Wild Weekend

Here are the highlights of my third weekend in Canada. Last Monday was a civic holiday and so it was a long and wild weekend over here.

Friday

My aunt took me, my mom, and my dad out for the evening. We had dinner at this fancy restaurant called "Baton Rouge." I ordered a steak. She then took us to watch a broadway musical. One of the great things about being in Toronto is that you get to watch some of the best stage performances. Years ago, I watched the live broadway musicals of "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Mama Mia." Last Friday, I watched my fourth broadway musical entitled "Jersey Boys." It's the story about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Apparently, this singing group was a big hit in the 1960's. I don't know most of their songs but I did recognize popular ones such as "Walk Like a Man" and they're extremely big hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."

Saturday

I was invited to be the guest speaker at a youth camp hosted by a Chinese church here in Toronto. When they said "camp", they literally meant "camp." My aunt who invited me to speak warned me days before that we were going to "rough it out" at the venue. I didn't know what she meant by "roughing it out" until I got there. The venue for the youth camp was camping grounds designed mainly for boy scouts. All the facilities were what I would call "basic." It makes every youth camp venue I've been to in the Philippines look like a five star hotel.

Cabins looked like army barracks with bunk beds as amenities. There were two showers in the vicinity. The two showers were supposed to be good enough for the 75 campers and 10 staff at the site. Some campers eventually ended up skipping one shower, or showering in the river, or who knows, maybe not even showering at all. We also had to cook our own food and clean the place ourselves. In fairness, the food was really good. The cooking team did an excellent job. It was an interesting experience to rough it out in the wild.

That evening I delivered the first message. Half of the campers didn't exactly know who Jesus was to them and the other half, in my observation, wasn't serious about a relationship with Christ either. I recounted for them the last moments of Christ and showed them what Jesus had to go through for our sins. It was quite an emotional moment for some of the kids. I could see tears in some of their eyes especially after I showed them a short video of the death of Jesus made by my brother. We ended that night with a bonfire and marshmallows.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, we had a simple service at a beautiful outdoor chapel near the river. I delivered my second and final message about trusting God with everything. The camp planning team informed me days before that many of the campers struggled with confidence issues. So I explained to the campers that confidence to go through whatever life hits you with comes from trusting in the one and only Creator of the universe.

A few parents came all the way to the campsite to hear me speak that morning. I was flattered that they would drive two hours to the venue to listen to a 30 minute message. They told me they weren't disappointed. It looked like God did a fantastic job that morning.

After finally completing my tasks, I was able to relax the whole afternoon. The campers went canoeing. I decided not to canoe which was actually a smart decision. The canoe route they took was a tedious five hour journey. I opted to take the motorboat instead. We spent two hours rescuing canoes that tipped over and teaching people how to canoe properly.

After the motorboat ride, I decided to help at the kitchen. I don't know much about cooking but they had me cooking fried chicken. I fried 300 pieces of chicken. That was a lot of chicken. The campers ate them all. It was good chicken. We had a workshop in the evening and we ended the day with a bonfire and marshmallows again.

Monday

It was the day we headed back to civilization. Before we left, we had to clean everything--as in everything. Beach front. Kitchen. Mess hall. Cabins. Toilets. My team was assigned to clean the toilets. "Lucky" me. Real "lucky" too because my aunt decided that we should leave earlier due to a dinner we had to attend that evening. I didn't complain. ;) We left right after they announced the cleaning assignments.