Fun and Fiction

I hung out with my Little Brother yesterday and we went to the Western Fair. We had a good time with various games and shows. We saw a trampoline act with a couple of guys from the Canadian Men's team, including one 16-year old who is competing in Holland next week. We caught a pig race and we finished off the evening with a tractor pull, which I had never seen before.

One of the acts that we saw was a lumberjack contest. I was cheering and booing as expected and I'm afraid that I embarassed my Little. At one point, he poked me and asked why I was being so loud. I tried to explain that cheering at an event is well and good but I don't think he agreed. Heh.

The only problem with the Western Fair is how much money is costs...and speaking of which, I remember how much money Richard spent on Tara on their first date together, when he took her to the Western Fair. Happy third anniversary, mes amis!

As a different point of interest, I've been immersed in various sci-fi novels recently. All that science that they jam into the stories is so crazy, and yet it's usually based on real-world theories and experiments. The newest author that I've started to read is Stephen Baxter. So while I'm having fun with the weirdest aspects of science, I come across articles like this that try to explain why the most far-out designs for space shuttles simply won't work and that we have to stick with the tried-and-true because it's the only thing that can work. Stupid facts, getting in the way of my fiction.

Birthdays and Other Things

Happy Birthday, Ma et Laura! We celebrated both of their birthdays at the Mandarin today. I have a couple of pictures that I will put at the end of this post.

Heads up to any guys that read this blog. I'm inviting y'all over to play poker at my house on Sunday, September 25 at 1:00 pm. We'll play with poker chips and you can bring a couple of bucks for the main pot. If we have a ten dollar pot that will be good. I'll also get some pizza and you can bring a couple of bucks for that as well, though that is not necesary. If you're a cash-strapped student, consider it a friendly and free get together.

Congratulations to Terry Arsenault. My old roomie is now an official Nerds on Site guy with his own "franchise." He has the slick red beetle and everything. With his technical expertise, his great sales experience and his drive, I'm sure that he'll do quite well.

Congratulations to the two most important women in my life:

Stealing a wish:

Prophetic Worship

I was involved in some worship this past week that God was all over. Some of the ministering worship that we did evidentally helped heal some people, and some of the warfare worship that we did was pretty powerful. For my part, the congas and percussive instruments that I was using lent themselves to stepping forward in a prophetic ministry at various times over the weekend.

God has placed an annointing on musical ministry. Even without singing and without words, instruments can be used all by themselves to allow God and the Holy Spirit to move. That may be a new concept for some people but my experience shows that a humble guitar quietly strumming or an rythmic attack on the drums can be very effective in the spiritual realm. More important than my own experience, the Bible has plenty of stories that show how this works.

One of my favourite examples involves David and Saul in the Old Testament. Did you know that Saul met David before the Goliath stuff happened in 1 Samuel 17? Indeed. In 1 Samuel 16:14-23, David was called into Saul's service because Saul was being tormented by evil spirits. Back in the day, everyone clearly understood the power of musical worship and Saul's attendants recommended David. And so regularly from that time on, David would play his harp and "the evil spirit would leave" Saul. Not to say that musical worship was a magic potion because later on in chapters 18 and 19, after the Goliath heroics, Saul tried to kill David with a spear out of jealousy while David plays his harp.

There are other stories that we could reference as well. In 1 Samuel 10, after Saul is annointed but before he becomes king, Samuel instructs him to take a trip. Saul comes across a musical band of prophets and he is changed as a result.

In 2 Kings 3:14-16, Elisha needs to ask God for advice for the king and he asks for a harpist. It says that "when the harpist was playing, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha."

There are a couple of other stories like that, showing the power of music and praise to God. For me, I think part of it is that music has a way of hitting our hearts and our souls directly. Music doesn't need to pass through our heads and be interpreted (though it can be). It can hit us in our deepest parts, allowing God to touch us in ways that we might not understand. It can be more of a Spirit-to-spirit message. There are other explanations for the power of music, I suppose, but that one works for me.

Related Post: Prophetic Misnomer?

Return to Braeside

So I spent the long weekend at Braeside Camp as part of the worship team. I left from London mid-afternoon on Thursday with almost all of our sound equipment jammed to the roof in my van. We played for one service that evening and then I came home very late that night so that I could be at work on Friday. On Friday afternoon I returned to camp and I stayed there both Friday night and Saturday night.

The camp had free accomodations for every member of the team plus our immediate families, if our families were joining us. I shared a very nice cabin with Justin, one of our vocalists/guitarists. It had a private bathroom, fridge, microwave and the whole bit so it was quite nice even if it was a little girly as far as the decorations went. They also gave each of us tickets for free meals and free late night snacks, so I took full advantage of that. I've never been in this kind of position before so I felt very well treated.

In addition to Thursday evening, our band played Friday evening, Saturday morning and evening and Sunday morning and evening. Thanks to Al Hamilton's gear, our sound system was pounding the floors quite nicely. Not that everyone loves booming music but we had a lot of fun with it. :)

I played percussion all weekend. My hands were pretty sore at the beginning of each practice and it will take a few days for the swelling to go down completely. There was plenty of altar time for us to minister in music and plenty of free-flow worship, which I love. I also had the chance to dance and jump around before God at various points. I particularly enjoyed the fact that I was using the church's two congas since I feel like I was able to minister prophetically on the drums at certain times.

There were various prophecies and words from God during the various services, as I expected. As one example, there was an eighteen year old guy that spoke a word during the final service, after the musical worship but before the sermon. It was a long analogy/parable about someone being trapped in a room with a window. This person blocks the window to block the sun coming in, preferring to use candles and lighters until all of the artifical light sources have run out. God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the sun that people are blocking out of their lives. At night, the light of the sun is still reflected into the room by the moon, which represents the Christians.

The speaker came up after the guy was done speaking and asked the guy in the projector booth to tell everyone what the speaker had told him just three minutes before. The guy in the booth said that he had changed the set of powerpoint slides at the speaker's request, which he then displayed on the screens. What was the title of the newly-chosen sermon? "The Light Source."

So fun stuff like that happened all weekend long. A bunch of people were saved, some were filled with the Holy Spirit, etc. Honestly, I can't think of a way that I would rather spend a weekend then ministering in worship for hours each day. It was the ideal weekend.

News & Links

Yep, it's finally here. R2D2's holograph, "Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." Check out this interview with the inventor of a 3D float-in-the-air computer monitor.

The Toronto Star had an interesting article today that rated the Top 5 boo-ings that have evere happened at the SkyDome. As I'm sure you're all aware, Rafael Palmeiro and the Orioles were playing there this past weekend and Rafael was batting for the first time after his (laughable) 10-day suspension for testing positive for steroids. That's a big deal because earlier in the year he vehemently denied ever using steroids when he appeared before a US Congressional hearing, wagging his finger at them in emphasis. We Canadians booed him so loudly that he put in ear plugs and then later cotton swabs as well. He looked like quite the fool in the highlight clips.

Mike has arrived in South Korea and he has a blog post about his first impressions. Of course, if he thinks that Incheon is big (population: 2.2 million) then he should check out Seoul (population: 10.8 million). Heh.

And for the record, I chose to keep my new Tablet PC after two weeks of testing. I'm away for all of this weekend at Braeside Camp, as I wrote about here. I know several people that are planning on going out there to Paris (Ontario) for the Saturday night service, so if anyone wants directions then contact me.