Canada Day

We had a great Canada Day Event. Here is the summary of me and Rebekah's ministry here in Okotoks over the last month or so. You can also check out my photo album to see many pictures. If you would like to receive the full email update for this month or in the future, please feel free to email me at the following address.

jonathan.raffini@gmail.com

Here is a link to the photo album.

http://photo.xanga.com/jraffini/albums/bb0f0113310132

What is evangelism?

Today I want to ask a simple yet complicated question. What is evangelism? What is it not? What did Paul mean when he spoke of evangelism and sharing the good news? How does evangelism tie into what both Jesus and Paul taught about worship? I'm looking for thoughts and answers. Pleaser respond and I'll post them.

Jonathan

Northwest Territories Trip

If you haven't already seen it, keep going down this page and see a lot of pictures from our trip to the Northwest Territories. This entry will provide a brief text update of the trip. For those of you on a email update list, you can expect a nice newsletter to come by the end of this week. If you are reading this and are not on that list, please feel free to comment on this blog or send me an email and I"ll add you to the mailing list.

jraffini@hotmail.com

Saturday May 26th
We departed Okotoks around 830am to head north towards our destination for the night of High Level, Alberta. High Level is about 12 hours north, but still in Alberta, as it's a pretty big province. To give you some perspective, Okotoks to High Level is about the same distance as it is from Anderson, SC to Philadelphia, PA. We stayed with the Wiebe family there. They are a great family that many people have stayed with before on the way north.

Sunday May 27th
We left early in the morning again and headed on our way again towards Fort Simpson. To give you a better idea of how far we went in two days Okotoks to Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories is the same distance from Anderson, SC to Portland, Maine! We stopped along the way several times becasue the scenery was so incredible. The pictures in the weblog show a lot of what we saw. We stopped at the Alberta/Northwest Territories border and made a few good pictures, especially me with the Tiger Rag. Best picture of the trip if I do say so myself. We also stopped at several waterfalls along the route. The small native community of Kakisa that I spoke of in my email update was also a stop. Kakisa has 52 people in it and although there was very little activiity in town on this particular Sunday, I was struck by the immense challenge of trying to reach the people in this town with the gospel. I want to challenge everyone who reads this to think about how ministering in such a isolated community would be possible. How can we do it? How could you do it?
One of the more interesting portions of this part of the trip was the 250 miles on a dirt road. It was raining part of the way, so the dirt road was more like mud. It turned our white car a very dark shade of brown (see picture) We also crossed the ferry just before going into Fort Simpson, which was lots of fun and a little bit scary as we drove down a dirt embankment towards the river and ferry. We did make it safely across and eventually into Fort Simpson. We set up camp and got ready to go out into town and make some phone calls and look around. Monday was going to be busy.

Monday May 28th.

We met with Dan, a fairly new believer that our Current team led to the Lord and baptized three years ago. He helped up find the people we needed to find. We met with Betty Ann about housing and where our team could stay and got some really positive things done with that. We also spent time looking around town and got to do some other prep work for the team that will be there for the summer. We got so much done, we decided to go ahead and leave Monday afternoon. A quick but effective trip to Fort Simpson. We went back to High Level and stayed the night.

Tuesday May 29th

We drove most of the day to Edmonton and checked into our hotel. We then spent part of our evening at North America's largest shopping mall, the West Edmonton Mall. Lots of fun and we found out they were shooting a Christmas movie in the mall. We watched and had a great time with that.

Wednesday May 30th

Spent almost all day at the mall, mostly watching them film the movie. We saw Patrick Swayze and Chris Kataan shooting scenes. It was pretty great. We then checked into our hotel for the night. Long day at the mall, but we still didn't see or do everything in this huge mall.

Thursday May 31st

Back to Okotoks and that was our trip. I would highly reccomend making this trip. It was lots of fun and beautiful. Look for further updates to come!

Northwest Territories Trip

Our trip to the Northwest Territories was certainly great and we had a great time! Please check out all of these photos and I'll post a text update of the trip later this week!

You can click on any of the pictures and it will take you to my online photo album which shows the picture in a larger version and it will offer you a description of what you are looking at.

16 Days till the Wedding

Here is a brief fun little update.

I'm including the website of the new church in Okotoks, Alberta where I will be serving as Minister of Children and Families. I thought some of you would like to know what is going to be going on there. The website is functional but still being developed, but feel free to look around. My church email address is not up and running yet, but it will be soon. Here's a link

Big Rock Baptist Church




Jonathan

2 Big News Tidbits

I'm excited about the latest news from Transworld Snowboarding Magazine's latest edition. The magazine's readers has named Whistler-Blackcomb resort in British Columbia as the #1 Resort for snowboarding. This makes me want to go and snowboard there even more.

2nd thing is the biggest news for New Orleans since Winn Dixie and McDonalds in Gentilly opened about a month ago. The "temporary" stopsign at Gentilly Blvd and Lafaye Street has been replaced with a working redlight!!! This got me so excited since there had been a stopsign there since last August's little hurricane issue. I realized that when a red light being replaced 14 months after the storm is big news, New Orleans progress is pretty slow. But yipee for the new/replaced redlight!! I wonder if FEMA officials did this?

Bob Barker to retire!!!!!!


The terrible news comes down today. See this article if you want to read the AP article.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061031/ap_en_tv/tv_bob_barker_retires

This means one thing. I have until June of next year to make it to CBS Television City in Hollywood California to be at a taping of The Price is Right, otherwise I won't be able to check that particular thing off my lifetime list that includes a wide variety of things such as snowboarding down the Vancouver 2010 Olympic downhill run in Whistler, BC, Canada and riding in a bobsled on a real bobsled track at over 100 mph. I'm presently trying to think of other things on that list, but I'm drawing a blank. The point is, Hollywood, here I come, maybe even "coming on down" to win a new car playing "Hole in One, or Two" on The Price is Right! Let the mourning and countdown to Bob's retirement begin.

Update!!!!!!

This update is dedicated to Michael How, who says I never update.

I am presently sitting in Baptist Heritage, in which I am both paying attention, listening, taking notes, and blogging all at the same time. Enjoy your day everyone!

Saints WIN Yes it has been FOREVER since an update, but here is info that must be blogged about. THE SAINTS WIN in the return to the Superdome. What a great night for this great city. Living back in the city has been good, but it got a lot better tonight with a saints win. To summarize the last 2 weeks of progress in New Orleans, specifically the Gentilly area. Winn Dixie grocery store is getting ready to open, if it hasn't already, I haven't check this week, McDonald's opened about 2 weeks ago, Lipsey Hall (my former residence) on the campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary now has sheetrock walls, and the Saints win. Yippee for a great few weeks! Things are looking up.

Meeting With Mormon Missionaries

Hey everybody, I know it's been forever, but life has been just going crazy lately. I need all of you and others, maybe you can pass this along to friends to pray for myself and my 3 teammates tommorow night at 7pm Mountain Time. We are meeting with the Mormon Missionaries in town, who we met briefly last week, but they are coming over for an extended "talk" Monday night. We know they are trying to convert us, but we can't wait to ask some very interesting questions to them. My team and I have done some extensive research in the past week on the teachings of the Mormon Church and have found, as we knew before that there are multiple questions and contradictions contained within Mormon doctrine and teaching. THe book of Mormon, along with another document called the Doctrines and Covanents, both of which Mormons consider equal with the Bible, contradict the Bible in many, many places, and even contradict each other in several places. We can't wait to get some of our questions about these contradictions explained tommorow night. Pray for us as we talk to these Mormon Missionaries that they will attempt to answer our questions and that they won't be able to explain what they believe because of all the contradictions. Also pray that we can explain the truth of the Bible and the biblical Jesus to them, as we anticipate them asking us tough questions in return for us asking them hard questions. Thanks in advance for your prayers and I'll update you Tuesday or Wed. about how it goes.

Engagement!

Big news. As of last Friday I am offically engaged to Rebekah Walker. Most of you who would read this blog would have already received an email or phone call from either me or her, and you're probably just here to see the pictures, so I won't delay. If you need more details, or didn't receive the email just let me know. Here are the pictures.


Trinity Baptist Church Sanctuary
Set up with candles and flowers, as Rebekah called it simple, beautiful.
This is where I proposed at


Rebekah at the church shortly after we were officially engaged
Gerber dasies, her favourite
You can see the ring on her finger







THE RING on her hand



Rebekah and I after the engagement and dinner out
taken about 5 hours after we were engaged
Yes, it is supposed to be black and white




Pray for us as we plan a wedding and prepare to be married, and as we seek God's guidance as where he would have us serve in ministry together!