Spiritual Dialogue

I really do enjoy dialoguing about spiritual concepts, ideologies, philosophies, person points of view.

I love that my days always include discussions, dialogue and opportunities to share my relationship with Jesus. I believe it's the truth and I think it needs to be lived out and spoken of.

Thoughts?

Favorite parts of Winnipeg.

There's always something to love about any place you're living.

Now that I live in the geographical centre of Canada: Winnipeg, Manitoba.

I figured I'd share things I enjoy about Winterpeg:

A. the first snowfall of the season. Gorgeous white tipped trees. Pristine white sidewalks unscathed by dirt and foot prints.
B. Skating at the Forks is the BeeessssT (insert Nacho Libre accent)

I always love going. the Forks is like Granville island if you're from Vancouver, B.C.
A cool trendy market place, with clubs, restaurants. The Forks is the 'fork' where the Assiniboine and Red River meet.

During the Winter in the -50 C the rivers freeze...creating the world's longest outdoor skating rink.

Often they plow the rivers creating skating trails and line it with trees and lights. It's a beautiful way to enjoy the evening air.

When I was single i loved skating hard by myself for a few hours and 5-6kms...now it's even better to enjoy skating holding Julie's hand gliding on a romantic evening skate.

C. Summer time: Farmer's Market
- .50 ear of corn
- spring rolls
- apples that taste like candy.

D. It snows then it's plowed. It's a blessing to have clean streets to drive on unlike Vancouver.

E. Living across the street from a chinese market (WenKai) and the best pizza parlor in Winnipeg. (Romani's pizza)

I'll keep adding to the list.

The smoking man.

A title I stole from scraps of my memories x-files.

I’ve lived in my building 2 years now. And only 6 months ago we got new downstairs neighbors. No they aren’t loud, and they seem like decent people when we catch each other in the elevator… But the yellow teeth, the twitching stained index and middle fingers clearly reek a message: we are smokers and suck on my 2nd hand smoke.

They smoke all the time! So much so that the 3rd hand smoke seeps into our apartment through the bathroom and kitchen pipes… and those all too familiar apartment holes that run the entire height of the building.

The stench is sickening, not to mention my phobia of lung cancer every time I breathe. This world is so unjust! Not only is it death by puff it’s also murder to any others that are within breathing distance.

RANT!
I wish people who smoked lived in bubbles like the infamous ‘bubble boy’. Where smokers could infinitely be drowned in what they pollute. I believe it’s only fair for them to be subject to hazardous effects of 1st,2nd and 3rd degree smoke inhalation.

Yeah I know… what a sob story? Insert “poor little bunny” here.

Sad but i have so little compassion for these people... i think it's because i brand them smokers and not people. Wow how unjust of me.

feb 19th-Jars of Clay; Feb 24th-Switchfoot

hey Guys,

I never attend concerts..but this week i went to two!

Jars of Clay was fantastic. Although i don't have any of their newer albums....I only really enjoyed 30% of the concert. Actually there was a section of 3 songs where I almost fell asleep. Shh... don't tell anyone.

Their renditions of some classic songs were just as inspiring from the first time I heard them several years ago. I acutally use to listen to Jars before I was a believer... i never really understood the lyrics until I gave my life to Christ...then songs like"Flood"..."Frail" took an even deeper relevance to my life. They are quite talented musicians! - mundane dressers though ;-P





Switchfoot on was like night and day to jars. They were much more energetic especially with Johnathan jumping on speakers, singing ontop of balcony ledges, playing 6 different guitars and landing some great one liners. He had a few people come on stage to join the band too.

I still don't understand their current album "Oh Gravity" But great nonetheless. I enjoy Switchfoot's ability to make Christianeze into powerful poetic word pictures: "crooked souls"..."amateur lovers"...."hoping that he is meant for more.."

mommy mommy, A grumpy old man yelled at me.

I manned the booth today for a few hours at MissionFest Winnipeg 2007. Wow what an experience! I entered this large church which was housing the fest and wandered around for 15mins looking for the C4C booth. I couldn’t find it because our signage was so small in comparison to the numerous other missions groups.

A few things I learned:

1. Mission Fest is like the automobile show everyone’s trying to sell their product: “your best service for God”. I constantly heard the following from the various tables: “We are the best at what we do!”; “No one has the vision and heart like we do”; “We know what we’re doing”… I even heard: “Our ministry touches 98% of the world population with the gospel. We are doing so well because we have great speakers who practice, memorize and repeatedly give great sermons. We are successful because our ministry is great.” Sorry, but what happened to G.O.D.

2. Mission Fest has booth babes. I am offended.

3. We were all using media, music, free candy to attract people.

So since I was there manning the table, some of you might be wondering… I simply shared the vision of Campus ministry: we’re here change the world by helping to fulfill the great commission by winning university students to Christ, building them up in their faith and sending them to win, build and send others. I’m not that good looking and am missing a chromosone so no booth babe… Yes I used project videos to attempt to capture an audience, but when I turned on my laptop to show the videos the booth beside me turned up the volume on their dvd integrated 20in wide screen LCD monitor. I lost.

Saw a few students who were visiting the Fest, saw a few friends from Church. I enjoyed some of the other tables. I had a great conversation with the “stop-abortion” clinic people…about cohabiting and negative effects on marriage relationships. What can you say I am curious. Got to meet a few people from “gospel for asia”

And if you’ve made it this far: An older gentleman came up to me to ask if we (Campus Crusade for Christ) were giving away Josh Mc Dowell’s new book “the witness” I said, “no but I have a copy at home back in B.C.” He proceeded to ask me if I ever heard of McDowell. I said of course, I’ve read large portions of “evidence of the verdict” and finished “beyond belief” and am currently reading “A quest for answers”. I think he was trying to catch me off guard thinking…this little asian kid has no idea who Mc dowell is…hah.

This is when it gets interesting. He moves in closer looks me straight in the eye and asks, “so what do you do with Campus Crusade for Christ?” I say, “I am new to staff with Campus staff here in Winnipeg”. He asks, “how long you been a Christian?” I replied “…about 6.5years” He moved in closer…we’re now 6in apart (he’s in my personal space) He looks me straight in the eye and says: Do you believe in the word of God? How do you know it’s true? How do you know it’s true versus the Koran?” I am a bit thrown back. I reply, “there’s good evidence: external, historical, fulfilled prophesies….there’s good evidence for Jesus resurrection to validate his claim to be God. I am cut off. He retorts, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you even a Christian? Why did Jesus die on the cross? I am a spiritual grandfather. I’ve been a Christian for 53 years and I know what’s right. You have to be ready to defend your faith.” By this time he’s 3 inches infront of my face yelling at me. Normally I’d step back but this guy was being a jerk. I was sticking my ground. He proceeds to tell me that I better figure things out that I should always be ready to defend my faith.

So I was told that I’m not a Christian and shouldn’t be here at mission’s fest nor in Winnipeg doing what I’m doing…

Thank you for that experience lord. Thank you for reminding me that I should have a good reason for my belief in God….even if I don’t get the chance to fully respond about my believes, convictions and the good reasoning for believing and doing what God has asked me to do: to serve a spiritually desperate and hungry generation.

As I was typing this up I got an update, my director who replaced me after my shift told me that two people want to join the ministry. Two students who want to join a discipleship group and learn how to share their faith.

I guess the booth was a success and I was wrong. MissionFest is good as long as I am not behind the booth. I seem to attract the wrong crowd.

Everything I do falls through yet everything Kevin does succeeds. I think this year will be filled with much failure. It will be a good learning year. Maybe I should be mature and recognize that God is sovereign and that I need to be constantly reminded and ready to defend what I believe even to highly confrontational, obnoxious old Christian men.

Signing off. J.C.

MDA outreach results

Hey Gang.

Well the outreach surfaced 23 ppl. It was an added value outreach: Speaker talked about how to advance career and knowning Christ personally is ultimately your success.

Note: classes in the business faculty at the UofM are 75 mins long. And I accidently set up the outreach inbetween a 75min block.

So having 23 was okay, considering I was hoping for 35. We did not have a full advertising campaign. We gave away only 30 invitations, and postered for only 3 full days. We also did a blitz invite the day of.

WE have 4 people to follow up, who are interested in a spiritual discussion and the book that we are giving away "developing the leader within you"-maxwell.

That's one outreach: we now have a presedent in the management faculty.

My goal really is to raise up spiritual multipliers, i'm wondering if doing these added value outreaches helps surface or builds spiritual multipliers. Mmm. thinking about that one.

check out the outreach: MDA management