Voting for the first time!

So hooray...

Today I voted for the first time ever! It feels so cool knowing that you have a part in who is going to be helping lead our provinces and country. Now I know that if who I voted for wins the election I had a part in that. Also I can now have a right to be disappointed if who I voted for doesn't make it. As someone in one of the offices said to me when I called for directions to the polls, I'm doing my civic duty. Neato eh?

In case anyone was wondering...I voted for the Conservative party.

:-D

Growth Spurts

Becoming an adult is one of the most difficult challenges that I have had to face in my life so far. It's even harder than the teen years. Right now I'm at the place in one's life where they are stuck somewhere between teenhood and adulthood. I want so badly to be an adult, but yet I still often act like a teenager and even sometimes like a child. Now, becoming an adult is hard, but becoming a woman of God, now that is the ultimate challenge!

Right now I am stuck between being a teen Christian and becoming an adult Christian. Believe you me, this is not an easy journey. Already in my life I have been faced with many difficult questions, challenges, and life choices. And already I've chosen some pretty dumb stuff and some pretty good stuff too. Is it enough though? Not even close.

Today I watched a message by this guy called Paul Washer. I started the video thinking, well, nothing much really. I was mostly thinking I guess that I was glad for YouTube because I unfortunetly slept in this morning and so was feeling pretty guilty that I was missing church. I'm not too sure that I have yet found my Yellowknife church, but I know that I still need the Christian fellowship. So anyways, I watched this message by Paul Washer and it really got to me. He talked a lot about how Christians these days in North America live so much in and of the world and are ignoring the fact that it's not only a narrow gate that we go through, but there's also a narrow path that we should be following. He talked about how we so often "re-commit" our lives but it only lasts for maybe a week, sometimes a month, and sometimes even less. He also talked about how so many of us live our entire lives professing to be Christians because we prayed a prayer and we even live like our fellow "Christians" but often those people in our youth groups and churches aren't even Christians at all and we are living up to such a low low North American "Christian" standards. He talked about what we really should be basing our Christianity on, and it's not a prayer, it's our fruit and our lives and whether or not we really are walking on the narrow path, and yeah we all screw up, but as Christians when we screw up God is always there to chastize us and get us back on the right path.

What I got out of the message was mostly that I have been straying too often from the narrow way and have been basing my standard of living on too low of standards. I know that change will not be huge right away, but I think that if I really stick to it and if God is really in it, then anything can happen. I want to start putting my standards up to the way people like John Piper and Martin Luther and Paul Washer live/lived their lives. It's definitely not going to be easy, but I believe with all my heart that it will be worth it.

I recommend that everyone watches this message because it really is life changing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuabITeO4l8

I would really really appreciate it if everyone would pray for me right now, because I don't want my convictions to last one day, one month, or even just one year. I have a real desire right now to be more like Christ and I want it to stay that way.

If anyone has any recommended reading either from the bible, or some good book, please let me know in a comment. One thing to keep in mind that Paul Washer said before his message (and I really like this) "If what I say in this message is not the truth, then I am the one who is going to face judgement, but if what I say is the truth and you don't listen to it the judgement is yours." something like that...

Anyways it's baby steps from here on to Adulthood and t0 becoming a Woman of God...

Weekend out...

Last night I went out to a club called the Prestige to meet some of my cool and classy non-drinking friends. It was really fun. The club has started putting on "Retro Dance" nights where they play music from the 70's 80's and 90's till about 12am. It's going to happen every second Friday. The guy who teaches the salsa dance classes that I plan on taking is the one who started the retro night. He is friends with the owner of the club. So anyways it was a really fun night. It was really classy, nobody was drunk or going around hitting on people. Besides, Raza (the salsa teacher) and his roomy, Josef, were taking good care of me. At 1am we went to a really high class french restaurant called Le Frolic and we just sat and talked and drank tea. After that we took a cab back to Raza and Josef's house where they had a car they could use and then they drove me home straight away. On the ride home we saw NORTHERN LIGHTS!!!!!! It was AWESOME!!! I was soooooo excited! So that was my weekend so far. Really really awesome. Today I am working from 3pm-10pm so I probably won't end up doing anything tonight. It's really boring here on Saturday because no one is checking in or out. So that is life.

PS. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAVIS! Hope that you have a good one tomorrow!

Snow days and Paydays

Ok...I just had to come on here really quick to say that I walked to work in the SNOW today!!! So for all of you who are still experiencing +15, +20 and above weather, I HATE YOU! haha just kidding, but still...you guys are BLESSED! I got my very first paycheck with my new job today. Just another one of the coming of age things is the amount of tax they take off your stinkin' paycheck, it's crazy! Hopefully you get most of it back! Pay day is totally awesome. Can't wait for the next one because it will be a full two week paycheck.

Something else cool, or something, I am going to be starting shifts all by myself next week. Should be interesting for sure. We are training a new person tomorrow and on Monday apparently. It's too funny that I'll be "helping" train a NEW person...hahaha ironic.

Ok I really need to get to bed! It's almost midnight!!! I am going to check and see if I can see any northern lights tonight. It's probably too cloudy though because it's been snowing.

Tchau for now...

Salsa! Salsa!

I'll just start with saying that things have been working out pretty good at my job. It's been really busy lately, but I've survived. Pretty soon I will be able to handle things at the front desk on my own, by next week at the latest. I will probably get a lot of crappy shifts to begin with, but such is life. I am just going to make sure that they don't put me on the 6am shift because, if you know me well enough, you know that I HATE mornings! I would seriously have to get up at 4am in order to get to work on time, totally not going to happen. One thing I like about my job is that it is in the mall so I get to interact with people all day, and since I like people, that's really cool for me. I've met some pretty cool people, no real friends yet, but that will come later I'm sure.

Ok, so now to my exciting news...
This past Friday night, Kelly and I went to a "Retro 70's, 80's, and 90's night" at a local club in town called the Prestige. It was kind of a fundraiser thing. Anyways I dressed up a little and that was really fun. We stayed there for quite awhile. Kelly heard about it through some co-workers. Anyways, while enjoying ourselves immensely (at least I was :)) Kelly and I met one of the people in charge of putting the whole thing on, Raza. As it turns out, he teaches Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, and Reggaeton dance. I talked to him a bit and both Kelly and I tried a little salsa dance with him. I've decided to take lessons! I am SO excited. I have always loved dance and have always wanted to take lessons. Kelly in fact is already taking his classes (the first "set"). The co-worker who met her at the retro dance is taking them and his partner decided not to so Kelly took her place. It's really exciting. Raza is hopefully going to help me find a partner to dance with. I am also on the hunt for a dance partner. The next set of classes don't begin until the beginning of November so I still have lots of time. I am also thinking about taking private dance lessons as well. They are much more hands on so you learn a lot faster in a shorter period of time. I might see if Raza can find me a level two partner and I can just take a few private lessons to get to the second level. That might work, but it might also be harder to find someone who is level 2 and in need of a partner. I just really want to start lessons now! I am too excited. If you want to see more about the classes check out Raza's blog: http://salsa-arctica.blogspot.com
I'll let you all know how it all works out.

Well I am off for now. It is past my "bedtime" and I have work tomorrow (of course) so I had better be getting out of here.

Tchau for now...

Working Adventures...

I know I havn't written on here in awhile. Mom has been bugging me about it, so here you go.

I had a couple of crazy days at work, but besides that it's been awesome! Earlier this week I went in to get my criminal record check done and surprisingly it's already done! I go in to get it tomorrow afternoon. So that's really good because I can finish up my subbing application this weekend. It's almost done, but I have a few pretty important things to fill in.

Now I have to get to what happened today. It was an awesome day! The day was going at just the right speed...not too fast, not too slow. I was really enjoying my job. Anyways, it was almost the end of my shift and two guys come up to the desk to check in. I was just doing my job, checking them in, when I heard them speaking in what I thought must be French, because we get a lot of French people staying in our hotel. So, I was just checking them in when I happened to here one of them say, "quatro." I was thinking, "I thought that four was quatre?" Finally it hit me! Quatro is PORTUGUESE for four! I waited for them to finish talking and then asked them where they were here from. They told me that they were here from Calgary. Next I asked them where they were originally from and they said, BRAZIL! I was like, "Fala Portuguese?!" and they of course said, "SIM!" (which is Portuguese for yes..hehe). We had a short conversation in Portuguese and then we talked about some other stuff.

We got to talking about how I knew Portuguese, so I told them that I had lived in Angola for a year with my family and that's where I learnt "Portuguese de Portugal". Then I told them that my family (minus me) had moved to Namibia. They asked me which organization my family was with and I told them that when my parents were in Namibia they were with Christ's Hope International. Then, to my surprise and delight, one of the men told me that they were both believers as well!

The two of them are with Samaritan's Purse. One of them gave me their card and I gave them my family's and my blog address. It was just SO cool. I told them that they had just totally made my day!

After work I went to the restaurant to have something to eat. When I was done I headed home. I was almost home when who should I run into but the two Brazilian men! I asked them what they were up to and they told me that they had tried to find Great Slave Lake. They had gone the wrong direction and had ended up at a smaller lake. We had a short chat and I'll see them briefly tomorrow morning before they check out. They told me that I should get in touch with some people from their Brazillian church so that I can keep practicing my Portuguese. I just might do that.

Signing off for now. No one has told me what they want me to write about yet, so I'm just winging it. Let me know what you guys all want to hear about!

The Sunday adventure...

Well, we sure had an adventure this Sunday! Last Sunday while we were walking to the Calvary church we watched a well dressed fellow walk out of the apartment building across the street from where we live. I looked at Kelly and Dakotah and said something like, “he sure is dressed spiffy, he must be going to church.” We all joked about following him to whichever church he was going to. When he drove by he waved at us so I said, “Oh crap! He must have heard us talking about him!” It was really funny.

So, this Sunday, Kelly decided that we should actually follow this guy to whichever church he was going to!!! I was like, “oh man, but he’ll think that we are stalking him!” Regardless, we all agreed that we would try to wait for him at about the same time that we had headed to church the previous Sunday. Kelly checked out churches online and we decided that he had gone to either one of two churches, a non-denominational church called The Church of Christ or a Baptist church called Central Arctic Church. Kelly figured that since he was so well dressed he must have been headed to the Baptist church. We all got ready and sat out in the truck waiting to see when the “spiffy guy” left. We waited for awhile and then decided to just go on our own. On our way down the street we spotted what Dakotah and I recognized as being his truck. We waited a little while more, but when he didn’t show up we left again. We decided to head to the Baptist church. Kelly wanted to go there because the “spiffy guy” had been friendly to us.

We got to church in time for Sunday school. I looked around but didn’t spot the “spiffy guy.” I kind of gave up on him showing up. Part way through the beginning of morning service we were asked to stand up and greet each other. Who do you think was sitting right in front of us? The “spiffy guy” of course! I whispered to Kelly, “I’m pretty sure that’s the spiffy guy!” I hadn’t even noticed him when he came in.

After the service there was soup and buns. Dakotah of course went straight over to the “spiffy guy” and started talking to him and a guy she knew from school. Later when she came over to where I was I asked her if she’d asked the guy if he lived on our street. She said that she hadn’t so later on when she was talking with him and the guy from school I decided to ask him. He of course did! Ha-ha! Well, during one of the conversations Dakotah and I had with him, Dakotah decided to tell him all about our stalking him to church! It was really funny and really embarrassing all at the same time. He seemed to think that it was all pretty funny. His name is David and he lives about an hour from High River, Alberta, the place we nearly ran out of gas on our way up here. Yeah, that’s a story for another day…

I guess that alls well that ends well. Despite the embarrassing way we got there, I think that I will end up attending there. I even have a way of getting there. Kelly talked to the pastor’s wife and she said to call her anytime to get a ride to church. I really like the church. It’s mission minded and the preaching is good. The people that go there are also really friendly and it’s a good mix of ages. I don’t think that they have a college and careers group, but they do have a ladies group that meets on Tuesdays, at least they do this Tuesday. It was really cool because I met this girl from Zimbabwe! She has only been going to the church for two weeks now. I hope that she keeps going! Well this is it for now; Kelly wants to take me out driving, scary eh? Ha-ha! I hope that I drive good and follow the rules of the road!!!