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!

Or that time I..

Just remembering some funny moments. Like that time I lost my balance standing on the bus and actually fell on some strange man's lap. Looking back, there were so many things I wish I had said to smooth that over. But really, is there any smoothing over sitting in a stranger's lap? No. No there is not.

Or that time I decided to pick up my friend's travel mug and turn it upside down to see if it said what it was made of on the bottom. As mugs often are, it was full of coffee. I will never live that down.

Or that time I took a coffee onto the double decker bus and dropped it on the upper level, spilling it all over the floor. It meant that every time the bus went forward or came to a stop, everyone watched the coffee creeping further up and down the aisle and eventually spill down the stairs. You have no idea how horrifying it is to have to tell the bus driver that you had an accident. 

I should really stay away from coffee. And buses. Especially together...

Or one I really like: instead of saying "Have a good day" at the end of a call at work, I accidentally said, "Have a good idea."

Or that time I was really sweaty after biking to work so I decided to use the shirt I had biked in as a towel just to realize I forgot the shirt I was going to wear and now had to put back on the shirt I had just used to dry myself.

Or that time I watched some guy ahead of me step in dog poo in the middle of the sidewalk and as I watched I thought "Poor sucker never looked where he was going," and immediately stepped in the first part of the same dog's poo because I was too busy watching the other guy not looking where he was going. I tried to get his attention to commiserate with him but he pretended I wasn't there and that nothing had happened. Pride goeth before the fall but not before you steppeth in poo.



This is me, a failed bear.

Or that time I volunteered to wear the teddy bear mascot costume at a Christmas fundraiser for the Queen Alexandra Foundation and tried to convince a skeptical little boy that I was in fact a real bear. I mistakenly said something about bears celebrating Christmas and decorating Christmas trees. He replied (with disdain), "Bears hibernate during the winter." Nobody told me I was talking to Dwight Schrute's illegitimate child.

Or how as a child I had an obsession with carving my name into things, particularly our furniture. At the time I wasn't thinking that this was incriminating myself, I was solely thinking of one word: fame. I carved "F+R" (R for the boy I liked in grade two) into a cabinet and when my mother confronted me I tried to convince her it was someone else. Of the ones I remember, I wrote my name in our doorframe, our storage unit, my desk at home and at school, a bunkbed at camp and many trees. When I was thirteen I got in trouble with the park ranger at Miracle Beach campgrounds for carving "Faith + Mike" inside a large heart, into a tree on our camp site.  Mike was a boy I liked on a camping trip after knowing him for three days and, as we all know, 95% of all park rangers are bitter about young love (this is true, I swear). The day before he left he serenaded me on the beach with his Catholic school horror stories. He had a concaved chest and said his best friend was a girl with big boobs who offered to donate some to fill the hole. These are the kind of boys I like.

You will also find my name in many cement structures around my old complex: the rock wall in my back yard, a corner of the basketball court, my friend's patio, the curb on my street and outside my aunt's old house in James Bay.

I refuse to be forgotten.