Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Yukon Trip Recap Finally, here is the Yukon trip update, Full and un-edited, probably. We departed on our Yukon trip on monday night January 2nd. We left around 9pm to drive all night and go as far as we could northwest and hopefully stay tuesday night somewhere before continuing wed morning. We picked up our 7th and final team member, Emily Buck, at the Edmonton airport around midnight and continued on our journey. We drove, and drove, and drove, and drove, and drove until the sun came up Tuesday morning and then we kept driving. I stayed in the front passenger/shotgun seat until about 5am until I couldn't stay awake any longer. If you were riding shotgun, you had to stay awake and keep the driver awake. You got the best seat in the van, but you couldn't sleep. Fair trade, but at 5am I was too tired to stay up any longer. Slept a little bit after that, woke up and guess what, we were still driving! And still had a long, long way to go. We finally exited Alberta and made it to British Columbia, which was nice, at least a new province. When we made it to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, which is the start of the Alaska, highway, which we would be on for the remainder of the trip. After Dawson Creek, our next big thing was Ft Nelson, BC (British Columbia) where we stopped for gas and a quick time to make sandwhiches for Tuesday's lunch. We kept going, planning on going as far as possible before it got dark, as we didn't want to travel extremely rural, isolated roads after dark. About 15 minutes outside of Ft Nelson, we got a flat right front tire. We stopped and had major issues trying to change the tire. If you ever rent a Dodge Grand Caravan with the extra deep storage in the back, just know that the spare tire is under the middle of the van and the access area for lowering the spare is inside the van between the two front seats! Strangest thing I have ever seen for a spare tire setup, but oh well. It was very frustrating, but once we changed the tire, we headed back into Ft. Nelson to get a new tire, and this delay caused us to have to stay the night in Ft. Nelson, which we had not planned on doing. We called some hotels, but were not able to find a place that was within our budget, so we just called this random Pentecostal Church we found in the phone book and asked is we could stay at the church for the night. The pastor said sure, so we went back there and had a free place to stay. Since we were not going to drive further we spent the afternoon prayerwalking in Ft. Nelson and found out about the huge needs in the city and some of us had begun to think about this city as a place for a summer team. That night, we met the pastor’s wife who shared her passion for reaching the city’s youth, just as we had noticed that same need, and she told about her and her husband’s plans for the summer. They would be out of town for about two months and were hoping to have a missions team use their house for the summer! Bells began to go off in our heads and we began to think about sending a team, having a free place for them to stay ,(one of the most difficult to overcome when sending a team to northern Canada) but more importantly we realized why God had given us a flat tire and made us stop in Ft. Nelson. We headed out the next morning to continue our trip on to Whitehorse, Yukon. We drove and drove and drove, the further we went the colder, more isolated, and worse the roads became. We celebrated wonderfully when we entered the Yukon, but we still had a long way to go. We finally made it Whitehorse on Wednesday night around 9pm. It had taken exactly 48 hours to make the trip, with most of that driving, as the only real stop was in Ft Nelson. Once we were in Whitehorse, we slept well and for the entire night, it was really great. We went out to go scouting and begin exploring what God is doing in Whitehorse. Everyone but me and Sammy went to the Canada Games Centre, a large recreational facility in town. Sammy and I headed into town and made our way to the Whitehorse and Yukon Visitor's Information Centre. We met Isabelle there and she gave us tons of great info about Whitehorse and the Yukon. Finding out about the place is one of the most important things that you attempt to do while scouting new communities. A good night's sleep followed. We were staying in the home of a great family that we have very limited knowledge of except that we knew the sister of the lady at the house. They are not believer's but they just readily opened their home to 7 strangers. Friday morning, we headed out to the remote cabin where we are going to stay for one night. Lots of adventure ensued. The cabin is on a frozen lake, has no power, running water, only a gas stove for heat, and the 2nd nicest Outhouse in the Yukon. We stayed there the night, froze for a bit, then got really hot when the wood stove really got heated up. Fun night, we didn't have enough water to cook with so we melted snow and had a great time "ruffin it" out in the woods of the Yukon. After we left the cabin we headed back into Whitehorse to do some more scouting. I spent a lot of time in a coffee house in town and learned that this is a very good strategic location in town. Sunday, we went to Riverdale Baptist Church, a fairly good sized church, of about 100 people located in Whitehorse. For those of you outside of Canada, 100 people in a Canadian church is a very large church. After church we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then it was back out into downtown Whitehorse to attempt to meet people and connect with them while learning about Whitehorse and the Yukon. We had a good afternoon, and we went to dinner at our host family's parent's home. It was great to connect with so many people. The seven team members were there, along with about 10 family members, of which there is only one believer, so we were able to have great converstaions with them. Monday was our last full day in Whitehorse and we attempted to make the best of it. We tried to wrap up some things and continue our hearing from God about what he might want to do in the Yukon. We were able to interview the mayor of Whitehorse and the premiere of the Yukon, which is the equivilant of a govenor of a US State. Both interviews went really well, and we were able to film both. We are going to put together a promotional video from some of the footage that we have shot while on this trip. Our last full day in Whitehorse was a success and we hit the road again to head back to Calgary. For those of you reading this that are not familiar with "scouting and exploration" as a way of ministry and hearing from God, and that would be most of you that have not done Current or live outside of Canada, this trip we took might not seem like a mission trip at all. Let me encourage you, that hearing from God, praying for a city, and seeing what God might want to do in a place is just as much a mission trip as painting a church or holding a Backyard Bible Club. Both trips are missional in their nature, but very different in their approach. I would encourage you that read this that seem a little confused about how you can take a mission trip without sponsouring a VBS or Revival meeting, or doing construction work to learn to hear from God and seek to attach youselves to what he is doing in the different places you go. God uses many different methods and ways to have his Gospel spread around the world, and simply going to a place to hear from him is an extremely effective way to be on mission with God. We started our long trip back to Calgary on Tuesday January 10th with our only real planned stop in Ft, Nelson, BC in order to meet with the pastor we met on the way up to discuss a possible Current Mission Team spending their summer in Ft. Nelson this coming summer. Our meeting and dinner with the pastor and some church leadership was very successful and fruitful. We spent 2 nights in Ft Nelson in order to do some scouting and praying there and we headed out on the last leg of our journey on Thursday morning. We had planned on stopping somewhere Thursday night and driving on to Edmonton to drop Emily at the airport about 4am Saturday, but we just kept driving. Emily was able to change her flight to Friday morning so we just drove until then, stayed at the Edmonton airport Thursday night and headed back to Calgary around 4am Friday. We arrived back in Calgary/Cochrane around 8am Friday morning where we all went to bed for the rest of the morning and half the afternoon. I got back up early afternoon and headed down to Okotoks, Alberta, about an hour from Cochrane to go see Rebekah, who I had very much missed over the last month My profile picture here on Xanga is of Rebekah and I. That completed our trip to the Yukon. I am going to post a good many pictures that I took on the trip under this text. Feel free to comment or email me if you want to know more about the trip. For those of you that were prayer and financial supporters of this trip, let me say thank you very much from me, and Thank you from the people of Northern Canada that will be impacted by the ministry that our team had while on this trip, and the ministry that God will continue to do in northern Canada. God Bless all of you. Let me explain a few of the pictures. Most of scenery, the roads and other things we saw along the way. There is a pic of the girls of the team at the welcome to the yukon sign, a few pics of our flat tire, my bed while staying in Ft. Nelson, the road signs you see are from Watson Lake, Yukon, in the "Sign Post Forrest, where there are over 50,000 signs nailed to posts, the pics you see are ones that I connected with such as Kelowna/Penticton. I took some others for people I know, Joe, Mobile is for you, Miriam, Mars Hill is for you, Michelle, Jackson is for you. The U-Haul Trailer you see was parked at a gas station in Whitehorse, but it was an image of New Orleans and Mardi Gras, which I just found funny was in the Yukon so I had to have a pic of it. There are some pics of of "cooking snow" to make water, that was pretty fun, The guy I'm standing with in one of the pics is the mayor of Whitehorse, and that hand is to give you perspective as to how large the cinnamon buns we ate were, they are the world's largest. Sorry for the random picture descriptions, hopefully you have a clue what they are! Enjoy and feel free to comment!