Canmore, AB
After a few short weeks to visit and catch up with a different chapter of my life, I found it hard to leave the Abbotsford area, a beautiful place continues to feel like home to me. I’m sure this is largely due to the quality of the people I have the privilege of knowing, who just make life better.
Saturday our group began retracing our steps back east as we drove to Canmore. In a lot of ways that’s what we’re doing this week as we debrief, and essentially begin retracing our steps. It’s a time for us to reflect on where we’ve come from while at the same time continuing the journey.
I’ve been so encouraged by the conversations I’ve been having with my fellow staff and students alike in the past few days. These have served as reminders that this program does not change lives, but the God at work in the lives of people (who happen to be in this program) that really brings about change.
One of my students made a “countdown calendar” in her journal the first week, as she painstakingly created a checklist that she would cross off at the end of each day. She confessed that upon first arriving it was a countdown of the number of hours until she could cross off another day, which meant one less day trapped with this wierd group of people in this program of which she comprehended very little. At some point things shifted in her, and the countdown became quickly dwindling measure of days remaining with people she began to love and experiences that were changing and shaping who she is.
I must give credit where credit is due here. This young woman has been visibly transformed over three short months in ways that can only be credited to the work of a loving God. And her story is only one. There are enough to fill pages and pages of how people have met with the living God and thus will return home at Christmas different, be it ever to subtle or ever so slight.
It’s been amazing, and the most amazing part is that I cannot take credit for much of it at all. I have the privilege of mentoring from time to time, singing and laughing on long van rides, making announcements, giving hugs as often as possible, some things I do well, others I do very poorly. To be honest my sentiments in this situation can be likened to the effect I have when I walk out of my hotel room here in Canmore to find myself surrounded on every side by the Rocky Mountains, small yet welcomed and invited to enjoy something significantly more grand and extravagant than I could ever dream up on my own.
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