It’s 2009 already!

So, the new year has come and I thought it was about time that I sent out an update to all.  I’ve been so blessed by the support shown to me over the year, and I hope that you know that (between random emails) I love you and appreciate you an awful lot! So, THANKS!! You know who you are 🙂

And so, onto the meat….

Vancouver, this winter, has had the most abnormal weather – I’ve heard rumours that it hasn’t been like this since the 40’s!! (or since 40 yrs ago…either??) Anyways…..and so we’ve been covered in at least a foot of snow for about a month!!! It’s slowly melting away now…although this week it got down to -5C and snowed today!!..aaggh!!

Here’s a picture of my car and me scraping off the snow one day in Dec…

scraping away the icy and snow

 

Me in the snow!

 

Haha…ok….so you’ve got the picture by now!!

By the way, so that is my team car up there – it’s an Oldsmobile Cutlass 1990. We’ve called it Opa or Opi or Oldi (basically Grandpa) It’s such an old man car, it’s funny.    The only problem is that it is quite the gas guzzler – it’s costing us more to fuel it than money we have in our account, so we have a wee problem.  We need a new car or more money – so please pray for that, or if you want to donate to the cause then email me!!

So, this week I got a new team member – welcome David Lancaster, from England – the Brits now out number the Germans!!  He’s a funny one, and I think will settle in well to the team – he’s out at a school basketball game at the moment with Ben (our youth pastor).  It was sad to say goodbye to Sophie before Christmas, but she is safely back in Germany…which has meant that Sarah is the only German on the team now! She’s coping well with all the sarcasm so far!!

I have been badgering two local schools this week, trying to get meetings – Burnaby Mountain and Cariboo Hill Secondary Schools.  We have quite a few students in our church youth group who go to Cariboo Hill, so it’d be amazing to get involved there and meet their friends and make new ones – get them involved with the church.

Our youth program at the church is taking a change, starting Feb 1.  We’re starting new small groups (called Clutch) and fun events and a new service centered night called Crew Nights (that’ll start later though).  We’re really excited to connect more with the girls in our group, we have some awesome Grade 8’s who we really want to see grow in their faith and in reaching out to their friends in their schools.

Here are some names you can pray for – Sarah, Shawna, Rachel, Hana, Jessica, Stefanie, Katrina… they’re all super cool girls who we want to see grow in their relationship with God, their relationships with each other and to see them share that with the world!!

What else…??

The Flying Buzzard set sail at the beginning of December, they are currently around the Canary Islands….what’s more exciting is that her and Mike got engaged!!! My mom’s getting married!!!!!

Ok….so I think that’ll do for now.  This is a new season and I’m super excited!!!

Please email me with comments, or questions, or just to say hi, or to tell me that you’re praying, or to tell me how you’re supporting me….all’s good! I really appreciate it all. Thank you.

Be Blessed, love Jess

Happy Turkey

So…it’s been 2 months since Pais 08/09 started and this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend a.k.a Happy Turkey.  I get to spend Sunday with some of my favourite people and then get Monday off work too…which is great!

Ok, update on life thus far….

I got back from England and had a beautiful few weeks in the sunshine of Vancouver, I went to Vancouver Island and visited some family friends, I went down to Portland, OR to visit a long-time friend and got to see Seattle, WA too – the weather was amazing and it was wonderful seeing my friend Jennica again too (it’s been 4 yrs).  From there I flew to Fort Worth, TX for 2 weeks of Pais Foundational Training.

 

Pais Training:TEXAS

My role as Team Leader kicked in as I met the first member of my new Pais team – Sophie is 23 and from Germany.  My other team member is Sarah, she’s 20 and from Germany as well – she wasn’t able to get to the training in Texas until the last day because she had problems with her visa.  The training was an intense 2 weeks of seminars and teaching – it was good but crazy busy.  I was staying with the most AMAZING host family though – they had a swimming pool, hot tub, boat, jetski….it was amazing and the couple were the kindest, most loveliest people EVER!! I felt so blessed to have met them and live with them for two weeks.

Pais Canada::VANCOUVER!!! 

Back in Vancouver and It’s never felt more like home – I’m so glad to be back after being in Texas!! Vancouver is a sweet place to live. Seriously.

So, being back in Vancouver now, I have moved churches. I know work at a church called Cariboo Christian Fellowship Church, which is in the city east of Vancouver called Burnaby.  Because of this, I have had to move house too – so I spent my first week living with a Filipino family in Surrey.  The family were so lovely but Surrey is so far away! I was driving for nearly 2hrs each morning to get to devotions in Vancouver, as I had to pick up the girls in my team from Port Moody (which is also far far away!).  I moved after a week to near where the girls were living to another city called Coquitlam – where I live at the moment with a lovely couple called Bob and Sara.

My team life has been challenging – trying to hold onto the vision of creating a media team, but not having anything turn out how I expected it (not just things I wanted to happen not happening, but things I didn’t want to happen happening!)  So, I’m learning to be faithful with what I have and to hold on to my dream.  I have the most amazing people around me and I love my new church – my new youth pastor is called Ben and he’s awesome.  I just don’t like being so far out in the suburbs. I miss my old host family and being in the Westside…but I keep visiting.

And now it’s been 2 months and things are plodding along….it’s not bad but it’s not great.  But I do have tons to be thankful for….and now it’s Thanksgiving and I’m so thankful, I’m happy and feel so loved.  I feel at home in this temporary home for the year…..that sounds weird, but it’s all ok!!

 

Some photos:

Next Year

So, I thought I’d better write something quickly about my plans for next year (starting August ’08).  I have agreed to stay on with the Pais Project as well as starting a new kind of team for the department.

Last year, shortly after I arrived in Vancouver, I had the feeling that I didn’t know why I was here – I mean, I was doing youth work (which I’d not done much of before) and was living in the biggest city I’ve ever lived in (which was kinda daunting).  It wasn’t feeling much like home and on top of that, I was starting to feel that I didn’t want to lose the passion I had for film (after having completed my degree in Film Production).  

But then I had the idea of combining both my passion for my Christian faith and film together – brilliant plan!! I remember praying before I knew what I was doing after graduating, saying that I wanted to combine the two and that I’d be up for anything … but then I ended up on Pais?? 

I’ve met quite a few people in the Industry here – Vancouver has a million movies being filmed here, there and everywhere – in fact, there is a movie being filmed this week across the road from my church at the local high school we work at.  People always ask me if I want to go into the Industry too – but I don’t.  That’s not my passion – just ask me what movies I like and my mind goes blank, so I can’t be all that into it all eh? haha. Having said that, I recently watched three movies that I’ll recommend to you now – Juno, The Darjeeling Limited and A Scanner Darkly. Go watch, and let me know what you think.

ANYWAYS, to get back on track….

In October, we helped at a conference called Campusfire and whilst there, I heard a guy called Brett Ullman speak and he inspired me in what I want to pioneer next year with my team.  So let me try to explain this…

**I have a love for people, but a hate for the pain that people struggle with.

**I have a love for culture and media, but a hate for the lies that are constantly telling us we’re not good enough.

**I have a love for God and the truth and freedom that His name brings, but a hate for the barriers that prevent us from believing any of it, causing us pain and anger.

So, what to do about these things?  What I want to do now, is go into high schools and through creative (art, film, music, etc) workshops, seminars, classes, assemblies and whatever else, share with the students a life worth living – bringing them Biblical and good values but not in an explicitly Christian way.  However, this stuff won’t happen for a while. I need people to join me on this mission, and prayer.  As well as all this, I’ll have Pais work to do – which will be fun, doing things like update videos for the other teams, and newsletters and other stuff too.

Hello world!

So I have taken the initiative in starting this blog for all you people who want to keep up-to-date with how things are going for me in Vancouver.

I moved here about 8 months ago, in Sept 07 to join the Pais::Canada department.  I have been working as a ‘missionary’ to the students in the Westside of Vancouver – working with the youth at University Chapel, as well as offering local schools free resources through the Pais Project.  We do this with the vision of connecting churches with high schools – building community and hoping to bring students to Christ.  I have been doing this since September and have consequently been terrible at updates (due to busyness, but that’s a lame excuse really) – so this is my new leaf.  

Please, please keep me accountable to this!! If I’ve not written something for more than ONE MONTH, then feel free to email me with abuse.  

I am eternally grateful to all of you who have supported me during my time here in Canada, and to those who continue to do so….I  just hope I can give back to you a little appreciation in the form of these updates.

AND…for you who are in England, you should definitely make sure that you have 22nd June – 22nd July in your diaries because that is when I am back for a short month of visitations….so I’ll probably want to see you, so EMAIL ME!!! jessvgordon@gmail.com

Here’s an awesome photo of Downtown Vancouver, pretty sweet eh?: