Barak Obama's Big Night

Last night, I along with millions of others watched the Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado. It was certainly an historic night. 85,000 people crammed the outdoor stadium to attend the event and the overhead TV shots conveyed the epic nature of the crowd. It must have been an overwhelming event to be at.

Here's a commentary for you: today, the Edmonton Journal carried the story on the front page, while choosing to carry a story announcing the almost certain, soon to be called Canadian Federal election, on page 4!!! Definitely an honest reflection on the state of politics here in Canada.

In the United States, history is being made as Barak Obama became the first African American to be nominated as a major party candidate for President. Next week, the Republicans will nominate John McCain as their nominee and the race for the White House will officially begin. Most likely, that same week, a Canadian election will be called and the vote will take place prior to the American vote on November 4. Thus the entire Canadian election will be drowned out by the much larger, much louder and frankly, more interesting election to the south.

I'm a Canadian and proud of it, but I have to admit that I'm far more interested and captivated by the American political scene. Despite the fact that they have the longest democratic election process on the entire planet, I still can't turn off Wolf Blitzer, Campbell Brown and my favorite Jack Cafferty, on CNN!

Clearly I'm not alone, as evidenced by the choice of the Journal in relation to these two political stories.

Although the Canadian election has not been called, I have to wonder, WHY would they call it now? It strikes me that having an election in the middle of one of the most historic elections in American history is just plain stupid.

I also have to wonder, how many people in Canada will even know that an election is happening in our country? And will they care? Or is having an election now a recipe for the worst voter turnout in Canadian history?

Telus: the present is NOT friendly!

So I'm looking at The Canopy's phone bill today and seeing that we have $6.95 in long distance charges. This strikes me as strange because I know that I didn't make any long distance calls this month, so I go looking for more details. I soon find that there is a line called "Long Distance Administration Fee" for $6.95.

Now I have never noticed this before, probably because usually there are a few long distance calls on our bill.

In hope of gaining more information, I decide to call the Telus billing inquires number. After a few minutes of being irritated by the soft sultry tones of a computer generated female voice asking me a series of questions I arrive on the Telus help desk waiting line. Prepared for a long wait, I put the phone on speaker, where I am tortured by bad country music.

I begin thinking that eventually I am going to be talking to somebody who is physically located in India or Sri Lanka, and soon enough somebody comes on the line. It's a woman, but she definitely doesn't have the same sultry tones of the computer generated version!

I am informed that the 'Long Distance Administration Fee' is a charge for being able to make long distance calls! By this point the irony of the situation is sinking in: Most likely I've been on the phone for over 20 minutes, talking toll-free on Telus' dime, to a woman in India, who is informing me that Telus is charging $6.95 each month for the ability to make a long distance call, even when I DON'T make a long distance call!!

Is this what Telus imagines as a future that is friendly?

I suppose I should be thankful that I wasn't charged for calling India for 20 minutes!
(then again, maybe I was...)

Rain

It's rained pretty much the entire time we've been here in Banff. Incredible. It has been great to be at such a wonderful hotel facility... we've spent more time here than we normally would.

Today we went horseback riding. I haven't done that in nearly 20 years. It was great to see Josiah up on a horse and Rebekah looked so cute with pig-tails and cowboy boots! (Rebekah did a horsemanship option at camp this year, so she had more experience than all of us!)

Josiah was such a trooper on the horse: a couple of times his horse didn't want to cooperate and another time he lost hold of the reigns, which scared him a lot. I was very proud of my 6 year old!

We've been eating in our hotel room most of the time, which saves a lot of money. Tonight we're having mini-pizzas and hot chocolate. (not exactly the peak of nutrition, but hey, we're on vacation!)

I'm going to scarf down my pizza and head off to the hot tub, which I've been enjoying a lot of. I've always loved hot-tubs ever since I was a kid, and this one is a really good one. Josiah likes it too; Rebekah is more like Pam, who can take them or leave them.

That's about it for now. Not too many deep thoughts right now. Just enjoying the day!

Reflections from Banff

Pam and I have been coming for a number of years to the Banff area for part of our summer vacation. In the past years we've stayed at a hotel in Canmore that has been great, however this year we found that they had increased their rates substantially, so we decided to check out other options. Pam searched around and found a place right in Banff that looked pretty good (at least on the internet) and was a really good price.

When we arrived yesterday we were all totally amazed with the place. It feels more like a small condo than a hotel room. There is an upstairs loft with 2 queen beds, so the kids are there. It has a half bathroom and TV in the loft as well. The main bedroom is on the main level, with a small balcony, wood burning fireplace and a full kitchen.

Normally there's no way that we could afford to stay here, but they're doing a major construction project to expand the facility, so during the construction they have lowered their prices.

Oh, and there's a fantastic outdoor hot tub, which I'm all over!

Today we went white water rafting. Since the kids were with us, we were only able to do the introductory level rapids, (which for adults, isn't intense at all) and we had a lot of fun. It rained on and off but since we were getting wet anyway, it wasn't a big deal at all; actually it was a great way to spend a rainy day.

I'm enjoying a real spiritual sensitivity right now. My heart seems soft and responsive to God's Spirit. As I enjoy this time away, I'm aware of 2 things: first, our time of vacation always goes quickly and feels like it just flies by; second, I'm aware more than ever that it's not vacation that renews me. Nowhere in Scripture does it ever say that vacation is what gives inner strength or vitality. I'm not renewed on the inside by a good vacation; it's connecting with God in a meaningful way that brings renewal.

Don't get me wrong... not being all super-spiritual and saying that vacations are no good; clearly not, since I'm on a vacation that I'm enjoying quite a bit.

Yet as I contemplate how quickly the time is flying by, it helps to keep things in perspective.

A Matter of Running

Well before I take time to continue my reflections on the recent trip to IHOP, I thought I would write about my recent experience running in the ING half-marathon. It was held yesterday at 8 a.m., and there were about 1100 participants. It was my first time running that race and I have to say that it was a very well organized event. There were lots of volunteers and water stations.

I had a sweet and sour race. It was sour because I made a really stupid mistake and forgot to take my gels with me on the race. I brought them with me to the race, but then forgot to take them out of my bag; thus they sat unused in my backpack! (for anyone who doesn't know, gels are energy supplements that you take with you on the run to refuel as you run; without them, you can get in to serious trouble)

I won't go into all the details of how this impacted my race, but suffice it to say that I ended up 'bonking' about 2/3 of the way through the race and had no strength in my legs. (bonking is a term used to describe what happens to your body when you run out of fuel).

The other sour dimension was the heat. I've never run a half marathon in that kind of heat, so it was pretty overwhelming. I was sweating within the first 300 m!!

The race was sweet because in spite of my own self-inflicted stupidity with the gels, I still was able to run it in 1:50, which isn't a bad time, especially given the heat the lack of energy.

It was quite a bit slower than I had trained for, but given the circumstances, I can't complain too much.

So there you have it.

I'm going away for a week of vacation, so I'll be posting again once I get back.

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure Pt. V

Al and I just arrived in Grand Forks, staying at the same hotel, greeted by our old greasy friend, Ole, the night auditor (he's the one with the elbow holes in his shirt)
As I chatted with him tonight, he told me he's been the night auditor for 25 years! Ole cow! (shoot me now!)

One of the advantages of driving all this way is that you see the United States in much more detail than if you just fly. America is certainly a different culture than Canada!

For instance, at stores you are asked if you want a ‘sack’; meaning a ‘bag’!
In a restaurant, when you’re drinking coke, you are asked if you want a refill on your ‘soda’;
and when you go to pay you’re given your ‘ticket’; obviously meaning your ‘bill’.

America loves really big signs. There are LOTS of enormous billboards, advertising everything you can imagine; if you’re ever hungry for some McDonalds, all you need do is look up into the distant horizon and you’re sure to find some golden arches, atop a pole that has got to be 75 feet in the air!

Americans also love casinos. They are everywhere, in all sorts of sizes, and it seems that virtually every city wants to have its own version of Las Vegas, with some manner of casino-hotel. (and yes, there are enormous signs everywhere, announcing each one!)

And of course there is beer. Everywhere. In every corner store and gas station you can get jumbo cans and bottles of suds, many of which are only slightly more expensive than a ‘soda’!

Speaking of soda, that’s one of the great things about America: you can get cherry coke everywhere, and I’ve been enjoying lots of it! (LOL) And for some reason I don’t understand the fountain ‘soda’ dispensers work perfectly! I’m so used to having to poor off the extraordinary excess amounts of carbonation bubbles, but here in the States, all you do is push the button and watch your glass fill perfectly to the top. It’s amazing! (It’s almost as if it’s the way it’s meant to work!)

I also discovered that Jiffy Lube puts all other Canadian car ‘lube’ places to shame. (who knew!!)
It was amazing. They cleaned all the windows by hand, vacuumed the car, drove the car into the shop for me and offered me coffee while I waited (a wasted offer for sure, but nevertheless). Jiffy Lube rules!

The humor highlight on the trip may well have been Al's discovery of the 'pickle in a pouch' for sale at a local gas station (it's a dill pickle in a sealed pouch, floating in juice). He couldn't pass up the chance to buy one for his dad as a gag gift!

Only in America!

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure Pt. IV

It's 6:15 a.m. The sun is beginning to rise and as I drive up to the prayer room at IHOP, there are several dozen cars in the parking lot. I go in through the doors, which have screws drilled into the locking mechanisms of the crash bars, preventing the doors from ever being locked.

As I walk into the prayer room, there are about 150 people praying and worshiping along with the worship team. The back sections of chairs are roped off except for a couple of rows of people who are in the designated area for prayers for healing. There are about a dozen or more people sitting and soaking, being prayed for by people standing behind them.

On each side of the room there are tables and chairs set up and they are filled with people using laptops, with their Bibles open, studying the Scriptures and praying. It's powerful to see so many people reading and studying their Bibles as they worship and pray!

Right now, as I type this, there is a young woman praying on the microphone for small fledgeling houses of prayer, just getting started in other cities and nations. This will be the theme for the next while. I'm thinking of HoPE and the beginnings of the House of Prayer in Edmonton.

Earlier in the morning there was an emphasis on praying for people in the work place. After some lengthy intercession for those going to work today, they invited people who are on their way to work, to stand and to have people gather around them, praying for their day and for God to use them and open doors for ministry in the midst of their various places of work. There are a good number of people who stand. To my left in the row behind me, there is a young man in a business suit praying. I found it amazing to see the number of people who came to IHOP before they go to work. This is a daily emphasis during the 6-8 a.m. prayer block during the work week.

Al and I are leaving Kansas City today to head back home. We're planning to drive to Grand Forks today and stay overnight and then do a longer day of driving from Grand Forks back to Edmonton tomorrow.

I wanted to get up and come to IHOP one last time before I have to leave.

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure Pt. III

I appologize for the lack of posts lately. We are supposed to have free internet access in our room, but it has not been working well. I would have tried to get them to figure out the problem, but I've been pretty busy with other things.

Now I'm using the computer in the hotel lobbey (it's finally free)

Last night we were at the Encountering God service, and the honey was flowing, for sure. It was pretty off the charts to be awesome. Mike Bickle really knocked it out of the park with a great talk and then Jill Austin led the ministry time which was crazy intense. From my perspective, last night alone was worth the trip down here. It's been quite a while since I've been at that kind of meeting. (yes, Abbotsford was wild and crazy but like I said in an earlier post, the honey here is a different flavor)

Today I went to church at Forerunner Christian Fellowship, which is the Sunday Church 'wing' of the IHOP missions base. Al and I will be going tonight, but I wanted to see what it was like at the 10:30 a.m. service (they have 3 services each Sunday). It's interesting to go to FCF because the crowd of people at the services is quite different than at IHOP. IHOP mostly consists of full time and part time intercessory missionaries and various students with the various IHOP schools and internships; On Sunday you see more families and normal Kansas City folk, so the 'intensity' level is noticibly lower. It's just an interesting difference.

I will try to take time to blog again very soon, so stay tuned!

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure Pt. II

Al and I arrived at Kansas City last night around 10 p.m. It was a good day of driving but we were both more than ready to finally get there! We both agreed that it was a very good idea to break the trip up with some sleep!

Al was pretty tired and wanted to chill out at the hotel, but I couldn't wait and had to get over to IHOP. I thought I'd stay for just a while, but when I got there, plans changed! When I walked in, there were about 600 people there and they were in Song of Songs... just perfect in my world!!

It was awesome! I loved it. It's simply great to be here. Right now I'm typing in the coffee shop at the IHOP missions base.

Today Al and I were at the 10 a.m. slot and it shot off the intensity meter, pretty much from the start. They are getting ready for the CALL DC, which Lou Engle is heading up. The CALL is a young adult ministry that Lou leads here in the States and they have a few enormous gatherings each year, and next week there will be one in Washington, DC. They are praying for that event in major way here and they gathered around Lou and prayed for him and spent quite a while doing prophetic declarations over him and the CALL DC. Some of the declarations were really over the top (neither good or bad). Mike Bickle led the time along with Allan Hood. Cory Russell was there too, as was Jill Austin, who spend quite a long time prophesying over Lou. (I realize those names won't mean much to most, but at least one reader knows who they are!)

Al and I had lunch at TGI Friday's, which was the inspiration for the old Maxwell Taylor's in Edmonton. It's a great restaurant and one that we'll go to again for sure! There is also a Fuddruckers, here in Kansas City too, so we'll be going there too.
We honored the tradition of going to Fudd's in Sioux Falls on the way down. Man that was a good meal!

We don't have a camera (Pam needed mine) so we won't be able to take any pictures, which is a definite bummer. Al and I had a great idea for a picture at Fuddruckers! LOL

What else to say.... hmmmmmm......

In some ways it's hard to describe the more serious dimension of things, which is happening now that we're at the prayer room. I think that reading about the experiences of other people is sometimes difficult, because you can't really appreciate what's happening when you're reading about it.

So I'm hoping to be able to continue to have some humorous things to share with you, but we'll see how it goes.

(If any of you friends back home are wanting to hear about anything specific, please feel free to leave me a comment)

Sadly, the bookstore has been a bit of a disappointment this time around. Not a lot of new material.

Tomorrow the Healing and Deliverance seminar begins, so we'll see how that turns out. We're both going into it lightly, in that we're here more for the prayer room than the seminar; probably we'll go to some of the main sessions, but not the breakouts. (Eric, you get the idea!)

For those faithful readers wondering if I've encountered any honey yet, I can say that it's beginning to drip, but it's a different type of honey than in Abbotsford. No honey glory yet, (On the way in to KC, we drove by 'honey creek', and I laughed. I told Al that if it had been 'honey river', I would have had to buy a camera.... bathin' in the honey!!.... let the reader understand) :)

Well, it's about time to head over to the prayer room. Luke Wood is leading from 10 - midnight, so Al and I are stoked about that. Should be a really good set.

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure Pt. I.5

So it's 9 a.m. now and after a good night of sleep, Al and I are ready to go!

We ended up staying at the local Holiday Inn (other motels were full and at 2 a.m., you don't have energy to shop around!)

Last night, the greasy night guy named 'Ole' told us our room was poolside, which really didn't matter too much, but this morning I awoke and saw the pool and I have to say, it's amazing. My kids would love it! There's a pretty decent water slide and a big play area for little kids, kind of a small version of the new area at WEM waterpark.

One classic moment last night was Ole informing us of the various amenities of the hotel, when he said, "as of last week, we now have a free continental breakfast; it's located beside the pool'. The tone he used made the comment so funny... mainly because to me, continental breakfasts are about as common as Orange juice, but Ole seemed so impressed as if this was some impressive leap forward in hotel amenities. Nevertheless, Al and I were quite happy to hear it and enjoyed it this a.m.

This morning as I looked over to the pool area, I saw a rather incorporated middle aged man sitting with his family in the hot tub, drinking a diet coke. Not something you often see at 9 a.m. in the morning. As for me, I had some cereal and toast, with marmalade (I looked for honey, but alas, none could be found!).

America certainly has different products for sale. Not only could you have your normal breakfast foods, you could also purchase various snacking foods, such as M&M's and chocolate bars. They also had a snack I'd never heard of before, called a 'Salted Nut Roll'. I have to confess that I'm not a 'salted nut roll' type of guy (not that there's anything wrong with that!!) ;)

Anyhow, so we're pretty close to being on our way, for another fun-filled leg of our journey to IHOP.

I'll keep you posted!

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure Pt. I

It’s 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon and Al and I are hurtling down the highway towards Yorkton, Sk. Pretty much the entire trip so far, we have been surrounded by storm clouds behind us and to our left and to our right. It’s been kind of interesting to be just on the edge of a storm; at times it looks like we’re headed right into the middle of it, but then it ends up being just off to the right of us. We’ve even seen some lightening at times!

We drove straight through to Saskatoon and then had lunch at ‘Cactus Jo’s’; some tex-mex place. It was ok. Not sure that I’d saunter across the road to eat there again, but it did the trick.

Saskatchewan has some weird little towns in it. We’ve been through “Sheho”, “Mozart”, and my favorite, “Kandahar”!! (actually we teleported to Iraq.. strangely more desolate than I’d imagined!!)
Another favorite was “foam lake”, which welcomed us with a sign declaring it to be ‘the greatest place on earth’. (wow, if that’s true, then all I can say is Come Lord Jesus, Come!!)

(pause)

It’s now 2:22 a.m. (CST) and we’re in Grand Forks. A greasy looking attendant at the local Holiday Inn welcomed us; his shirt was worn out in the elbows (a wardrobe issue I’ve not seen before!!)

No matter... after driving over 1500 km and being on the road for the better part of 15 hours, I’m ready to crash. It seems I’m not as young as I used to be.

more tomorrow! (okay... later today!)

Jim & Al's Excellent Adventure 2008!!

Well, it's 11:28 p.m. and I'm pretty much packed and ready to head out tomorrow.... ready for 30 hours of driving bliss on the way to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City!! Yahoooooo!

Al and I are scheduled to hit the road at 8 a.m. tomorrow; we'll see how it turns out.

Our time at IHOP happens to overlap with the Healing and Deliverance summit, so we're signed up to take part in it. It's a pretty small gathering of about 300 people, so that will be good. Kind of an unexpected bonus!

Personally, I'm not really going with any specific expectations; mostly wanting to connect with God... spend time reading and praying... soaking in God.

Maybe not expectations of God or IHOP or anybody, but perhaps some expectations about the time I'll have there. Time to get away and not be thinking about responsibilities.

So that's about it for tonight.

The plan is to blog fairly continually about our excellent adventure, kind of like we did last year.

Hopefully it will be both humorous and thought provoking for those who follow along with our journey.... so stay tuned!!

:)