Back to Reform School: Auxano Round 2

Jim told us to kill each other.

So I came back to Auxano after Christmas break and it was like, really? ANOTHER semester with these amazing people, learning about my favorite subject (God) in this beautiful valley and going on adventures? We were talking to the Kaleo students who go to a similar program at Camp Qwanoes and they were telling us about a big paper they had to stay up late writing and all the exams they had to cram for. It was hard not to feel anything but pity as we don't have any papers or exams. I spent days and days of my break staying up late and sleeping in. I am not ashamed of those days. I mean, yeah, I'm a little ashamed, but not a lot. I helped my parents at home, but not as much as I meant to or should have. I hung out with friends but not enough to really contribute to them in a significant way. I ate a lot of cookies and drank a log of eggnog of the soy variety but not a lot... oh wait. Yeah. A lot. Like an excessive, disgusting amount. I saw The Hobbit and loved how even with the things they added from Tolkien's edits everything was still excessively drawn out, just so they could extend the novel into three feature length films and steal your money with the extra frames per second thingy and the fairly unnecessary three-dimensional aspect. Otherwise I loved it.

This week started with, well, first my day off on Monday, and then an adventure at Botanical Beach on Tuesday. It was my first time to Port Renfrew. I didn't understand; I had heard of Port Renfrew so many times. I imagined it was a city. I can't even be sure it qualifies as a village. Maybe a hovel. All I know is I thought we were going to die on that sketchy road getting there in the Auxano van. Logging trucks seemed to speed toward us (I say seemed because when you get behind one they don't seem quite as fast as you thought) and some parts of the road are single lane which gets really awkward when you have to play chicken with a logging truck. Twenty minutes into the trip Jim remembered he needed gas: Vern was running on empty (we named the van Vern). We had to turn back and head to Lake Cowichan as Port Renfrew doesn't have a gas station around for miles. I think that might be why it stays in "hovel" status instead of becoming a legitimate town. But it was all worth it for the beach. I love the ocean. It seems silly but just being away from it for a few months I already missed it. We found a sea urchin shell for Shayla who was sick and couldn't come with us and brought her home a collection of pretty rocks. I especially loved the tidal pools with their miniature Little-Mermaid-esque worlds. I tried to get Steph and Matt to put their fingers inside the sea anemones that suction your finger with their little suckers (it's the best feeling) but they were total wusses. I was disappointed in Steph until I saw her freak out at a teensy orange starfish the size of your finger and realized her fears had gotten the better of her sanity. That left Matt. What a wuss.

Jeremiah and The Whale Spout.

We hiked across a beautiful rocky landscape. You could see where the sea and wind had eroded the softer rock and the different colored layers that some genius could probably tell geological time from. None of us were geniuses so we just knew the layers were old. There were long stretches of shale with a zig-zag of quartz. I now know where I am going to get my future roof shingles and floor tiles. Trekking across those rocks felt a lot like Frodo and Sam Gamgee on their journey to Mordor. And I'm not even saying that just because I watched The Hobbit. I managed to not get my runners wet during all the times it would have been reasonable to get them wet. For example, at one point we were watching the waves break against the rocks and one came too far so to try and save myself I pulled Matt into a puddle... At another place the waves broke against an alcove and shot up like water from a whale spout and soaked Jeremiah. Another time Brad, Eric and I climbed a ridge on the shoreline and Brad slipped down it like a slip and slide and fell up to his knees in water. No, all those times where I should have gotten wet, I didn't. I managed to get wet at the very end of our trip when all the extravagant displays of the ocean were over. When you are concentrating hard on skipping rocks sometimes you forget that after the waves go out on the shore they come back in again. Finally, after our Botanical experience in Port Renfrew we drove to the Honeymoon Bay Resort and went in the hot tub, which was partially outside and surrounded by snow. To get to it you had to walk through Aslan's Garden and pass the Toadal Fitness room where, if you wanted, you could work out before going in the hot tub. But you didn't see Frodo and Sam working out after their long journey to Mordor. No, they did exactly what any Hobbit would do, they went hot tubbing in Rivendell.

On our way to Mordor. Jim was sick of us already so he wanted to throw us in a mountain of fire.

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!

Adventure in Homelessness

Last week was quite the adventure. Auxano took it to the street! Word up! Not quite so gangster as that unfortunately but we did go to Victoria for a week of outreach. We lived at the Mustard Seed which is a church and food bank and multi-function community center in one and we did have a so-called "homeless" twenty-four hours on Thursday. The girls slept in the family centre for the week and the boys in the board room. At first I pitied the boys because all they had was a fax machine whereas we had a puppet show, but it turns out there is no time for puppet showing when you are working your a-double-snakes off volunteering (an expression we found hilarious that week). Surprisingly there was time to read most of The Christmas Pony out loud in different voices until it got so wearisome we couldn't continue. The week fit well with my radical experiment for the year: to volunteer in the community, so as you can imagine I was incredibly happy and felt like I was right where I was supposed to be. Steph was just talking about that feeling on Sunday when we led the church service at Saanichton Bible Fellowship and talked about our experience. I agree. It is a pretty great feeling. You should try it sometime but I warn you it probably means doing something outside of your comfort zone to help someone else. We helped out in the back of the food bank organizing all the donated food. I couldn't believe how much food the Mustard Seed gets every day. Most of the Mustard Seed's clients are low-income families, not homeless people, which just goes to show you how many there are. I found out there are around 1500 homeless people in Victoria, but there are thousands more who are living under the poverty line, especially because the cost of living in Victoria is so high. Apparently the issue in Victoria for the homeless is not food but housing.

We also volunteered at Our Place. They offer free meals to 1200 people Monday to Friday (they don't have enough funding to be open on the weekends) and they have 45 rooms for transitional housing that help the homeless get off the streets and give them a chance at, well, life. We helped out in the kitchen making meals, at the clothing exchange and cleaning the showers, which I especially loved. Don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy cleaning showers but I do enjoy giving  people access to something so simple being clean. We all just want to feel clean. For many of the people living on the street it is not a choice, though for a small few it is. We like to think that so we don't have to feel bad for them. The saddest part is that for so many of them who didn't have a choice, in the end they had no choice but to take substances to keep them warm and make them feel something better than what they were feeling. So we think it was their fault that they got addicted to drugs or alcohol and now have to pay the consequences, but for most of them it's just not true. For a few nights we got to volunteer at Sanctuary Youth which is run out of Church of Our Lord and offers a place for youth under 19 to hang out, to feel accepted regardless of who they are or what they have done. The first night we walked past a few young people begging on the street and invited them to Sanctuary Youth for pizza. We walked past this guy wearing a joker's hat and a mask playing his digeridoo, and who turns up at Sanctuary Youth but Mr. Digeridoo himself? We found out he's a pretty cool guy, a complete hippy, and when we saw him the next night happily playing his digeridoo we said, "Come on out to Sanctuary! There's cookies!" It was interesting to go there and hang out with kids who were obviously stoned. How could we judge them when we had no idea where they were coming from? Or better yet, we knew exactly where they were coming from and it made perfect sense that they would rather go through life high than live without the security of a home, the satisfaction of a job, the love of a family and the support of a community. It was here that I felt most aware of how close I had come to being exactly where they were. Growing up my family was the grateful but humiliated recipients of many a food hamper from the Mustard Seed and we lived in low-income housing for most of my life. There was nothing separating me from these kids but the grace of God. Nothing.

Hope Farm is a rehabilitation centre run by
the Mustard Seed in Duncan.

Thursday afternoon we started our twenty-four hours of being homeless. Even though we weren't able to sleep on the streets like we were hoping to do we still hadn't showered in four days and all we had was a handful of change and no place to go - just a little taste of what it would be like. After sleeping in the same clothes on the hard ground we stood in line for mediocre but much appreciated free breakfast Friday morning at Our Place. We were able to talk to quite a few homeless people, hearing their stories and telling a little bit about what we were doing. Brad and I talked to a guy named Jo we had met at Sanctuary Youth. He was high. He was also hilarious and we all laughed a lot. When we asked where he got the crazy fur coat he was wearing he said he killed a Yeti in the Himalayas with his guitar and I for one believe him. It was clear he enjoyed just having someone to talk to, that feeling of loneliness set aside for a short moment. Friday night we helped with something called Drive-by Cafe through the Mustard Seed. If they have enough volunteers for Street Cafe they take a table downtown and give out free food to whoever comes by. We each got a stick of chalk and went down a few different streets writing encouraging words on the sidewalk. I had a lot of fun writing out the lyrics to the song "Dark Horses" by Switchfoot. And yes. It took me a while. I probably looked like a crazy person squatting on the sidewalk with my sidewalk chalk but a little crazy is good for everyone. The song is about the street kids in San Diego and had become a really special song to all of us. It was pretty breathtaking to praise God on the streets of my hometown with such an awesome group of people after volunteering all week and having our eyes opened. I highly recommend it. But FYI you look really weird. 

We all felt very grateful after that week. And humbled. Most of us plan on volunteering at one of those places over the Christmas break and hopefully it will become a life-long passion helping people who need it most. We might not be able to do anything about the substance abuse or the housing problems but we can certainly make their lives a little better, give them a little bit of love and share a little bit of humanity. These people are not just children of God, they are also just someone's children. Wouldn't you want that for your own?