The time is approaching when Ana and I will board the plane for South Korea. Nothing is making that more obvious to me at this point than the farewells I have gotten from my church community. Final conversations around golf games, dinners and church programs help both pastor and congregation come to terms with the departure. At my farewell service on Sunday, as I expected, a few people took the opportunity to share some of their memories of my time at the church. These tributes were mostly touching, but there were a few awkward/embarassing moments when stories that I had forgotten, or hoped that others had forgotten, were told to the congregation so that a laugh could be had at my expense. I didn’t get a chance to redeem myself by clarifying the context of the story, so I thought I would do that on my blog.
Story #1 - “Remember when Will locked us in a room by putting that chair in front of the door …”
This story made me sound like I had trapped them in there against their wishes, preventing them from accessing the bathroom etc. The reality was that it was well after 1am, and they were making a lot of noise after curfew. I had told them to go to bed and turn off the lights, but knowing they might want to sneak out after I had fallen asleep, I but a big chair that could be moved but would make a lot of noise, which would wake me up. That type of booby trap got me lots of extra sleep from peace of mind it gave me. A well placed pile of pop cans and tin garbage bins were also quite effective for the task.
Story #2 - “Remeber when Will got married and made us cater his wedding …”
Our wedding guests may remember a group of beautiful and carming young people serving food at the wedding. That was my youth group. Like most couples around wedding planning we struggled to draw the line between friends we invite and friends we don’t invite. My position at the church made this extra difficult. My solution was to only invite church people to the reception if they were interested in helping serve or prepare food. Cheap? Maybe. Inclusive? Absolutely.
Story #3 - “Remember when Will lit his face on fire … “
On a young adult camping trip, I designated myself as the lighter of camp stoves. After a few successful uses, I may have let my guard down and not followed the lighting regiment entirely. As a result, some more gas leaked out than I needed, and a large flame shot up from the stove when I put my match in it. The flame was so big and hot that the girl standing five feet away jumped out of the way because of the heat of it. I had been in similar situations before, so I just closed my eyes and waited for the heat to stop, which it quickly did, and adjusted the dials to regulate the now regular sized flame. They all gasped at my ordeal and gawked at my singed beard and eyebrow hairs. I really think that story got blown out of proportion, especially when Ana arrived later that same day and quickly joined the chorus of “you should be more careful” that I had already been hearing.
Maybe next I’ll share a few stories that weren’t repeated at the farewell service but would have been equally interesting.
There was a family gathering yesterday on my side of the family. I got to see my parents, siblings, uncles and cousins again, some for the last time before we leave for our trip. We talked a little bit about the climate and culture of South Korea, as well as the political stability of the region. The discussion turned to the Korean hostages in Afghanistan and we were jokingly asked if our faces would soon be appearing on their TV screens asking for help from Canadians to be released.
Both of the organizations we looked at working with have the same policy when it comes to hostage takings. If Ana and/or I were kidnapped the organization that employs us would not pay any ransom demands to have us released. This may sound heartless but it makes a lot of sense. Any money given to an organization willing to kidnap someone for it could only go to support more violence. Christian Peacemaker Teams has the same policy and refused to pay to have their workers released in Iraq.
I’m not sure if the Korean aid workers currently being held hostage felt that they would be safe because they were protected by God, because their cause was noble enough, or because the situation just wasn’t that bad. It would be interesting to hear if they had any sort of contingency plan for this kind of scenario. It is obviously a tragic situation, and it’s impossibly to know how one would react in their shoes, but I would like to think that I would refuse to trade my freedom for that of a terrorist prisoner. I don’t believe that every Taliban prisoner is a bloodthirsty savage, but it just doesn’t sound like a fair trade to me.
Will and I just got back from a youth service trip in Montreal, and we have an incredible week, full of challenges, excitement, surprises, adventure and…aching feet.
We hopped on the train August 4 and had a longgg journey first to Montreal, then taking the metro to our stop, then walking up a long uphill tunnel to the MCC house. That evening we got our groceries and witnessed an arrest taking place, of a man so drunk he couldn’t stand on his own. What a way to break the youth in to Montreal.
Service Experiences
Alyssa (the other sponsor) worked with a group of 2 girls at an organization called COCLA (I don’t even know what that stands for), which provides service to the Hispanic community, focusing on immigrants. They mostly did translation from French to English (ironically, none of them felt real confident with French) and organized events for seniors.
Will worked with 3 youth at La Maison de L’Amitie (The House of Friendship), an organization that provides lodging to refugees, community events, language courses, etc. They spent the week painting there.
I worked with the other 3 youth at Multicaf, which is a cafeteria and food bank for low income families. The organization mostly has volunteers, many of which are working there as community service, as an alternative to paying for parking tickets or doing jail time for shop lifting. My group had a diverse experience, as we were moved around and given various different jobs to do; serving food, preparing food, cleaning the storage room, husking corn, sorting cans, bagging food, preparing soap bags, unloading the truck, etc. We met people from all parts of the world, different ethnic backgrounds and ages, different stories and languages. The highlight of our time there was probably sliding down the conveyor belt (where boxes are put from the truck and slid down). We thought we wouldn’t be allowed to do that, but when the boss came by, he encouraged us to do it, and told us to do it in boxes, because it’s faster. That was awesome. Among the interesting people we met were a muslim converted to Christianity (but didn’t want it to be known by anyone there), an Italian who told us (because we were willingly volunteering) “if everyone in the world were like you, there would be world peace”, a few wonderful people working off parking tickets or shoplifting fines, a man who crowed like a rooster all the time and made other animal noises, and people who just wanted to know more about Mennonites. It was a unique and growing experience for all of us.
Fun Stuff We Did
During our week, we kept ourselves busy with plenty of fun things to do. We attended a neat church Sunday morning, that is fairly modern and young, but using the building of an old cathedral. I greatly enjoyed the sermon, but there were mixed feelings among the youth as to the style of worship. Alyssa (the other sponsor), Will and I spent the afternoon seeing churches, including a huge and highly ornate church called “Mary, Reign du Monde” (Mary, Queen of the World), and the “Notre Dame” cathedral.
Tuesday night was movie night, so I took a group of girls to see “Hairspray”, which far exceeded my expectations. I thought it would be stupid, but it was actually very good, and John Travolta was quite convincing as a woman.
Wednesday night, my group was able to visit the other groups at their work places, as we first went to COCLA to pick up the first group, then together we met up with the other group at House of Friendship. Afterwards, we walked up Mont Royale, and enjoyed the spectacular view of the city lights at night.
Thursday night was our Allouettes/Body Worlds night, where Will took a group to the Allouettes football game, and Alyssa and I took a group to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Montreal Science Center. We were all glad we went, but felt unsure about the experience, as it was a little…disturbing.
Friday, we all managed to get off early from our placements, and met up with each other at Mont Royale station, and went thrift store shopping. We then went to an amazing restaurant called “Juliette et Chocolate”, where they have chocolate everything! Their hot chocolate is literally melted chocolate. We got chocolate crepes, and chocolate brownings, and hot chocolate and yum…
Even though we were all exhausted by the end of it, we all had a week fantastique!