Merry Monday

We had a fantastic Easter Brunch yesterday.  Our auditorium was packed and our Church family brought so much food there was enough for fourths!  We were also able to bless StreetHope with the leftovers.  Nigel & Maureen organized a bunch of fun activities for our kids and we showed a mini-video that some have requested to see again:



This past week was pretty relaxing due to some amazing servants!  Aaron & Monica M. headed up our decorating and set-up.  They did a great job coordinating everything and our brunch never looked better!  Dave P. helped represent our Church on Good Friday, then serve on Saturday with set-up, and then serve again on Sunday!  He and Nicole are a huge blessing to me and our Church.  Lynn B. and all of her helpful crew did an awesome job of facilitating the food and kitchen work.  They were all such hard workers and blessed us so much.  Many people stuck around after to help clean-up.  Thank you to the Olsen's, Espezel's, Parson's and everyone else.

This week will be much more hectic. Angela goes in tomorrow for her last round (for now) of chemo.  Both of our mom's will be taking shifts this week! Things are ramping up at the College with end of semester stuff.  I also have a bunch of meetings including our summer camp fundraising team, Church council, Jim Moses' memorial planning and prep, our Kid's Camp Rally on Friday, and then our Sunday gathering and evening of prayer and worship!

I hope you have a great post-Easter week living in the reality and with the resources He has given us.

Monday "Morning" Thoughts

Tuesday Life Group Easter Egg Hunt from Mission Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

We had a great Easter Brunch on Sunday!  There was tons of good food, laughter, and cheer all around.  I can't think of a better way to celebrate the Good News then with a Sunday brunch.  I'm already looking forward to next year's brunch!  The only downside is that we were having so much fun that we forgot to take pictures.  It was neat to see some new faces and welcome them into our Church family.  We had about 200 out to the brunch and over 30 volunteers made everything work smoothly, from the set-up on Saturday, to the serving, cleaning, and running of kid's activities on Sunday.  Our Church family has exceptional volunteers... they sign-up freely, serve graciously, and work diligently.

After the service, we had a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Mark & Katy came over to watch the Canucks lose.  After the Canucks game I watched the movie "Tron" and found it somewhat entertaining.

Today was the first day I have had off in about two months.  I set a horrible example in this department as I am lazy (disguised as being a workaholic) with my Sabbaths.  We had a fun day.  I got to play with the kids in the morning.  I then went down to Centennial Park at 10am to hide Easter eggs in the woods for the families of our Tuesday Life Group to go and find.  Everyone showed up at 10:30am and went a hunting.  The older kids got a good haul and the younger kids were too young to care.  We were treated to a "birds of prey" show at the park too when a falcon kept dive bombing a squirrel... it was really cool.  After our hunt we headed over to the Offer's house and had a laid back lunch... it was a good time.

This afternoon, I went Winston Churchill and enjoyed a hot bath [insert Angela's comment of "no one wants to read that" here].  I got to read my bbq cleaning manual and the first half of Acts.

Around 4:00pm we headed over to the Manning's for a ham and turkey dinner.  The food was awesome...  and I enjoyed meeting and hanging out with their family.  They are nice people.  Monica had her home decorated with like 100 of these huge (18" wide) flowers made out of tissue paper.  She's giving them to us when the Easter season is over and we'll use them next year at our Easter Brunch.

This week our guys Tuesday Life Group will be watching the game.  Schubert's are coming over on Thursday for Angela's world famous greek dinner (already drooling).  On Sunday, after Church, we're having an Elder's lunch.  That's all I can think of for right now.  I hope you have a great week knowing, growing, and sowing Jesus!

Easter Brunch Recap

On Sunday we hosted a Easter Brunch and it was a lot of fun.  Just over 180 came out for a morning of good food, company, music, drama, and of course.... chocolate (well, the kids got that part).

I'd really like thank all our volunteers who worked very hard and gave of their time so that others could enjoy their time.  Half a dozen came out on Saturday to help set-up.  The George's did amazing at organizing the buffet.  Louie W. and Laura B. made amazing pancakes.  Casey and Charmaine worked their butts off serving in the kitchen.  Then Chris K. and Dave P. (even after acting in the drama) lead us in clean-up.  Dave vacuumed the auditorium and lobby in record time!  Mo, Diane, Seyong, Christina, and Nigel did an amazing job with the kids program.  Tony and Alison performed beautifully.  And Jack, Dave, Eugene, and Martin did a fantastic job with their dramatic presentation.  Thank you to everyone who helped make the morning a lot of fun and a great time to celebrate together the resurrection of our Saviour, Jesus!

Pictures should be coming soon!

A Good, Good Friday Service

This morning Ruby and I enjoyed a Community Good Friday service hosted by Cedar Valley Mennonite Church.  It was really nice to see pastors from various churches lead the music and other ministry elements of the service.  It was even greater to see 400-500 people from different churches come together to be the church in Mission!

Although I rarely get to meet with our local ministerial (they meet Wednesday mornings and I work at Pacific Life Bible College on that day); they are a great group of people who love Jesus and love our city.  I would like to thank them for planning these and a few other services (because there isn't one building in town large enough to hold us all).

Dan Rempel (Pastor of Cedar Valley Mennonite Church) mentioned in the service that one year we would love to have the service either outside (and battle the elements) or in an arena so that we could all gather together as the church of Mission.

Don't forget that you can participate in the Community Easter Sunrise Service at Heritage Park this Sunday at 7:00am!