Terribly Poetic

So I guess my blog is living up to it’s name recently. The Terrible part that is. A lot of things in my life have taken a back seat while camp is on. We are now at the halfway point of our summer camps, although if I count from May we are way past half I guess. Anyways, I didn’t take time from my busy camp schedule to complain or to be down on my blog. I appreciate all of you for reading my blog, even with it’s very few updates and it’s sporadic nature. I love you all. I took this time to share my heart about what’s been going on in my life and the life of my family. So here goes…

This spring coming into camp I felt very confident and at ease with where God was moving and how I knew that God was in control of everything here. The month of June is and was the hardest month for our family. Due to the camp life, I end up being at camp for most of June and my family ends up being back home. I get to come home most weekends and whenever I get a day off, but it takes it’s toll on the family. I know that this spring has been particularly hard on Dawn as life with Norah and the stresses of her health still very much exist and at times seem to linger. Add to the fact that I am away alot just makes it more difficult for Dawn. While Dawn struggles to deal with everything and handle the kids, pretty much as a single parent, I am not immune to struggles as well. It would seem that not having kids to deal with while working would be nice, in fact it takes it toll on me. Nonetheless, our family survive the month and soon they joined me at camp.
This summer, Dawn has been very excited to get more involved with camp in whatever way works. From getting involved in some admin duties, which she loves, to getting to mentor a bunch of girls, which she loves even more, she has really felt alot more connected to camp and staff than last year. This is awesome. As she has gotten involved more, so her support of what I am doing grows even stronger than before. I am so thankful for my amazing wife and her love and understanding of this wonderful ministry. Praise God!
What has been on our minds lately has been the continued stress of Norah’s health. Some of you may or may not know (from reading Dawn’s posts too), that Norah has some issues with her spine/ribs. She has a curvature of her spine and some fused ribs. We are told that she will have to see a specialist to monitor her growth until she is done growing!! Please pray that things will be alright with this, as the biggest issue is her ribs. If they stay fused then that side of her body can’t grow and develop properly and it makes it very difficult for her organs to grow. If it gets worse then she would have to undergo another surgery. This one would be alot longer and more involved than even the open heart surgery she already had. I can’t begin to tell you how much we want to avoid that! Also, due to the defects she’s had together she recently underwent an ultrasound on her kidneys, as it can be common for these defects to all be connected and for more issues to exist as well. We are waiting on the results right now and are praying that her kidneys are fine.
Lastly, in her recent checkup it was noted that she is only 13lbs!!! They are worried about her weight gain, and we are now tasked with trying to get as many proteins and such into her little body. Pray that Norah will gain weight. She is strong and can actually stand, situp, and take steps when holding our hands, but is just so tiny. All in all, I am finding it more and more difficult to remain peaceful about everything. God has given us amazing peace, but before and during the surgery. We are so thankful for all your prayers and I just feel that I need another dose of God’s people to continue praying for Norah and us as we continue to deal with it all. Thanks.

So there it is. In a nutshell that is our life. And just so you all know, if you are ever near Saskatoon or North Battleford area, we would love to give you directions to Ranger Lake to stop by for a visit. Summer here is going well for ministry, God is doing some amazing things in the lives of our staff and many, many campers. We wish you could all come be witness to His work. Until next time, (which will probably be after camp) God Bless.

So I glanced at the calendar and realized that it’s March…. What? How did we get here so fast? It seems like winter is fading away and I hardly remember it. Maybe it was all the craziness of Norah’s journey that made everything seem to pass by so fast. Either way I am now looking at the calendar and the huge amounts of things on it as Spring brings many things for us. House renovations getting done; which will bring a slew of jobs for me soon; to spring LIT retreat, youth group visits, lots of R/C Truck Events, planning programming, beginning to start thinking about video for this summer, and the list goes on and on. And this doesn’t even include all the things on the calendar for our family. Luckily one of those is a family vacation in Edmonton for Easter. I am really hoping this will help put my head on straight before Spring really hits and I start heading out to camp for rentals, staff training, etc, etc.

As always, the think to take a backseat is this site. Many are probably checking back here for updates on Norah. But she is doing so well that I forget to tell everyone that. She’s great. Growing, getting chubbier everyday. So makes us all smile each day. I wish you could all come cuddle her and see for yourself just how much she has changed. Pictures are cute (I guess I should post more too) but they don’t really show how much she has changed in the past month. She has healed so well that we are starting to pick her up under her arms now. So glad for that. Makes it easier to cuddle with her. Before we know it she will be rolling over.

I wish I could write something profound and earth shattering here. But life really seems to be “back to normal” for the first time in a long time. And by normal I really mean busy. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Before you know it, it will be summer and we’ll be moved back to camp for the summer.

So its been a whirlwind past few weeks. When camp ended we left the very next day for our family vacation to Idaho. It was a great trip and if you aren’t alive and haven’t seen some of our pics on Facebook, just look me up here. I could give you a long story on our vacation but I don’t feel like updating many weeks in one post. I just need to get back into regular posts here. So here goes…

In my last post the most pressing prayer request was my job situation. For those that don’t know, my job at Ranger Lake Bible Camp will continue to year round. We are so excited about this answer to prayer. Already I am busy preparing program, brochures, theme for next year at camp. I am excited to use the skills and gifts God has given me here at Ranger. I am also very excited to be doing alot of work with our newest program of the Radio Controlled Trucks. So much so that I bought my own! More on that on another post. So our fears are done away with and I will have a job when our new baby arrives in around 7 weeks!!

So vacation ended and then I got sick! This has been the worse sickness I have had in 10 years. So much that when I went to my doctor they didn’t have record of me being a patient because I hadn’t been in 10 years. I guess sometime ago they upgraded to a new computer system and “old” patients didn’t get put into the system, so I got deleted. Needless to say I ended up at a new doctor in Stonebridge area, which actually helped me, and with very little wait time. After going on antibiotics for awhile the sickness seems to be gone, however, the energy levels aren’t quite there yet. After all these years of not being sick, I realized how blessed I am for my strong immune system. Here’s hoping it returns soon.

So mark this down on your calendars, Daryl is back from summer. Holidays are over, summer camps are done, sickness is gone, so I am officially back. If I have a long time between now and my next post, I blame it only on myself.

Hey everyone, just thought you should all know that I am very much Alive. Camp is going great and is very busy. For those that have ever worked at camp before, they will know that this is a very good excuse for not posting for such a long time. Dawn and Libby are really enjoying their time out at camp as well. It has been hard at times as June required Dawn to be in Saskatoon for most of the time and we therefore have had to spend way to much time apart as a family. This past month was much better as Dawn and Libby have been at camp for quite abit of it. Libby loves being at camp and runs around tons. This has helped Dawn to get good naps in the afternoons as Libby runs so much that she usually naps for a few hours each afternoon and allows Dawn to rest. Thankful the summer hasn’t been extremely hot, however, it is plenty hot for any pregnant lady.
I’m so sorry that I can’t post some great photos of us at camp, but my time is so precious that I haven’t had much time to take pics. When I get away from editing videos and out from behind the camera, the last thing I want to do is take more pics. So if you want to see us you will just have to come visit us at camp.
Well, tomorrow starts the beginning of our busiest time of year as we now will be running two different camps at the same time for the rest of summer. What this means for me is that I will be making two different DVD’s each week instead of my usual 1. Thursday nights are about to get even later. Until September, don’t count on many more of these updates.

And if you are the praying type, please pray for us as my future job here at Ranger Lake is still up in the air and with only two months till October 1st hits, and 3 months until our second child, I am getting abit anxious.

So I need to apologize as I have been fairly absent from this blog when it comes to actual writing. Blog meme’s, reposting, and videos have taken over and I need to get back to real writing. The real reason is actually Twitter. If you aren’t on it and don’t get it, that’s too bad. Follow me here

Okay so now comes the real difficult task of actually writing. Seems like so many things have been on my mind lately. Must things related to my new job as spring is a busy time preparing for camp. With long TO-DO lists for the camp, and many projects on the go or needing to start yet before the summer, it seems my mind is constantly scheming, dreaming and thinking up new ideas. So narrowing down something to write about specifically is hard. So for today I will pick…. men…. huh? Is what you are thinking now.

Over the past few months, (largely my new job and our church) I have been witness to ministries being very direct in targeting “men” and “boys” in their respective areas. At Ranger Lake, we have been trying to do more things to reach out to boys, with activities such as RC Trucks, Riflery, and our boys only paintball camps (called D.I.R.T. camp; which means Direct intentional Recreational Training) we are trying to get boys to come to camp, so we can train them to be Men of God. Also at our church, our pastor just shared his vision for the church, one part of the vision is to be intentional in reaching out to men. I have to say that I love this and hope to see more places return to bring manliness back to our boys and churches. As someone who grew up going to “boys club” and learning boys things, like building campfires, shooting, making shelters, etc, etc, I learnt alot from the Godly examples of what it means to be a Man of God. I am extremely grateful for being raised in an environment like this. However, I see many boys, growing up without this example, and (sorry ladies) I see many co-ed environments that are largely led by women (such as kids clubs, worship teams, etc, etc) that aren’t helping to raise men. Young boys in today’s society no longer have a ‘right of passage’ into manhood, and grow up sitting infront of their TVs, internet, and video games, without learning to be a man. It is largely this reason why we see so many ‘men’ in our society that are so childish. It also makes me angry to see how the roles of men and women are so blurred. Sure I am all for equality and do believe in it, but I also believe that God created men and women different for a very good reason. We all know very well the example of a great mother, and how she cares for us, and is there for us when we are little, etc, etc, all those good motherly things. However, how clear are we when it comes to the father, the dad’s? In our society, (take pop culture, like, “The Simpsons” as an example) dad’s are the bumbling idiots, who are dead beats, who never listen, always forget to take out the trash, and are only good for drinking beer and getting into trouble. This is the sentiment that we as a Church need to stand up against. And we don’t all the time. Take the upcoming Father’s Day for example, how many of you have been to a Father’s Day service at church that plays right into society and joins in the “bashing” of dumb Fathers? I have. And I don’t like it. It’s time we as a Church returned to building up men. Tough Men of God. Men who stand for what’s right. Men who look after their familes. Men who aren’t babies and complainers. Men who teach, and train their children. Men who lead their familes. Men who provide. Men who love their wives. Men who are honest and trustworthy. Men who aren’t afraid to get tough when they need too. Real Men of God.

Who’s with me?

I know, hearing all about my life is exactly why you all read this isn’t it? Okay you probably just check the site, or subscribe because I know you or I twisted your arm to do it. Sometimes I think my blog is more like Creed Thoughts but then I realize that I am not nearly that creepy, weird, popular of a guy. But for whatever reason I still enjoy coming back to this site and putting out an update, a thought, or whatever else strikes me; even when I have know idea how many people actually read it, know exactly how few of you actually read it. Yes, that’s right I am also a geek (duh right), and I track my blog’s stats quite often and know how many of you there are. Wow, that may have been my longest pre-blog I have ever had. Nonetheless, I will care on.

So it has almost been 1month at my new job and I gotta say, I LOVE IT! It has been a challenging month just learning the ins and outs of Ranger Lake, but I have so much to be thankful for already. I am working with so much more purpose and direction than I have been in awhile. I feel that my skills and giftings are being tested and that I am being pushed to use them to a greater potential. While its hasn’t been all easy, no its been challenging, but I love that. I want to be challenged to be more effective in the things God has given me. It’s nice to be working with a small group too. The full time staff consists of only four people, one of whom lives out at the camp and I don’t see him much. So between myself, Greg Benson, and Dave Thiessen it makes for a very fun atmosphere to work in. We have had a lot of laughs already, but between the laughs, I get to see a man with a clear mission from God push me to use my gifts to be apart of that mission. The amount of “God Moments” in the past month has given me a new outlook on prayer. WOW is all I have to say. In this short time I have seen some amazing answers to prayers. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do this summer. Man its great to be working back in camp ministry. I forgot just how the environment of camp ministry pushes one to rely solely on God for EVERYTHING. So with that said here are some prayer requests that we have right now.

• Female Senior Cabin Leaders
• Leader in Training (L.I.T.) Director(s)
• Volunteers as we have TONS of work projects to do before camp
• Greg and I as we are in the midst of developing the summer discussion curriculum

Hey everyone, just thought I would post a short update on my current job status. Last Monday I told you all that I was leaving YFC, and doing it with my next job not setup. Well, God knew what He was doing, and just two days later, I had successfully secured a job at Ranger Lake Bible Camp. This is the term job that I briefly mentioned. It will start April 1st, and run until Sept 30th, upon that time we will evaluate my future at Ranger. We feel that God has called us back into camp ministry once again and we are extremely excited about this opportunity. My job will have three focuses, Mentorship, Promo, and Program. Here is an excerpt from my support letter which I managed to get in the mail last Friday.

Mentorship is one of the areas of camp ministry that made the biggest impact on my life. Through being mentored, my life was changed, which in turn helped guide me into fulltime ministry. Part of my job will be very deliberate in mentoring younger staff members and seeking to establish relationships with them not just during summer, but during the off-season as well. God has given me a vision to help equip, train and mentor young leaders to passionately serve God with their lives. We are very excited to see where God will lead us in this vision.

Promotion
I love making videos, and designing graphics, and this gift will be put to great use at Ranger! At the end of every summer camp week I will produce a souvenir video to sell to campers. This will enable campers to show their family and friends what Ranger is like; we’ve used similar tools like this at YFC and had great results. Already I have had much input in designing the promotional materials for this camp.

Program
There’s more to a camp program that just games! During the summer, campers learn four “skills” every day like archery, wall climbing, backcountry adventure, and horseback riding. Part of my job will be to help ensure that each of these skills are as effective and excellent as we can make them. If they need to be retooled, or updated, I will seek out the right tools and resources to help make them the best they can be. Ranger also runs off-season camps for church youth groups, schools, staff development retreats, and various other groups. I will help plan program and offer leadership training for these groups as needed during the off-season.

We are still responsible to raise funds for my salary, but thankfully, Ranger requires us to raise a minimum of 50% of these funds, and they will cover the rest! If you are interested in supporting the ministry at Ranger Lake, please drop me a note.

Announced this week the Barenaked Ladies and singer, Steven Page will be parting. For those that don’t know. I am a huge BNL fan. I have seen them 3 times in concert and loved each one of them. These guys have more talent than so many of today’s “pop” stars. Thankfully, the rest of BNL, we stay together and are going back into the studio in April. I am very excited to see what they churn out, without Steven. Steven is launching his own solo career, which I’m slighty leary of. While he is a great lead to BNL, I’m not sure he has the whole package to go it alone. Time will tell I guess.
I am alittle sadden to see them parting ways, but I trust that the remaining members, Jim Creeggan, Kevin Hearn, Ed Robertson, and Tyler Stewart will not disappoint me, as they are all very talented musicians. I know I will be seeing them in concert next time they are in Saskatoon.

First off I will preface this post by saying that I am not downsizing the blog. While it may appear that way because of the lack of posting to the site, I am in no way planning to downsize my blog. In reality, I would like to increase the amount I post here. However, I would rather wait to post something good, than post alot of junk. If you are looking to here more from me than I encourage you to follow me on twitter here, if you don’t know what twitter is, then you are missing out. You can also see my most reason twitter in my lifestream on the sidebar to the left.

Now to what I meant by downsizing. I have decided that I own to much stuff. While I don’t think of myself as a pack rat, I have accumulated too much. Oh sure I have many useful things that I might like to use more often at a later date, such as my pool table or coke machine. The reality is that I don’t need this stuff and can easily get rid of it, sell it, or even throw it away. While the idea of selling the stuff I have to get new stuff is a reality, I hope to be more diligent in spending this money. For instance, I need new tires for our car, this would be a wise use of money I would get from selling my coke machine. However, one of the biggest reasons I want to downsize is because we don’t need all this stuff to live. Modern consumerism has played a HUGE part in helping me acquire all the stuff I don’t use. My plan is to get rid of stuff and not to free up space for NEW stuff as consumerism would tell me to do. Jesus told a parable about the rich man, and when told to sell everything he had and give it away he was very sad, because he had lots.

How many of us have too much stuff. I know I do and I plan to do something about it. I will sell anything of large value, like my pool table. But I hope to be able to donate alot of it as well. We have so much and others have so little. Sometimes when I see my garage, my basement, my storage rooms, I get sick to my stomach by all the waste. Today I am letting you all know that I have had enough. It’s time to downsize.

My sister tagged me in this meme, and I thought, since I’ve never been tagged by her in a meme, that I should do this one.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a post with
25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.

1. I am a complete and udder coffee addicted, espresso loving, darker the roast drinker. So much so that I actually believe that Starbucks doesn’t fall into the category of amazingly great coffee. But I must also admit that I am so addicted that one will find me drinking just about any coffee, no matter how bad it is, when I really need a cup.

2. I am a huge fan of BNL, or for those who know them as The Barenaked Ladies. As a side note, they just got nominated for another JUNO®.

3. I love action movies. Yeah I know you are thinking duh, but I actually like action movies even when they are dark and have no happy ending, as well, I like action movies even when the plot sucks as long as things are exploding.

4. I get paid a salary because many people support me and donate money to YFC. In fact, if you want to help me to keep getting a pay check, just click here

5. I am apart of the growing number of couples who struggle with infertility. Yes we have a daughter, but NO, it didn’t heal or cure us. And yes, we know that our daughter is getting old and we should really have another one. Stop asking us, we don’t know when either.

6. I love my wife, I love my daughter, and they happened to also be the cutest most loving family a guy like me could ask for. Thanks God.

7. I watch alot of TV, sometimes to much, but I gotta say that I HATE all forms of reality TV. This includes, but is not limited to, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Amazing Race, Extreme Makeover:Home Edition. I know I might get hate mail over that last one, but Ty Whatever your name is, you are helping people, and you might be a great carpentar, but I just can’t stand watching you.

8. I love Food & Drink and all forms it takes. The more I am exposed to different forms of it the more I am witness to the amazing creativity of God and His creation.

9. Following the previous “thing” I would love to tour France or California Wine County if given the chance.

10. I love Shrimp, it might be the best food EVER.

11. I think about food too much.

12. I love music and can’t go for very long during a day without having it on.

13. I also really love Jazz music and haven’t missed the Jazz Festival in Saskatoon for quite a few years. Favorite concert is a tied between Dave Brubeck and Ed Thigpen

14. I hate snow and cold, but live in Saskatchewan, must run in the family as my sister said the same thing. But she’s moving back to SK after living in lower mainland of BC, so she really is crazy.

15. As the title of my blog suggests, I do actually write poetry, just not for awhile.

16. I am an avid athlete, at least I once was. I love the Ultimate Frisbee league I play in and will be sad to have to leave it this summer as I go to camp for the summer. I’ve play all of the following on organized teams/leagues/tournaments, basketball, soccer, softball, slowpitch, baseball, hockey, football, volleyball, Ultimate of course, ping pong, billiards (its on the sports channels it counts), Beach Volleyball, Track & Field, Gymnastics, I think I got them all.

17. I survive on little sleep most days. Staying up late and waking up early. This drives my wife nuts who needs her sleep.

18. I can sometimes be quite blunt and this can sometimes offend people. Sorry in advance.

19. I am a youth worker, and I am organized, and for those of you who are the stereotypical youth worker who is always late, has a disaster of an office and can’t seem to figure out how to “get it together” as the rest of us would put it, you can give people like me a bad name. I don’t want to be painted with your brush. Sorry if this is offensive to you, but, see #18.

20. I would love to be able to get paid fulltime for graphic/web/video design and production, and bonus if its my own company.

21. I would love to be more disciplined in my spiritual life

22. I would love to be a better writer.

23. I would love to be able to hear God’s voice and plan for my whole life right now.

24. I wish more people would visit and comment on my blog.

25. I hope people read this and learn something about me.

There it is, now I would love to hear from you. As this is a blog post I will try to tag people in facebook (where this meme started), and as well mention those bloggers I know. Such as Jared, Jess, Ben and Shannon