Sunday May 30, 2010

Our Sunday morning worship was with The Point Church at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. That morning while boarding the bus down the road from PLBC, the driver asked me if we were all from the Bible College. I told him that we were, thinking for some reason that he knew we were simply residing at the college for a short time and not attending.
While bouncing along with the bus and minding our own business, we suddenly heard a voice over the bus intercom system. The bus driver greeted us as Theology students and then began a lighthearted quizzing of the Bible. Needless to say, we were all pleasantly surprised and I do believe he became our favorite bus driver of the trip! He reminded us to “love one another” and bid us a friendly farewell as we exited the bus.
Once we arrived on the SFU campus, we met up with Kelly and his family. The worship service was located in one of the lecture halls in one of the many buildings of SFU. We were introduced to an array of people, some being from The Point and others a part of the recently arrived 9 member mission team from Louisiana.
Church began around 11 AM with music led by two SFU students and a message from their pastor, Victor, on how to live everyday missionally (mission minded and hearted). Some of our group put together a sketch portraying how without God, love means nothing even to those that are hurting and searching. It was very heart wrenching and spoke to many people.
After the service, we packed up our things and the church equipment and took it to the Interfaith Centre Office in another of the SFU buildings. Once finished, we began our trek to Burnaby Mountain Park where we would eat our lunch and spend our afternoon.
The spot in the park where we settled overlooked both the city and the mountains. It was absolutely gorgeous. Some people began playing games such as Big Booty (a concentration game) or ultimate frisbee after eating. Laura and I set off to explore more of the park.
Neither words nor photographs can describe the grandeur of the view we witnessed or the awe of God we experienced while exploring. Mountain springs filled with fresh water from melted snow raced down the fir tree covered mountains sides into the low valleys and rivers below. Distant mountains appeared hazy as if shrouded by clouds and mist and the closer snow capped peaks poked mightily into the sky.
Around 3 PM I went with Kelly and Jeanne to their home (which is practically on the SFU campus) in order to talk with him about the possibility of returning as a student missionary in the near future. We talked with Yun Seon Choi, the planter of the Korean Church Place of Loving People and another member of her church for several hours. If I were to come back next summer, I would spend my time working with the PLP, being involved in their church services, and helping with English Conversation Classes.
When we finished talking and at 5 PM, we began our travels back to SFU campus for another service at The Point. After the service, most of the group headed back to PLBC while the rest of us, including the Louisiana team and members from The Point, headed out for a night of sushi.
Scott, a student as SFU one of The Point members, sat at our table to help us order. Most of us, besides Laura, were new to sushi and had no idea where to begin. I found I really enjoy eating sushi, but am not partial to tuna or salmon.
Near the end of the night we were all stuffed but still had food to eat. We were told that we had to pay extra for the food we didn’t finish. The restaurant did this to discourage the wasting of food. So we stuffed ourselves.
At one point Laura and I began to tackle some kind of weird soup. I slurped the noodles into my mouth and soon found that I didn’t like them. I had no place to spit them out, so I pushed on and almost throwing up in the process.
I didn’t feel all that well after consuming those noodles. I was told I was very pale and looked horrible. That pretty much reflected how I felt for the rest of the evening. After paying, we rushed outside to catch our bus to the SkyTrain Station. However, we missed it by a few minutes and Kelly drove us down a short way to catch it so he could go back to the restaurant and ferry everyone else to the station.
Kelly managed to get 2/3 of us to the station before we had to board. It was late and also the last SkyTrain running for the evening. The other third of our group had were in a friend’s car that was blocked in by cars in the parking lot and therefore had to be driven back to PLBC by Kelly.
When we arrived at King George SkyTrain Station, Paul, the Sikh expert and father of Kelly’s daughter’s boyfriend, met us to take the rest of us to PLBC. We arrived back at our lodgings at approximately 1:45 AM and soon all headed to bed knowing that we didn’t have to begin our next day’s work until 11 AM.