Wuddup Adults

Well, it's 12:30 at night, I was scrolling through fb looking at old memories, and I popped on here to see if I could find our Old Testament video. Then I figured I'd say hi to everyone (since EVERYONE's totes reading this still). It's funny to think of everyone 8 years ago now when I think of who I was to who I am now, and what you guys must be like now.

This last Tuesday marked two years of me being the Youth and Young Adults pastor at a Baptist Church in Hinton, Alberta, and I'm liking it. The Lord's allowed hard times at the church to grow me, and I'm grateful for them now. It's a humbling experience to have the Lord use you, even when you're vividly aware of all of your inadequacies. Maybe it's just my temperament, but often I feel as if I'm climbing a muddy hill, slipping on the mud and wearing mud and having mud in my eyes. I'm utterly unable to do much of anything, and half the time I'm sliding back down the hill. Yet there's Jesus, calling me forward and coming back for me, getting me up to my feet, and getting the mud out of my eyes so I can see. He says once again "follow me", and I don't know why. Is he blind? Does he not see how often I fall? Why doesn't he just quit on me already and leave me in my mire?
This would be my response. But it isn't Jesus'. And I'm terribly grateful for that.

Anyway, I'll pray for our group tonight. I really need to get to bed though. If anyone comes across this, feel free to shoot me a message, even if it's a year or two or ten from now. It'd be good to hear from you guys. God bless you and keep you all.

Loggs Magoges

P.S. the OT video is under November 2010 ;)

Hello from the Windy City!

So I checked to see if this was up and running and sure enough it still is haha. Even after 4 years apart, I still think of you guys from time to time. There are always different situations that remind me of my time in Kaleo. And one of those situations happened last Saturday night. First I'll give a lil bit of context! 

For my final semester (FINALLY) I've been living in Chicago for the semester doing an internship with a nonprofit that works with low-income seniors within the city of Chicago. I've been learning lots and have been taking it all in. Pretty crazy to have this as a final semester. Even crazier that getting my undergrad has taken me from Hamilton, Ontario to Crofton, BC to Sioux Center, Iowa to Chicago, Illinois. 4 cities. 1 undergrad. Haven't met to many people who have done that. Also don't ask me what I'm going to do after because I have no clue. It'll just be the life of a post-college student. 

Thats just a brief summary. There is lots more, but everyone of us has a long story since Kaleo ended back in 2011. 

Okay, so why am I writing this and how was I reminded of you guys? So last Saturday the band Judah & the Lion played a show in Chicago. Great band for those who haven't heard of them. Anyways, noone on the program wanted to go with me so I met up with some random college students that I got hooked up with through a mutual friend. I had no idea what to expect going there. They were having a little shindig before the show started. There were over 20ish people there and we ended up breaking into small groups before the show. It was a chance to get to know some new people and every group prayed for one another. This is what really reminded me of Kaleo. It reminded me of when each of us shared our stories and had community pray for us. If there was one thing for me to take away from Kaleo, it was the times we did that as a community. I'll always cherish those moments.

I just thought I would share that with anyone who reads this. I  hope everyone is doing well!

I'm married!

One kaleo buddy made it to my wedding and I thought you'd like to see! Congrats to sweet Mary Baines as well!

You're Invited!!!

Hey so I too have been thinking of a Kaleo reunion  too, and what better way than to invite ya'll to my wedding!!! You don't have to feel obligated to come but if you are around on the Island at that time please feel free to join me in the celebrations. It will be super chill potluck style at my parent's house in Duncan on July 12th at 4:00pm. If you would like a formal invite just comment with your address and I can mail one to you. Also Taylor and I bought a house with some property so if you need cheep accommodations we can arrange a tent city in my yard for those who don't want to pay for a hotel. If you have any other questions and if you are able to make it just message me on facebook!
Love you all and hope you are doing great.
Mary

Redeemed and Transformed!!

Hey everyone

Sooo once again I have not posted on here for like a year. I totally forgot about this blog until I was reminded about it this morning. As most of you know I have been at a Christian rehab program here in London called Teen Challenge. I entered the program in January of 2013 and graduated in January of 2014. I am now working there as an intern for 6 months! God is so good I don't even know where to start. Before I came into the program my life was going downhill very fast. After Kaleo I started partying again and I was getting worse and worse until I finally hit rock bottom. I was getting involved with some heavy drugs again and this time I had so much guilt and shame because I knew God was real and that there was a better life for me but for some reason the overwhelming pull of drugs kept dragging me down. I cried out to God in December of 2012 and told him if I don't get out now that I will either be dead and in jail within a few months. I have no doubt that one of those two would of taken place if God did not rescue me from the pit I was in. I re-dedicated my life to God right then and for the next 5 weeks I was able to stay sober before entering the Teen Challenge program. The first few months of TC was extremely hard. I felt like I knew a lot more about God and his word than any other student here and satan used that against me. I had quick easy answers for everything and therefore looked like I had it all together. It wasn't until month 3 when I realized that I was helpless on my own strength and that I needed to surrender everything over to God and let him take control of my life. This is when REAL change started taking place. God started chiseling away old habits and thought patterns and replaced them with love for his word and his children. It's amazing to look back over my life and see how God was always there trying to direct my path and I didn't even realize it or if I did how I just ignored it. After month 5 I became a mentor. Meaning I had my own room (usually you are in a room with 15-20 other men and you sleep in bunk beds :P) and when a new student came into the program he would bunk with me for the first two weeks to learn about the program and ultimately about God. That's when I first saw the changes that were happening in my life and the first time in a long time that I started to enjoy life again. God has been molding me into the image of his son this whole time in Teen Challenge but I did not start realizing it until month 5. Being a mentor helped me to mature a lot and helped me to be a leader in this program. It's awesome how God can use someone like me with my past to now help others here in the program. I have had the privilege to be in the Teen Challenge choir for 10 months of my program as well. It has been an amazing experience going to different churches every Sunday around Southwestern Ontario to share my testimony through song and through spoken word. God has increased my boldness to share like never before. I have been given a couple opportunities already to share my testimony at youth groups and on the streets of London during our evangelism course. Teen Challenge is not just a rehab centre but also a discipleship program. One part of the program is going to the streets of London( many places I have been in the past using or selling drugs) and sharing the gospel with the homeless. WHAT A PRIVILEGE! I am in awe that God would not only save me from myself and my destructive lifestyle, but now is allowing me the strength to go back to my old areas and share the gospel with people who are hurting just like I was. AMAZING! The last few months of the program was a transitioning time for me. Getting ready to go back to society with new disciplines and a change of heart. That's also a big reason why I decided to do an internship. It's another 6 months where I can give back to the ministry but also continue my own personal growth here as well. After my internship is done I am looking into various bible colleges including Briercrest, Redeemer, Tyndale, and EBC. I am praying that God will lead me to the right one (as I know He will) and looking forward for what he has in store for me now! I will leave you guys with two big things that I have learned here at TC. First is that Jesus is much more a savior than  I am a sinner. I hope by my little testimony here you guys can be encouraged that no matter what we do, God has already forgiven you for it! The second thing is that we can be somebody's breakthrough! People all around us are wondering if God is real, and we have a short time on earth to leave a legacy of what a man or woman possessed by God really looks like. A SHORT TIME. I am now realizing how short life really is and that our mission here on earth is to be the light in this dark world. To share the gospel and to ultimately just love on others. I always thought I needed to be on a missions trip to be sharing the gospel. I can't believe I thought like that! Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, that is out mission field. Who knows if you were called to work for this job or go to this school at just a time as this? :) God bless you guys and I miss all of you!


Nate

An Outrageous Proposal

So...
I am going to propose a wild idea here...
All of the K8 from Briercrest are graduating this year (except me.... my bad) so if anyone is interested you should come to the grad ceremony so we can have a mini reunion! Or come to YQ! Just a thought, the K8s here at lil' ol' Caronport were talking about it last semester a little bit. We would love to see you guys again!
That is all :)

An Ultimatum

First order of business: Congratulations Mary! I was very glad to hear this news :)

It is Logan here. This post is not overly well written, I had a lot of ideas swimming in my head, but I have been wanting to post on here since September, so here it goes. Life has been good but challenging for me over these last several months. I don't know if you guys will recall this, but I can remember sitting in gospels with Wes, and we were going through Matthew or Mark or Luke, when Wes presented Jesus' call to "pick up your cross and follow me" in a way that was much more real than I had ever heard it before. His asked us: "we are told to take up our cross and follow Jesus, but what does it mean for us to follow someone who is going to die?"  His words hit me like fire, yet at the same time I had no clue what to do with this challenge. Even now I find that this call should belong to a much bolder person than I.

At the end of last year I took another class with a very brilliant professor named Carl Hinderager called "The Sermon on the Mount." Many times I have heard parts of this sermon used for evangelism:

    The Bible says that "everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Well who can do that? You need to repent!

Now maybe this isn't wrong, or even a bad way to evangelize, but when I hear this as a Christian man I often do not view it outside of the context of evangelism. Yet just a chapter earlier Jesus has already called the people to "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The sermon then, from my understanding, is something which is applied to believers. Following suit, Jesus' commands then are commands addressed to believers. We are called to obedience. It may sound silly, but this was to me a radically new way of reading the Bible.

From here biblical passages started to speak to me and call me out in a much more direct way. Verses that I thought were to be intended for me when I got to be a better Christian turned out to have more weighty implications for me now. "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness" (Col. 3:5) is a call for all Christians! "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions" (Rom. 6:12) is a call for all who have been baptized into Christ. I was more and more starting to realize that the Bible was calling out to me, challenging me to be something that I was not. The Christian life, as it turned out, was one of obedience.

This theme of obedience continued to appear as we read through the Sermon on the Mount. But this theme was equally matched by another in the sermon: Dependence.

While I struggle with this call to obedience, I find dependence to be an even more difficult task to deal with, primarily because it is a task which strips me of my power, my will, my independence. When I first read about a tree and the fruit it produced (Matt. 7:15-20), I regarded it as a call to live an obedient life: If I want to produce good fruit, then I have to try really hard. Yet as I have continued to reflect on this, I find that it has less to do with straight obedience and much more with being dependent on God. Apart from this dependency, I might dare to say that most, if not all of our acts of obedience only transform themselves into pride in our hearts. While we look good and even holy externally, internally we are dying and rotting. We are white-washed tombs, and our fruit is rotting from the inside out.

How do we escape the wicked grasps of pride and sin? And who will deliver me from this body of death? It is Jesus Christ, who allows us to live life in the Spirit. Acts has many themes within it, but one of the most prevalent themes is that of the Spirit among the early believers. I imagine that I am not unique when I say that when I compare the story of Acts to my life, I see a significant amount of contrast between the two. I rarely even hear about, let alone see, anything of a miraculous nature take place around me. That was why I was caught off guard several weeks ago by the testimonies of several individuals I spoke to who had been missionaries. Their stories felt like a rushing wind. One man had told me about how he had been driving with his friend in Moose Jaw when the Spirit told them to evangelize to a lady who was walking on the sidewalk a ways up. They pulled off, stepped out, and started talking to her about Jesus. In about 10 minutes she had accepted their message and gave herself to Christ. The next day they went to her apartment to give her a Bible. When she was not home they went to the tenants and asked to give the Bible to her. Surprised, the tenants asked if they were sure they had the right lady. When the men affirmed it, the tenants told them: "we have been praying for her to turn to Christ ever since she moved in." Another missionary told me about how he leaves his Bibles and tracts in clear plastic bags when he enters countries closed to the gospel. He told me that years ago he had tried smuggling Bibles across the North Yemen border (which is a closed country to the gospel) and had been stopped and inspected. When the border patrol opened up a crate with a couple thousand Bibles inside, everyone around looked in and saw them, and then simply continued to proceed as if nothing was inside and let them continue on. After he was back in the vehicle, God told him "don't worry about smuggling Bibles, I will do that. You preach the gospel." Now he does not worry about concealing God's word when he travels. I also heard numerous stories about missionaries who had ended up in impossible situations, having no money with large taxes or bills, and how God had provided for them countless times, sometimes through a random person who they had never met sending them money on a 'whim' (or possibly as an act of obedience to God), and how God had provided financially like this for years.

All of these stories sounded wild to me, and as I thought about these men, I noticed a trend: all these men seemed to be very dependent on God for how they lived. There was no concern in them about losing their jobs, being poor, being ridiculed, or even being killed when they were focused around proclaiming the gospel (and at least one man I talked to had experienced all of these in some form or another). They did not fear what the world might do to them, or what the day might bring, because they trusted in One who was with them in all of these things. They lived through the Spirit. They were dependent.

What am I getting at? Well, I think that I have been learning both obedience and dependence are integral parts of the Christian life. Yet this life is impossible without wrestling with what Wes had asked us in our gospel's class almost four years ago: "we are told to take up our cross and follow Jesus, but what does it mean for us to follow someone who is going to die?" We too need to die. C.S. Lewis, in "Mere Christianity" puts it this way:

Christ says, "give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work, I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self [with morality], but to kill it. No half measures are any good.... I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours."

He continues on from here to claim that "this is the whole of Christianity, nothing else." This is where I am right now, standing at the ultimatum of life. Putting myself to death, crucifying myself with Christ, means giving up things that I so dearly find my identity in. Things like my pride, in which I can assure myself that I am smart or funny or a moral person or a good friend, or my lusts, in which I long after what I do not possess, or my anger, which I can foster when things don't go my way. The call to follow Christ requires that we die and let Christ make us new. A kingdom cannot stand divided, and I certainly cannot serve Christ while still serving my passions. Yet presently I still cling to these things. I feel torn between what I know is right and true and good, and this life which I have grown so comfortable in. I need boldness to commit to this call of picking up my cross and following Christ.

Thanks for reading guys, I miss you and love you all dearly.

Logan

MARY'S ENGAGED!

Remember This Girl

I visited Anna today. Due to some simple poor choices in a desperate moment, she is in the hospital emergency room, awaiting a bed. She doesn't want to be there, greatly regrets the reasons she is there, and feels very, very alone. Her parents are there, as always, calm and supportive and available. Nevertheless, today her most dreaded word is how she feels: abandoned. She does not want to blame her friends - it is a transitional time of year, and she knows how awkward and helpless her situation makes them feel - but in the few weeks when she was actually doing fairly well, one by one they disappeared into their own worlds.

I am one of them: a trip south; a final week of camp seeking out new students; I have my excuses. But I haven't been there lately for Anna, not in person and not even virtually. Today I happened to be in Victoria when I found out where she was, so I dropped in and talked and listened and prayed. And she gave me a message for all of us: "Right now, I don't need you as my counselor, but I need you as my friend."

After I left, I got a text from Anna, ending with "PLEASE pray for me!" And another asking me to write this blog. She has damaged her liver too many times, the doctor says; may need a transplant, and may not be eligible for one.

So I ask you to pray for Anna, maybe find a way to send your love this week - in short, please remember Anna. In her heart of hearts, she wants life. She had "Free" tattooed over her scars. Please join her in the cry of her heart.

In Philippians 4, where Paul tells us to "in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God," the word petition refers to our heart-felt response to a deep and specific need. Can we please collectively reach deep into Anna's heart and join her petition to God: for Freedom.

Hey y'all! Bryan here.

First off I want to say congratulations to Anna on her engagement. I'm very happy for you. Any date set for the wedding?

So I think it's been quite some time since I've posted, so I will keep this concise. So much has happened and then at the same time seems like nothing has changed in almost a year.

Well if I remember correctly last time I posted I was in the middle of a pretty bad depression. So after some close calls I finally decided to go to my family doctor to get help. As I had expected he gave me antidepressants. The difference those made were HUGE. Best way to describe the burden being lifted was it felt like colours got brighter and life made more sense. Mostly because there was hope now. I continued those antidepressants all the way until, I think it was March.

Then I met Amanda. I wont say how we met but I fell for here head over heels. We dated for sometime and it was the happiest I have ever been in my life, even my parents noticed the difference in my disposition. During my time with Amanda I moved out of my parents place and into a single room suite owned by one my brothers friends. To say I love my place would be an understatement. At the same time I met Amanda I also quit my job and started working for my brother as foreman for his irrigation company, which has been really good for me.

But alas, all things must come to an end (or so I'm told). A few weeks ago I broke it off with Amanda feeling used and unhappy with the relationship. Thinking back on it it definitely was the right choice and I do not regret my decision, but wow it hurt to do the deed.

So that's about how my life has been in a nutshell lately. I'm sure there are things that I missed or just left out but that's the gist of it. Now I am working about 50+ hours a week, working weekends, with no goal in mind and living life the best I can with what time I have.

Thanks everyone for your support and prayers, they are much appreciated.

Love and miss you all!!!

- Bryan Converse