People & Prisons

Congratulations to my boy Shawn on his recent marriage. Shawn was one of my co-workers back in the day. Smart guy, good family man.

Congratulations to Lori! If her child already has a picture on the web at this age then the kid doesn't have much hope of privacy later, eh? Note that in South Korea, the child's age is based on the date of conception, officially nine months before the date of birth. So happy 3-month day to you, kid!

My baseball season ended with a whimper. We forfeited one of our two final games since we only had one of the two required girls at game time. Then we lost the final game of the season badly. Our season went from early May until now and while we were in playoff position for the first three months we fell apart this last month and plumetted down the standings. I may be rather competitive but I think that I kept a good attitude during our free fall and we had fun.

As I mentioned, I visited the Grand Valley Women's Prison in Kitchener this past Sunday with the worship and drama teams from my church. There was the tight security process complete with inspection of all musical gear and a metal detector. Once we were inside, it was fairly normal. Just a big building and we were in a gym like they have in grade schools.

We opened with three rocking songs and then I gave my testimony about purpose in life. Specifically, I talked about how my friendships when I was a teenager were too superficial and how, at the age of 21, I decided that my friendships should mean something. Love should have an effect on both me and my friends and we do need to open up about the real issues in our lives. We followed that with another worship set, a drama and then a short sermon by Pastor Tim. The songs were great and I was really able to get my dance on thanks to the hard gym floor.

Afterwards, we hung out and chatted with the ladies for about forty-five minutes. The one lady I spoke to was forty-two years old and she had a sixteen year old son that she was looking forward to seeing again once she got out. On the whole, the ladies were friendly and not much different then what you would expect from any other setting. A few of them did have some anger issues, swearing revenge for petty offenses and the like, so it was a bit like high school social groups at certain points. In any case, this place was a million times better than the prisons that I visited in Belize years ago.

The CD that I recorded with my church throughout June has been mastered and it's currently in for manufacturing. It's official release date is Labour Day weekend, when my church is having it's usual Sunday service at our eventual new location on Sarnia Road. I did percussion and sang backup tenor vocals on most of the tracks and the parts that I have heard mastered so far were sweet.