Another Beautiful Bride

As some of you may already know I was a bridesmaid this summer for one of my best friends' weddings. Jenn and Andy got married June 4th. They looked fantastic and the wedding went off without a hitch. Well okay little Emma didn't want to walk down the isle, but who could blame her when she had three strangers swarm her right after she woke up from a nap to change her and put her in her beautiful little yellow flower girl dress. She had a very good reason in my books. We had a lot of fun together, not only at the wedding but beforehand too. Tabetha and I spent two days with her prior to this special day; dinning out, miniputting, bowling and a little rock band too haha. I just love my Jenn! Here are a couple of photos from their wedding...

There was also a wedding that I attended just yesterday. Not to down play Jenn's wedding because it certainly was a very nice wedding and she looked absolutely stunning and well he matched her too. This wedding was something that I really looked forward to because of seeing how God worked in and through this friend I have in Ashleigh. I found that our friendship really blossomed this summer. A year an a half ago we almost lost Ashleigh. It was a freightening experience and as we heard at the reception last night it was freightful for Jake as well. He almost lost the woman that he was already falling for. They were not even dating yet, but he knew something was growing in his heart. It is only by God's grace that she is still able to be with us today. When we lost a fellow student this summer Ashleigh and I both wrote a blog to honour his life and within moments from one another. We caused one another to weep fresh tears with the words we shared. I thought often of how close Ashleigh was and I'm sure that it crossed her mind too during that time. Now she is very healthy, in love and has a new name. I am so thankful that I was able to share in her joy on this very special day. Love you Ashleigh!

Tchibo

You just don't know coffee until you have had it in Europe. A couple of weeks ago I met up with my Czech co-workers in Niagara Falls and they presented a gift to me and it was Tchibo coffee. This is one of the favoured coffee brands in the Czech Republic and I grew to love it when I was there. I would sit in my living room with a carafe of coffee and do my devotions just about every morning. It was wonderful and something that is missed here seeing how I don't have space like I did there. I was so pleased with this gift that I am sure that my eyes lit up along with my entire face. Today my landlord's brewed a pot of this coffee and it was a hit with my landlady. I certainly enjoyed my cup of coffee this morning

Family Vs. Friends

I value my family to smithereens. Granted my family is not perfect by any means, but they do mean the world to me. I enjoy spending time with them, being goofy and being relaxed with them for the most part. We all have our quirks right? haha you might get where my thoughts are. I know that no matter what they will be there in a heart beat, my parents have even come up here more often this year and I have loved going out on the town with them. We usually share a meal and then go on a little adventure. I was even "surprised" with having my sister waiting at a restaurant one time for us. It was special, even if the boys thought that a carnival was more important than seeing their auntie (who can blame them though, I would do the same haha).

I have been thinking a lot lately about who my true friends are. Those are the ones who try to keep in contact, I feel that I do my fair share of trying to get together with people. I feel pretty used by some of those people I considered friends truth be told, now that their other friends are back forget about Christina I want to hang with them kind of mentality. Or the feelings of you are only good enough to talk to if you are dressed well, have make up on, and did your hair. Some of these people have "preached" that they want people to be authentic in their Christian faith, but I don't see that when this comes through. They they are talking about being authentic in their faith yet fail at their friendship showing "Authenticity". Kind of contradictory or maybe even hipocritical. This is how I have felt about a few people who have referred to me being a friend of theirs. If I was truly their friend they would hang out with me even if I was wearing a "hoodie" or if more of their friends were around. Granted I have many other friends that do not fall into these thoughts. I spent the night with one of these wonderful ladies last night, we stayed up til 3 am talking about things. I am seeing one tomorrow, one is getting married on Saturday, one is kind of far away so I just might not see her until Spring. Next Saturday one of them is coming up to visit me.

If you are one of the other "friends" that fit into my feelings of dismay or are just not sure if you fit there or not talk to me and we can talk through it. You may not have realized my thoughts or that you are one of those people, and frankly I don't really want to call you up just to set up a time to finally meet up and tell you how I feel. This kind of needs to be under your own conviction I think. There is a time and a place to walk through these things, one of my friends and I did go through this as it just came up. We faced the music and walked away with a better understanding of one another and now we know what we both want and need from one another. You know who you are too. I love you all though so don't think that there is any hating going on here. Just expressing my feelings in a "beat around the bush" kind of way.

A family in need of some prayer

Last fall while I was living in Calgary I lived under a wonderful Christian family. The husband is a pastor and together they had two wonderful children. Super sweet and smart children. While living there, they learned that they were expecting baby number 3. The pregnancy was not an easy one for mom as she had much morning sickness and then later learned that her tiny baby had several abnormalities with her heart, lungs and other places. On May 21st she gave birth to a tiny baby girl weighing just 4 lbs 12 oz. Rachel is her name, she is almost 5 months old now which has surprised some of the doctors, they certainly did not think that she was going to live that long. Yesterday was a very rough day for the family as they almost lost their little one. She is just over 5 pounds now, so weight gain has been very slow. Her oxygen levels are very low and she was struggling to breathe yesterday afternoon and started to turn blue. She overcame that but is tired. This family is super grateful to be able to enjoy Rachel for this long, but of course the longer that they are blessed with her the harder it is going to be when she passes from her earthly parents arms into heavenly fathers arms. She has been able to bless many with her smiles and they have many pictures that captured them. They were also able to capture some videos of her laughing. What a blessing and something that can be treasured forever. This family has been clinging tightly to God through this not so fun rollercoaster. They are facing a huge valley right now. Please take a moment to pray for this family. Rachel's siblings are 4 and 3 years old, they are quite young and may not understand it all that fully.

I'm a Klutz

Ok so some of you who have known me for a long time know what I am referring to haha. My parents and siblings know and are probably nodding their head in agreement and maybe are giggling inward as they think about some of the whipouts I have had.

I have fallen a lot in my days. This hasn't changed as of recently and I will say that most of the falls in the last year were due to slippery conditions. These many frequent fall have scarred me so much that I am dreading winters arrival. Granted having boots with some traction would help a great deal. Less than half an hour ago I was walking to the bus stop from school and I stepped in a rut in the grass twisting my foot a bit and lost my balance and fell...right in front of Tim Hortons! How embarrassing...so many people saw me fall. I'm sitting here giggling about the incident and shaking my head in dis-belief that I wiped out yet again and this time I do not have ice or snow to blame. Whatever will I do haha.

Time with God

This morning I was reading the Book of Jude. It was written to warn the people that Jude was writing to about their sin and godlessness.

Jude talks very frankly to them as they are living a life full of sin and enjoying it a little too much. Jude is warning them of what could come of it if they continue to live in it too long. If you do not know Jude is the second last book of the Bible in the New Testament. As Jude is writing he talks about some things that happened in the Old Testament. First he talks about the people that God freed out of Egypt but that he later destroyed most of those people because of their faithlessness. Then Jude mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah with how these towns/cities were destroyed because their sexual immorality. He mentioned a couple of others but I decided to dig deeper into these two familiar stories to get more background as to what Jude was talking about.

I went to the Israelites first and read about them complaining continuously and how everyone twenty years old and older were destroyed with the exception of two men; Joshua and Caleb. I got to thinking of my own life right after reading this passage of Numbers 14. "How does this apply to you?" you might be asking. The answer is simple for me to tell you. I can say that I do not like my job, I often complain about my manager, the customers and some of the scheduling issues that I have been having. This has made me realize the kind of hindrance I can be to people towards my Christian faith. Most if not all of my co-workers know that I am a Christian and that I live the life so to speak of a Christian. I have gotten comments that I don't swear, they wonder why, why don't I drink? What do I want to do after I am done school? I even receive apologies from some members of my team for the language that they use. How is my complaining influencing them? Probably not in a godly way...can we say conviction? Give me a resounding YES! Lord catch me in the act and help me to see what damage I could be doing. I need a Saviour for a reason and here is one small example.

The next passage I went to was the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot was the main person of this passage and Lot was the one who took care of the angels that were sent to "take care of" the city. People in the city saw the angels go in who were actually described as men, the city people came banging on the door wanting to defile the men inside. Lot fought against that idea and told them that they could not have the men and that he has them in his house to protect them. Anyway I'm not going to go through the details of the whole story* but will fast forward to a part that had me asking questions. After Lot and his daughters were safely away from Sodom it talks about the daughters taking turns laying with him. I wonder what happened to their men that they were to be married to? Lot told them to flee with him, but it doesn't say what happened. So the daughters still felt the need to carry on their family line so they had sex with their father in order to do so. Now here is another area that I was thinking about. Had that way of life or the culture set in so deeply into these two young ladies that they were influenced to carry out a sexually immoral act with their our father. Hmmm...we see things like this all the time in our world. Kind of scary if you ask me. Thank you God for working in me to help me see my need for you and my ever need for dependence on you.

* For the whole story please find it in Genesis 19 but 18 is crucial to see how God works in the unfolding plan for 19