Northern territory

　

This week will be my last in Canada - and consequently, my last outside of New Zealand for some considerable time. There are a myriad of things that I feel about this - mostly just sad to be leaving the Wide World and the wonderful new friendships I have made between countries, but also a deep-seated joy of the return, and a renewed love for Aotearoa and all it holds for my life.

The past week has been very house-centred, actually. Tom painted the back house, I helped on the trim and got so into it that I ended up doing the front steps of both houses, too. They look pretty good, if I do say so myself - think I may have found my calling! The yard shared between the two houses got a re-vamp too; there's a large garden section in the middle of the yard area, with a concrete wall around it about a foot high. Tom, Justin and a few others designed, built and varnished a great big beautiful outdoor table that fits perfectly over the top of it on Wednesday and Thursday. It's a great place to sit with a book on a sunny day, and of course to eat community dinner.

Christy and I paired up to go street-walking and had some great conversations with some ladies on Wednesday night (although I almost packed it in when I saw that Black Dahlia Murder were playing at a pub on the DTES), especially a seriously scary woman who lives in an apartment block/unofficial brothel not far from our house. I'll leave her name out for security and privacy (to be honest, it's possibly fake anyway). We sat and talked to her for about half an hour and arranged to take her out on Friday, but she wasn't well and couldn't come. I'm going to see her tomorrow - if you're of the prayin' type, she is in a really dark space and yearns for support and people to be around her. She mused ruefully to Christy and I that she has plenty of floaters in her life who are "acquaintances... not people who you, like, do stuff with." I'm going to see her tomorrow, so any prayer for that would be great. I would also love to be able to pass the baton on to other women in the community that can take care of her and get her hooked in to healing support and intervention. Really, I'm trying to do that with all the people I've connected with - connect them in turn with a community who are really in here for the long haul and can gift them with a journey of healing that goes beyond hanging out for a few weeks.

　

The weekend just been was an absolute miracle. Several of us women were supposed to go on a day trip up Mt. Seymour in North Vancouver to look for snow, but the lovely weather of the last week meant that the odds of the white stuff were not in our favour, and the bus that goes up the mountain wasn't going because it's the off season. It was all looking a bit dire. Then our lovely friend Jenny suggested that we pitch in and hire a car (pretty cheap actually - $60 between five people? Good times), go all out and drive up to Whistler for the day! When we compared the chances of snow, gorgeous landscape and cute wee hikes to that we would find in Van... needless to say it all made a hell of a lot more sense. So we did! Have a peek at my facebook page for pictures. How many photos can you take of mountain ranges? Lots, it would turn out.

Also, as I was staring dreamily out the window, somewhere just outside of Whistler I managed to see a (small) BLACK BEAR eating something on the side of the road! HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT?! The whole experience lasted about three seconds, but I will be screaming and shrieking about it for days to come (and annoying Canadian members of the team who have seen tons of them). Ah, Mother Nature.


However, the day wasn't without sadness - we witnessed a head-on car collision take place three or four cars ahead of us on the highway just outside of Brandywine Falls. Noone really saw what happened, but a car from our northbound lane drifted across into a jeep heading in the opposite direction, both vehicles travelling about 90km/h. Mercifully both vehicles had airbags and neither spun through traffic or veered off the road - but we are unsure of how badly anyone was injured. None of us saw the accident proper, and none of us had First Response training, plus several other cars around us had pulled over to help, so we made the decision to keep driving. But of course, the rest of the journey was spent in a stage of dull guilt and worry - made worse by the fact that hours and hours later on our way home to Vancouver the wrecks were still there, complete with police. Whether or not we would have been able to help, I'll never know.

　

　

I'll be leaving in five days and have been feeling a little bit funny about it all - couldn't really put my finger on it, but I was in the car yesterday when it suddenly came to me that I think I may have lost a little bit of myself over the past few months. It probably started before I even left New Zealand, that slow disengagement with the 'me' that I'd known, in order to be open to the 'me' that I needed to be for this trip. Being encouraged again and again by the people who love me (and whom I love) back home to be always open to what God is doing and inviting me to in every opportunity has never been more that I could bear - actually it's been the door to some incredible stuff - but I never quite feel as flexible as I thought. I concentrate on being the learner whose heart resides out of the culture that I'm living in, in order to capture some of the beauty embodied in that culture, but in being that learner I'm drawn almost more deeply in, and before I know it I've put down roots. Egh.

But let's not get melancholy on it, shall we?

Anyway. I look forward to what this week brings. Hopefully another blogging session will fit into the picture somewhere before my time in Vancouver comes to a close. Goodness knows I need to keep debriefing!

Love you all. If you're floating around Tel Aviv and see Chris, tell him I love him too.

Go Canucks!

　

It's a stunning day in Vancouver. The weather has flipped on summer like we would flip on a light switch. The dying cherry blossoms of past weeks have given way to green leaves that line Oppenheimer Park with freshness and life.

What a busy past few weeks! The team have had the usual ebbs and flows of community dinners, visits and Bible studies, but the busiest part of the last couple of weeks was when we took on two new prehab candidates - a guy and a girl. This is slightly unusual, but we managed to make it work by putting one in each of the two Cordova Street houses. They stayed well, interacting with team rhythms and both successfully entered into rehab programmes at different points last week. Being a woman, I was more able to journey a little with our lady prehab (I'll call her Zoe for privacy reasons). She is a gorgeous and motivated woman who has three kids who have only very recently been taken into care - she loves them very much, not apparent in her words, but in her focus and determination to get clean. The foster care system here is huge - much bigger and even more bureaucratic than what we experience in New Zealand. I watched one Saturday unfold into disaster as Zoe was preparing to go with Ruth from our team to visit her kids in their foster home. She was bright and hopeful, drinking tea with me in the kitchen and animatedly describing the things that she loves about each of her children and how much she was looking forward to seeing them. She called the social worker to confirm the details of the visit, and was consequently informed that the time of the visit had been changed (what I want to know is when they were planning to tell her if she hadn't called?!). She asked to check with 'her program' (us) if that would be ok, and then call them back - the social worker said 'sure thing'. She checked, then rang them back, only to be told that her visit had been cancelled! Whether it was a misunderstanding, lack of trust in Zoe to ring back, malice - I'll never know, but as can be imagined, she was devastated. In a matter of about half an hour, her sunny morning which had started with such anticipation had been completely shattered. I never understood why, or whether that was even legal. Ruth and I raged with Zoe, cried and had a cup of tea with her - trying to pick up the pieces, all the time silently asking ourselves and each 0ther "what the HELL just happened there?!". Thankfully, Zoe managed to keep another visit which was scheduled the next day which Bonnie and I were able to accompany her to. Her children love her to bits - to see her tiny two-year old daughter come flying out to meet us, yelling "Mummy, MUMMY!", who wouldn't be a bit teary? Zoe stayed with us for another few days before landing a place in a rehab centre in another suburb. Happily, in that time she actually made a decision to follow Jesus - what a cause for celebration! If you are of the praying type, she desperately needs people who will come alongside her - a church community, or a neighbourhood group like ours to journey well with her both in rehab and when she comes out in a couple of months and begins the long, difficult quest of both reclaiming her children and re-learning how to parent them. She has a long way to go, but the horizon is clear and she is very motivated. Praise God.


SO - aside from that, I have been learning the rhythmns of the DTES more and more with each day. I have celebrated birthdays, go with neighbours to drop-ins, adult literacy and pottery classes, played hundreds of card games, celebrated new jobs, organised food pickups, watched Bollywood historical epics and reminisced about India, drunk litres of tea and coffee, cooked for an open dinner, joined in ukelele/guitar jams, farewelled a member of the team who is preparing to go to Sierra Leone with Word Made Flesh, been introduced to the new BBC series of Sherlock (brilliant), flown kites with kids, eaten a First Nation feast of moose, courtesy of our friend Jacquie; I have walked and walked the streets praying, spending time with God like I never have before. Yesterday I walked with some with some friends to Granville Island, which is a little peninsula full of wacky markets and shops (my mum would LOVE it). We stopped on the way to get poutine for lunch! That's another thing I can tick off my list! Despite the forty minute walk there and back, it was a STUNNING day and totally worth it. We could see Mount Baker in the distance, which is in Washington. It's my job next week to plan a trip to the still-snowy Mount Seymour, near North Vancouver. I'll keep you all posted!

Chris has just had a week in Mumbai with his Dad, who dropped in to visit him (cute). He has now successfully entered Oman - phew - he will now be travelling over land to get to Jerusalem in order to begin an internship with Christian Peacemaker Teams (
http://cpt.org/work) next week. Scary - but I'm so proud of him for doing it. Pray for his team's safety, but also that he will learn bucketloads about the suffering of the poor in the face of the war machine - something that we both make a lot of noise about back home. This experience will hopefully be a challenging and powerful chapter of Chris' relationship with the nonviolent Christ Jesus, who calls us to be with and for the downtrodden and to bring peace in the midst of violence.

Not long until I come home now eh? I really need a prayerful reentry to my beloved Aotearoa, to my Urban Vision community and my job. Please pray that I'll get enough time to prepare for this - it's just as important as preparing for the beginning of an internship.

My love to you all. I'll talk to you soon!

Me x