Kaleo Ministy- "whistle while I work"

So for some reason I feel like I don't know what to say. It's a good thing to enjoy a quiet brain from time to time, one should take it as a little blessing/relaxing time from God. 

I guess I will start out with a Psalm I wrote for Theology class:

As soon as I draw close to you Lord, my enemy attacks.
Are you still protecting me?
Are you holding me up in your arms?
For there I am safe, I am covered by your wonder.
My will cannot persevere through daily attacks, but with your strength I can do anything.
Lord help my eyes fix upon you, keep my path straight.
As I pray I am already wandering, Lord how truly ignorant am I!
Shake the mountains; show me your anger, yet all you show is mercy.
Lord of mercy, I do not understand!
Lord of mercy, why do you keep me as your own.
I rebuke you, I stray, I am covered in sins.
Still, day-by-day you come to my feet and wash the dirt away. 
My Lord takes it all, and now I am free, I am white as snow.
Look at the load he carries, it is taller than the tallest mountain, yet it is not a burden for you Lord.
You are too powerful, how truly magnificent you are. 
Remind me of your mercy, so I may be faithful under attacks.
Let the enemy cower away at the sight of your work within me.
I give thanks to you Lord, for your mercy and love.
Let praise come from my lips unto your name until my life ends.
And even then I will sing your praises in heaven with the angels.

Hope you all enjoyed that.

This week cant really be determined as a good or bad week, busy or light. It was just a week, a bit of everything from everywhere.

A few main points of this week:

-Theology class was so amazing. It really stretched my brain with the christian community, marriage, and the church. How one should not be motivated to find a church that serves them best, but find a church where one's gifts can best be used. We need to serve the church, and the community within it, just think how amazing churches would be if we all followed that theology! (We have theology class monday and tuesday morning, so that we don't fall asleep in the afternoon like we all were this week). Mornings are amazing, afternoons are a bit hard, even the teacher was getting sleepy, so its a good thing we are doing it like this. 

-Didn't get to go ice-skating with Kaleo, because I have 3 weeks where I can't hit my head, so I was a bit annoyed at that. Enjoyed watching all the Canadian kids own once they got skates on though!

-Learned a great new game called Phase 10!

-Exam for theology of mission went well, I feel confident coming out of it.

-Lots of good conversations throughout the week.

-Watched a movie called Hot Rod (there is a lot of cloverdale (where I used to live) in the film so I was super excited about that!)

-Lots of reading/work this week.

-Played piano for 1 hour and 30 mins straight. Jer came along to listen and sing once we got to the worship songs:D

-We are doing a 24/4 week of prayer so not a full week, but 4 days, and it has been a pretty cool session so far. My last prayer time is tonight at 10pm-11pm. Our focus this prayer time is to pray for the missions trips we will be going on. 

Youth Group was cancelled this week because we had a Church Christmas Dinner instead. We had this dinner, because all the other times were cancelled during christmas because of the snow. It was a bit weird to be singing christmas carols during the end of January, but I still had fun. The youth were invited to come, so I had a good time sitting with the rowdy kids. They were a bit disappointed that they had no games to play, so I got them laughing with our conversations, and when we did the 12 days of christmas, our table was the partridge in a pear tree so we acted out something new when we stood up to sing that each stanza! Some of the youth were involved in playing instruments during the night, so it was fun to encourage them and see their performances. 

-Prayer requests:

-that I can start organizing my future with Gods direction, this is starting to become a burden that I don't want to think about. 

-for more time, I have been very good about my management this semester and am really buckling down, however I can just see with all the things I want to get done this semester it is going to be very busy.

- for Shannon and a trail she is working through

-for the youth of Ladysmith

-for the mission trip to Vancouver and parts of Vancouver Island.

-for classes this week and the professor Lech.

Thank you again so much for your daily prayers.

Have a great week, we are off to missions fest on thursday!

Keep smiling,

Deborah Fisk

aka FISH!

p.s. sorry that there are no pictures, I do not have a cord to transfer items off my camera to the mac computer yet.

Kaleo Ministry- let the stress buildup begin!

Bonjour mes amies! Ca va?! Je suis pas mal. 

I hope you all had a great week, and maybe enjoyed some authentic food:D anyone?! Personally, I am craving some authentic asian, thai, indian, and indonesian cuisine. Sniff! man have I had it good tasting the food of asia!

As most of you know, I just spent this week up in the glorious heights of Mt. Washington (on Island)! What an amazing place to spend 4 nights and 5 days! We were able to see in the distance the mainland and the white mountains there, mountains surrounding us, the one Mt. we climbed off in the distance, beautiful white covered trees - that went green as it was a hot week up on Mt. Washington- and land covered by fog as the chair lifts brought us above the fog level. It was SPLENDID. I can honestly say that the star night sky and the view throughout the day kept me in a state of complete satisfaction and enjoyment. 

So the time up there was pretty amazing. Apart from getting a concussion, and being a little more quiet this week, I had a good time. I got a concussion on the first day hitting the hills. It was my fault, because stupidly I was doing jumps without a helmet, but apart from loosing my memory for 15 mins, I still had a great day. I did go to the hospital after the fall, and to this day cannot remember the jump, fall, or skiing down the hill to first aid, but im alive and all is well so I guess thats okay right?! I had some good friends looking out for me, and when I came back from the hospital I got a lot of concerned looks. The week was full of injuries though, 2 broken wrists, 1 sliced pinky, a concussion, and one guy broke his leg before coming up the mountain. So that is pretty crazy. 

I enjoyed trying snowboarding, but currently I think I am a skiier at heart, I just love it so much more, and want to continue to learn how to get better with it. However I do not bash snowboarding because I think skiing is better, i respect them both! 

On Wednesday we got to snowshoe down the mountain after we jumped off the lift. It was pretty sweet slipping in the snow when there were large angles, and feelings your feet not really sink because of the good old snow shoes:D We also built a quinzee?! I don't know how you would spell it, but basically its a survival snowcave to live in. That was awesome. To finish off the day we went tubing at night, racing, spinning, and just going down these three massive slides for the tubes. 

Miranda and I went out one night and went tobogganing ourselves, which was awesome, because we got the work out for climbing the bunny hill multiple times, and enjoyed each others company as we laughed till our sides split for our horrible driving jobs. 

This week for Kaleo Ministry I was working in the Kitchen all weekend. I wasn't able to go to youth because of a thick fog (so I had no drive), and church was cancelled for me because I was cooking. I really wanted to hang out with the youth, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. Its better to be safe then sorry, however I do miss them!

Working in the Kitchen was very enjoyable, I got to work with two assistant cooks, and my roomies in the kitchen. Thankfully I knew where most of the things were in the kitchen this time, so it was easier to be more sufficient. I found it fun this weekend to be responsible for feeding people and providing a tool for good conversation to spread. I really experienced how fast westerners eat, so it was very cool when one of my guy friends said for a few of us to just stay, sit, and talk to him. 

Overall, I found the kitchen staff very loving as usual, because as you are working with food, there is tons of time to talk to each other and support each other through prayer and just listening while cutting or making some dish.  Plus I learned a few tricks for when I start cooking for others:D

Anyways thanks everyone for always reading and praying.

Please pray for:

- a friendship that is going through some tough times

-my future

-a summer job

-the work load that is about to build up

-a continuos passion for reading Job

-for the youth, that many will return next week and grow in Christ

love you all so much,

as always KEEP SMILING!

and send any prayer requests my way.

Did i ever tell you?! Answer to prayer : My friend Miranda's friend who got in a horrible car accident..who should have been paralyzed for life, is walking around like normal! Wow is she blessed. I pray she takes this as a kick in the butt and gets back on track with God! God was looking after her!

Deborah Fisk

aka-FISH!

Kaleo Ministry- Happy 2009... life is pretty much already an emotional rollercoaster

Hello Friends, Family and fellow followers of this blog! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope you all had a wonderful christmas. Mine was interesting for sure, but life is interesting, so why not take it as it comes eh?! I really enjoyed seeing my family (mark and the parents), seeing a few friends, and just enjoying the very white cold winter that we were blessed with. Of course there were some difficulties, considering we were driving everywhere in some messy conditions with a small honda civic, but every day there was something new to do. A few highlights were : working with Josie for a day as a caterer, spending deep times with Josie, driving with the parents, laughing with the family, playing games, eating random meals, making a new friend in Nanaimo, finding an amazing church there with a sermon that totally hit me, going tobogganing, and skiing with My bro, Dad and Garrett. 

(-by the way sit back and get comfortable, this is a long one:D)

So as you all know, I am back at school, I got here on the 4th around 6 pm at night. My family was kind enough to drive me home in the snow, thankfully they got home safe back to our house on the island. Lol im crazy, and I know my Dad loves it lol. 

So here is just some amazing things that have been happening this week:

This week has been amazing with my roomies. I have really enjoyed talking to them. We have had quite the conversations, and I just really enjoy being able to tell them about things and vice versa. On top of that we have been playing card games, laughing so much, giving each other words of wisdom, working together on a group paper for Theology of Mission (the class that went on this week), and having some sister fun "tussels" before bed. Lol when your rooming with me, of course there is going to be fake wrestling lol. 

Class has been very interesting and a bit frustrating. I loved learning about missions so much, and you could tell that our teacher really knew what he was talking about as he backed it up with biblical verses. I really appreciated being able to confront him with all sorts of questions on faith, people who haven't heard the good news, and Old Testament and New Testament times. However I did have a few tears this last class. It really hit me hard how life isn't fair, and how we as followers of Christ need to take it upon ourselves to be an example for him. We can't shy away at all, it is a very serious unending task to live our lives as best we can in relation to Jesus Christ. I can't shy away from telling the gospel to anyone who asks or is willing to listen. It is a gift that humans need to take, and keep, yet pass it on to someone else. All in all, I learned a lot about Short and Long Term Missions, missionaries, and everything in between. It was so necessary for me to get this class this year! On top of that we watched as extra curricular the movie Sometimes in April. A movie about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. That again hit me hard and provided an opportunity for more tears to fall. Thankfully, they are educated tears, and hopefully my new understanding of missions will increase Gods continuous work in my life to do his will! 

Another praise factor this week...YOUTH GROUP WAS AMAZING! God blessed me so much. I was talking to Miranda half way through the week, and just suddenly wanted to start reading my bible, because my mum had been telling me that reading her bible every day was her new years resolution. It couldn't get out of my head. So, as I was talking to Miranda about reading the bible, she said I should read the book of Job. At first I didn't really consider that it was going to be the book I would end up reading, but sure enough I opened it and instantly was locked in. I can tell you that I have been reading my bible every night for 4 days, I know it seems little, but this is kind of unheard of for me:D Anyways, I have been reading Job daily, a few chapters a night, and just started taking notes on it the other day. I also have gone up to a leader here and asked for Commentaries and books on Job from the library so I can really dig into this book. I really want to suck this book as dry as I can at this time in my life. However I know every time I come back to this book in the future ill understand things I didn't before, and I will feel different feelings too. None the less it is amazing.

(Don't worry this is going to get to the youth group ...it all ties in!)

So, in chapel the other day, Jim wanted us to praise God, and I mentioned that I was finally reading my bible on my own time. I had an example from my mum playing through my head, my new friend Garrett had been talking all week about me needing to read the bible, and Miranda suggested that book. I told them I was just so encouraged and very passionate about this new start for me. Later in chapel Shannon talked, and during her little praise she told me that she had also been reading Job. So now I have someone to talk about this book with and encourage each other with. I was very excited that God blessed me with this information, as I didn't intend in talking during chapel at all.

(okay it all ties in here is the youth group part...) Sooo...long story I know sorry! So this week our youth leader asked if Ben or I wanted to lead devotional. I knew that my feelings before opening the book of Job were to never lead bible study again, I hated it, and found it very nerve racking and just something I don't feel inclined to do. Anyways, I knew right away after receiving the email from our youth leader that I was supposed to do the devotional this week. I drew up my passion for the book of Job, and out came a devotional for this friday. Here is a point form of what we generally talked about:

-talked about christmas and gifts recieved
-talked about Job and all the gifts/items he had in life/read passage from the bible
-talked about God allowing Job's possessions to be taken away.
-who Job still focused on and praise
-how we should focus on God when we experience the good and the bad in life. How material possessions are not as important as this world makes them to be. 
-told them some self experiences in life (our house getting broken into, my dad loosing his job, having to sell our house, having my friend be hit by a taxi and die) 
-told them about the ultimate gift we were given that will never go away even when everyting else does
-and challanged them to give smth up for a time and see what it feels like to have smth gone. 

All and all, IT WAS ALL GOD!

God totally blessed me, I needed that. I know it was for the youth, but I was also encouraged by it. Many of the kids came up to me and said they really enjoyed the devotional, and both youth leaders said good job and amen. THANK YOU GOD SO MUCH FOR HELPING ME!

IT WAS ALL GOD! I know for a fact that the bible study wouldn't have gone so smoothly without him. I remember praying all friday because I was so nervous, getting some Kaleo people to pray as I left out the door for youth, and saying a little prayer as all the kids were getting ready to listen. WOW OH WOW!

Anyways I am so sorry this was such a long entry, I am sure you had 12 cups of coffee between this paper, but I couldn't stop.

Prayer requests:

-Pray that I stay dedicated in my bible time with God. 

-Pray that I stay dedicated in praying for missions around the world for a month

-Pray for the message to impact the kids at youth group

-Pray for my future, I am beginning to be praying about it...I should have trusted it over to God a long time ago.

-Pray for a few friends that are experiencing some trouble

-Pray for organization for this year, and a strict dedication to the last 4 months

-Pray that I continually do a bit of working out each day:D 

-Pray for the Vancouver missions trip approaching in March. 

Thank you so much for all your prayers, and continuous interest in my life.

Send any and all emails my way.

Keep Smiling!

Love Debb!