was, "You are a freaking cat psychologist!" or "You know a lot about cats! You probably have too many of them," and for first place, "You know waaaayyy too much about cats. There is something wrong with you. Please get your cats spayed or neutered, they are probably a fire hazard.") My night was made when Rachel Zalinko bequeathed me her ugly Christmas sweater. It's pink and has reindeer on it. I don't know why she didn't want it.

My future husband.

Then we had our classes on Romans with David Banks, a fantastic man who knows a lot but is super humble about how he shares it. The last week of Auxano was practically a vacation, other than some work we did at camp. We had a fun DTG (Ditch the Girls, Ditch the Guys). The boys went out in the woods and had a manly adventure. The girls painted ceramics in Chemainus and baked cookies. We are trying really hard to break stereotypes. No actually. To break them the girls decided to have a secret wrestling match downstairs because that's what the boys always do, but it turned out to be not so secret as the boys knew what we were doing right away just by the crazy noises we were making. That actually happened. We had Christmas morning at the Auxano house on the last day. It was such fun! I woke up the girls and Jeremiah woke up the boys with a cup of hot chocolate. The hot chocolate didn't wake them up, we did. That would be bad ("Merry Christmas suckers!" - hot chocolate to the face.) We did Secret Santa and I got Matt the greatest present ever - according to his standards of the greatest present which you will probably not understand because you are not childlike. It took me a long time to figure out the difference between being childlike and being childish. You probably haven't figured that one out yourself but as I keep being reminded, I am quite old (25). I will explain it to you: being childlike means you have the faith of a child, which Jesus says to have, whereas being childish just means that you are stupid and annoying. Anyway the gift I got Matt was a "Thomas the Tank Engine" coloring book and crayons. He's British. Gussie gave me the most thoughtful gift ever: a little tack board with her favorite Scripture verses on it and a framed picture she took of me and Leilani, the Rentons little girl. We had a feast that the amazing Kelly Watt provided for us and Eric made us pancakes. It's just what he does.

Jeremiah and I thought this was supposed to be a creepy photo.

On December 6th we all had to say goodbye to each other for our month of Christmas vacation. This is how it went down:
Me: "Guys, guys, stop crying, I'm only going for a month."
Auxano students: "But Faith what will we do without you and your wise advice? Who else will advice us in our residence as our very own Resident Advisor?"
Me: "Beloveds, this is your time to rely on God, not on mortal (wo)man. Man cannot live on bread alone but on the word of God, Deuteronomy something something."
Steph and Matt: "She's so spiritual!" (waving the little spiritual flags Steph made. No really, she made those.)
Me: "I know. It's ridiculous."
Auxano students: "Will we ever see you again?"
Me: "What are you, illiterate? I'll be back here January 6th. So will you. Don't ask stupid questions."
Katie: "I'm going to miss you so much!"
Me: "I see you every Sunday at church. What's wrong with you."
Auxano students: "Our prayers are with you, oh wise one."
Me: "Save your prayers. I don't need them. I'm already too spiritual."
Pastor Tom: "Faith, are you paying attention? You look like you've been day dreaming about something ludicrous during my very important class on the Pentateuch."

Of course, this conversation is completely fabricated. For one, Mondays are my day off so I don't get to sit in on Pastor Tom's classes. But I think it paints a pretty accurate picture of how important I think I am to the program, AKA my self-delusions.

Merry Christmas!

We got Auxano versions of Jones Soda bottles for Christmas. Every detail is packed with awesome!

Fall: Summer's Glorious Death March

The Auxano crew at Fall Teen Retreat (with a couple of last year's Auxano students thrown in for good measure.)

A lot of this blog post feels like old news. Time goes by so quickly out in the bush (Lake Cowichan) and at the same time there is no time or else there is not enough of it and you start going crazy and asking questions like "What is time?" and "If God created time does that mean he could create time travel?" and "If time is based on the rotation of the sun does that mean there is no time in outer space?" Really important questions that we're studying up here at Auxano. Just kidding. We don't have time to study such deep theological things. We are too busy studying Jesus (the default answer for every question in Sunday School), who is only the most important person of all time, the Son of God who existed before time began. He's kind of a big deal. Anyway I went for a walk around camp the other day and appreciated the plethora of multi-colored trees and took some pictures, a couple of which I included for your viewing pleasure. They are terrible pictures taken by my cell phone but beggars can't be choosers. Plethora is one of those words you want to use as sparingly as possible so that when you do use it it makes everyone happy. So Fall finally decided to show up, huh. Tardiness is so unacceptable. I know because I am always tardy and it is always unacceptable. I'm hoping some day that will change (that tardiness would become acceptable, what did you think I meant?) I gave Summer a talking to in spite of how much I love her because I felt she was getting a little carried away. I said as gently as possible, "Get over yourself already." So she did and then we nearly drowned at Fall Teen Retreat when it rained pigs and chickens (if it can rain cats and dogs, then it can rain pigs and chickens). It was wonderful. I wore blue polka-dot gum boots. 

Before Fall Teen Retreat Chris got me to fix up the cardboard maze that we have in the dry shed as part of the carnival we put on for the retreat. He basically gave me a drill, some zip locks, a staple-gun and a roll of tape and told me to crawl around in a confined, dark maze with the purpose of making it even darker by fixing up the holes. It was quite entertaining dragging around these tools, on my hands and knees by myself in the dry shed. I felt a lot like a Neanderthal fixing up his cave. Funny thing happened: no one knew where I was so they left without me to get their stuff back at the house. When they asked, "Where's Faith?" they should have known I was in the cardboard maze with a drill and staple gun. I mean really, what else would I be doing. Fall Teen Retreat - what great fun. Singing and dancing and playing games and whatnot. I can't remember. I was really tired. I had Restless Leg Syndrome the second night and decided to get up in the middle of the night during Hurricane Imadene (AKA it was very, very windy). I put on my gum boots and rain jacket and went to the camp kitchen to read because I couldn't handle feeling like I was going to pass out from being so tired but not being able to sleep because of my legs. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture in times of war you know. I then found a box of Tim Horton's donuts in the kitchen and proceeded to eat an apple fritter and have some tea and read my Bible. It was pretty fantastic despite how tired and annoyed I was and the feeling of satisfaction overwhelmed any shame I was feeling for stealing a donut that was probably for a kitchen staff member. In the morning I was telling people at my table about my late night adventure (because I don't know how to not tell things I should keep to myself) and the speaker John was like, "Wait, the box of donuts in the kitchen? I bought those for the kitchen staff!" Supes totes aux ("super, totally awkward.") It's a good thing John has a good sense of humor or he could have stood up in front of everyone during chapel and used me as an example of a wolf in sheep's clothing or something like that.

I had a good conversation with my parents the other day where I realized that I am not up here to make friends. No, I am up here to be an advisor, someone the students can look up to, a leader, to show God's love in an extraordinary way. I have no idea if I'm doing this. I hope I am, but remember when I said attention-seeking Faith would have to take a seat on the back burner? She keeps coming out! I think I need to drug her and ship her to a foreign country. It's the only way. You see, like most people, I want to fit in, to be like one of the "cool" kids (well, no, we all know that is never going to happen). I have this fear of being left out which means I'm not spending enough time on my own. For some people that's not a big deal. For me, I can't survive without it. If I don't take the time to recharge then how can I be there for these amazing young people? The dilemma is that I miss out on a lot already because I have to go to bed early like the old woman that I am, but that is who I am! Not the old lady part, but the person who has to go to bed early. I can't change it and in many ways I don't want to! It's always been important to me to take care of myself and having these limitations has made me the person I am: thankful for what health I do have and so aware of the health struggles of others. Nothing in this life is easy. If it is, it probably means you are not living properly. Otherwise I'm doing really well and studying this amazing book called Radical by David Platt which makes all of us want to sell everything we have and actually listen to Jesus when He tells us to make disciples of all nations. Imagine, listening to Jesus.

Finally children are not swimming in the freezing cold lake just because it happens to be sunny in October.

Ghetto Camping on Pineapple Beach

Going up Bald Mountain

I live in the little town of Lake Cowichan now. Can you believe that? If you say no that makes sense. It makes a lot more sense that I don't live in Lake Cowichan. Except that God wants me in Lake Cowichan and fighting God is like fighting your own fist times eternity in Pandora's box. That makes about as much sense as me living in Lake Cowichan. But guess what? I love it here. I love living in a beautiful house on River Road with eleven beautiful people: Jim leading us, Sarah his wife supporting us, Jeremiah the male RA, the girl students Katie, Shayla, Gussie, Jen and Stephanie and the boy students Matt, Eric and Brad. Of course, this is only the beginning of the second week of eight months with these people. And what's even more disconcerting, they like me. Which means it is only the end of the first week of eight months of having to keep these people liking me. I don't know why they like me. I have this beautiful room with a bed twice the size of the one I have at home while the five girls share two rooms and live in bunk beds. But I don't feel too guilty because I am living in a house with a dog. I am allergic to it. I have quickly found out that living with the embodiment of what I am allergic to gives me allergies.

This is how the first week went: we hiked up and repelled down Mesachie mountain on Monday and then cleaned the camp on Tuesday and then canoed to Pineapple Beach to camp for two days on Wednesday and then decided it would be a good idea to hike up Bald Mountain (which is three times the size of Mesachie mountain) on Thursday, canoe home and spend all day cleaning the camp again on Friday. I'm telling you, these people mean business. It's Jesus' little boot camp over here. And yet there is nowhere else I'd rather be or anything else I'd rather be doing than going on amazing adventures with these amazing new friends and serving an amazing God with joyful hearts. We are all learning what servant leadership is all about and can't wait for what God is going to do this year in us and through us! FYI Bald Mountain like Pineapple Beach is a misnomer. It is not nearly as bald as you would think it would be, but a lot higher than you would think it would be and a lot harder and scarier than my definition of a delightful hike through the wilderness with the fairies and leprechauns should be. And yet... there is that satisfaction of having hiked up a mountain that no one should ever hike up to see a view that no one should ever see. And you know, the bonding experience and all (they say danger brings people together).

Coming down Bald Mountain. As you can see, some are more enthusiastic than others. Some are pretending to jump...

My greatest memory of that camping trip was washing dishes with Jeremiah and Matt. No one knew what they were doing but we all thought we knew what we were doing and we ended up washing the dishes in three different contradictory ways trying to figure out the most sanitary way, without leaving food in the water to encourage the bears to eat us and without putting all the soap in the water to pollute the planet but also rinsing the soap off the dishes enough that we didn't give everyone diarrhea yet keeping the dishes clean from the lake water which we were told was not clean enough to wash our fruit and vegetables in but was clean enough to wash our hands after going to the washroom. Are you confused? Just imagine how confused we were. All I know is there was way more laughing than is generally acceptable when doing the dishes. At one point Matt rudely asked me for the soap which I told him was no way to speak to an RA and ended with Jeremiah telling him to take out his anger on the lake. At which Matt turned to the lake and yelled, "FAITH, PASS ME THE SOAP!" a la Batman voice. Life doesn't get much better than that.

We call ourselves a family. You know you are a family when you can pass wind in front of each other and everyone feels a little grossed out because let's face it, a fart is a fart (there's no getting around it, only through it) but you still have love for the person that did it. That is the definition of family.

If you want to see more pictures you can look at our Auxano facebook page here!

Auxano, or Something

Camp Imadene, Mesachie Lake

I went to Camp Imadene last week for Senior Coed, cabin leading an amazing group of girls ages 15-17. On the first day I thought I was going to die. On top of my chronic fatigue I went up there with a cold and still tired from getting home the week before from Intermediate 2 where I was the Bead Lady! Finally my dream of being the Bead Lady came true! All the kids loved me, which is weird because on the second day I cut myself on the paper cutters (seriously those things are dangerous, note to self: don't put your finger on the exacto knife part) and I didn't realize it until I was helping one girl put her bracelet on and said, "Where did that red come from?" Um. My blood. That's where. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know I was bleeding," I said. She was all, "That's okay," and unconcerned that the crazy Bead Lady just gave her some kind of blood disease (not really). Sorry for the digression. Anyway for someone who is naturally tired all the time (or would that be unnaturally?), all it takes is a laid back week at camp as the Bead Lady to wear you out enough that you get a cold because the walls of your immune system are made of rice paper. The craft was actually paper beads, which is ironic because we're on a lake and all the kids go swimming and no matter how many times you tell ten-year-olds that paper beads are not waterproof they still need to find out for themselves.

That week as the Bead Lady a friend told me about Auxano. What is that you say? A type of acne cream? No! I shall give you the definition because we all know how much you love reading definitions on my blog:

       Auxano (owx-an'-o)

1. to cause to grow, augment
2. to increase, become greater
3. to grow, increase
   1. of plants
   2. of infants
   3. of a multitude of people
   4. of inward Christian growth

So basically it's a greenhouse for growing plants and infants. Sorry, I was thinking of those little screaming baby plants from Harry Potter called Mandrakes. It's actually a greenhouse for Christians, as in an eight-month discipleship program for young adults aged 17-24 from September to April. My friend Erin told me they still needed a female RA, Resident Advisor. I said, "Oh I could never do that, I'd be too tired." She said, "Well you're tired all the time at home, why not be tired up at camp?" You think you're soooo smart, don't you Erin? Actually she is (she has also struggled with fatigue so she knows what it's like. She is probably one of the only people who could say that to me!). Sometimes the best wisdom is the most obvious. At Senior my friend Katie told me the amazing news that she was going to be one of the students. I was so happy for her, going out and doing this thing, whatever it was, that I obviously could never, ever do. Then Andy the director of camp sneakily started asking me questions that I knew were leading to something to do with the RA position and me. Then I thought, "Do I have to actually consider this? What, now I have to physically sit down and pray about it and ask God if I should do it and wait to see what He says and then have an internal dialogue with myself, or not-so internal because I like to talk out loud like a crazy person?" This was asking too much, people. Too much.

Mandrake

I wanted God to make it clear to me by Tuesday morning SHARP so that I could actually give my two weeks notice at work. And then what did God go and do? He left it up to me. He left the door wide open so that I could decide if I wanted to walk through it or not. It seemed like the perfect time to move out. As some might say I needed to fly the cuckoo's nest, I mean nest, although cuckoo is probably the most appropriate bird for my family (sorry family). And God had already shown me at Senior coed that His grace was sufficient for me, that He could use me despite my tiredness. One by one all the obstacles I thought were so huge (health issues, my parents needing to move, financial problems, my dog) they just started to seem more like changes than obstacles. What's a little inconvenience to my parents? By now they were secretly begging me to move out and get on with my life. So what if I can't afford to get a crown on my sketchy tooth? God would give me dentures. What's a dog, anyway, when you think about it? People in China eat them (just kidding, I mean they do, but I love my dog. Unfortunately she loves my mom more anyway.) One big thing that changed my mind? I told my brother about it and He was totally, completely against it. He reminded me that we are not rich kids who can just give up our jobs at a moment's notice. And then out of the blue during a different conversation he said, "I think you should do it. I will support you financially $20 a month." (What a good brother!) So I gave my two weeks notice at work and will be leaving on the 15th of September for eight months up at one of my favorite places on earth! The ten or so of us will be staying in a house in Lake Cowichan and commute to camp every day for the program. I will be an advisor and leader for the students so I have to be on my best behavior = sarcastic, attention-seeking Faith will have to sit on the back burner (she can come visit me in my room when no one is looking). Room and board and food are paid for but I will most likely have to raise money for a living allowance.

Wait a second, who decided that I would make a good RA? Have they read my blog? Do they know me? I think someone has made a grave error. No one must ever know how unqualified I am to lead a group of girls my own age in discovering their inner selves. I write stories about unicorns for goodness sake's. Thank GOD He is strong in my weakness! If the onus is on me this ship is going down in a giant whirl pool, and fast, with a lot of screaming and throwing up. If the onus is on Jesus then we have nothing to worry about! He walks on water and tells storms to pipe down and they do it. (I tell storms to pipe down too but they never do it.) I am going to have to change my name on this blog before they find out it is me and tell me no one who writes this stuff could ever advise young adults about life and God. I've just decided. I shall change my name to Paith Slenkin... Jr.

Campy

Every year I go to this weird cult thing called "camp" where I have gone since I was seven and where parents everywhere love to ship their children off for a week away from home so they can wonder what it would have been like if they never went down that road (Parenthood Rd). My parents shipped me off to a camp called Camp Imadene as a child and I will ship my future children off to camp in a generational cycle of party-time-for-parents. Little do the parents know that CAMP IS THE BEST THING EVER! Actually, I think they probably do know, but that's beside the point, I believe the children have won by subterfuge. As a child I looked forward to camp throughout the entire year. It was the quintessence of summer to me. One thing I do miss though is the Crow's Nest, a high tower with a big flotation ball on the bottom and a basket-like nest on top, maybe twenty feet up, that sat in the lake. You'd climb up into the nest and rock it back and forth until it touched the water and swung like a pendulum to the other side. It freaked the heck out of me, but it was worth it. And then it sunk. I think it may still be at the bottom of the lake and kind of hope it is because I have an unrealistic dream to resurrect it.

I love the safari cutouts because I never get
to see them with the older camps.

Just to get one thing straight, if there was a fight to the death between all the camps in all the universes, the camp that would beat them all would be Camp Imadene. It is the best place on earth, and I am one of the lucky few who have discovered the secret. Therefore I cannot divulge its whereabouts. But I can tell you that Mesachie Lake is the most beautiful lake in the world and that when it comes to camps, smaller is usually better, regardless of whether other camps have cooler stuff. Imadene could consist of a straw hut and a row-boat and it would still be the best camp ever. Call me biased.... because I am. The crazy thing is that Imadene now owns the mountain across the lake as well as the property on the other side of the road (they're trying their hand at world domination...). But it isn't that, and it isn't the canoeing, climbing wall, repelling, wakeboarding, tubing or BMX track, it's the entire camp atmosphere. You walk onto that camp and you feel love, pure and simple. And I can tell you why - before entering the camp grounds two old wooden signs sway in the wind, one says, "Camp Imadene," the other says, "Bible Camp." That's why. Because Camp Imadene is a Bible Camp.