The Storm Will Turn to Light

Wow. How's your day been?

Mine was one of the toughest days I've had in quite some time. We had the funeral of one of the teens who had been out to youth twice. He was killed by a train last week, and it hit home today. He was 16, and in need of hope. Not even sure what to think at this point. Just feel pretty powerless. I've been listening to one song for the past few days, and I thought it would be appropriate to share here.

how long have I
been in this storm
so overwhelmed by the ocean's shapeless form
water's getting harder to tread
with these waves crashing over my head

if I could just see you
everything will be alright
if I'd see you
the storminess will turn to light

and I will walk on water
and you will catch me if I fall
and I will get lost into your eyes
and everything will be alright
and everything will be alright

I know you didn't
bring me out here to drown
so why am I 10 feet under and upside down
barely surviving has become my purpose
cause I'm so used to living underneath the surface

if I could just see you
everything will be alright
if I see you
the storminess will turn to light

and I will walk on water
and you will catch me if I fall
and I will get lost into your eyes
and everything will be alright

So it's been a pretty tough day around here. There are two brothers and 4 sisters of this kid, and I watched his oldest brother just sit there and watch him in his open casket. Pretty devastating, but hopefully the nightmare is over. The situation isn't exactly stable, but I'm not even sure that that is what is bothering me. It's just the feeling of being entirely powerless to stop something like this.

I mean, I'm supposed to be part of the freakin' church, right? The hope of Jesus and all that. And that's how I feel tonight.

Powerless.

I think it's the fact that people would walk through the shadow of Jesus (or was it Peter?) and be healed. Yet this kid was able to walk into the church, be in our sphere of influence, and nothing...

So that's where both Michelle and I are at tonight. Just feeling pretty sad, not hopeless, but grieving. Such a strange thing, because we only know the family a bit. I guess they've been on my radar for a while, because they're a fringe family. I just have a lot of thoughts that need to get sorted out. Just a sad image in my head though, one of a boy who lacked enough hope so much that he chose to stand in front of a train.

So you can pray for us tonight. It's really not about us, but it affects us. So if you have a moment, prayer would be great tonight. Thanks all. We love you dearly.

Been a while, hey?

It has been a while - almost a month!

Last time we posted on here, there were a lot of things going on. There still are a whole lot of things going on, which I suppose has shown through our lack of posting. We now know what our summer is going to look like, and when things will be chaotic and when things will lay off a bit.

For the most part, it now looks like a busy summer.



I'll be preaching for much of July and August, and I've already had a few opportunities here and there. The last two weeks, I've spent an absolute ton of time on two videos (one was Dave's farewell, the other was the highlight of the team going to Thailand). Thankfully, I don't have to preach this week. But next week, we've got a pretty neat thing going...

Next week, we'll be joining our community in what's called the Green Square. It's in the center of town and we'll be hosting a Sunday service on July 1, and I get to preach. I think I'm more intimidated by that Sunday than the whole summer of preaching. We'll see how next week goes...

So enough about work! On to the good stuff! Michelle has been busy with babysitting, and she actually took Kaelyn and I out on a date with her money. That was pretty cool. Kaelyn is no longer content with just words here and there. She now talks in small sentences...

"C'mere!"
"Ruuuun!"
"Don't worry, I got you. Won't fall." (that's for when she's on the swings and slide)
She picks things based on colors, like her swings (she likes the black one - "That one!"

And she helps me go get the mail. She's the official keys holder as we walk until, of course, she sees the nearby swings and decides to dash for them ("Ruuuun!"). I think that's her normal mode of transport now - the run. She's got a ton of energy and runs everywhere. She's also an outside girl, which makes time in the park a lot of fun. Can't wait for the cabin!


As I was looking at pictures to put on this blog entry, I came across some stunners! I totally forgot to mention that I climbed my first mountain a few weeks ago. It was 5 kilometers in and 2.6 km up! Pretty amazing hike! And at the top of the mountain, of all things, there were hundreds of chipmunks living in amongst the shards of rock! So I have finally done my first mountain, and I have to say it was pretty amazing. The best part though, was ending off in Miette Hot Springs. Good way to finish any sort of difficult climbing. Michelle didn't make the hike with me, but she joined myself and the Blackmans (my fellow climbers and really good friends) at the Hot Springs after. Smart girl.

We had a pretty great day yesterday too. We took the youth out to Jarvis Lake, which was absolutely beautiful. That's a nice way to end over 30 hours spent on one video. Then last night, out of nowhere, I was sitting down to some TV when I thought the next door neighbor was playing hockey in his yard. Turns out it was ping-pong ball sized hail, which fell for about 15 minutes! So of course, I did the logical thing and ran outside to see what it felt like! After about 15 across the back and arms, and one really good one in the ear, I ran back inside. Then the next door neighbor came out in his hockey equipment...perhaps a good idea.

So with that, we are still cruising along here, although I suspect the summer will go too fast. In two weeks (wow, that short!) we'll be in the Yukon with family, but for the next week, I'll be lone gunning it while Michelle and Kaelyn go up and visit all the visiting brothers (all three over the next month!). Summer is good! So I'll fire some recent pictures up here, and get this post on the 'net!

This one's for you, Al.

I just went through my settings on this blog, and realized that I had saved a draft of a blog from a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if this is appropriate or not, but Kaelyn and I got to share in something very special.

Many of you have heard of Relay for Life. Well, it takes place here in Hinton right behind the church on the high school's track. Kaelyn and I were hanging out at the church, and we decided that we needed to go and do a few laps for a few of the people we know and care about who have had to endure cancer. And so that's what we did.

Kaelyn and I did two laps in a +25 hot sun (without hats too, but that's okay, because we didn't actually have one). While people and teams were setting up their tents around the track, there was one team on the track already: father and daughter. And we did two laps for two special people - one for my Grandpa Dimond, who passed away from a fight with cancer, and one for Al Forrester, who just recently passed away from the same fight. Al is a great friend to my parents, and from what I hear, a deeply missed fellow morning coffeer (yes, it can be a verb with some people). So Kaelyn and I walked around and said, "Here's to you, great Boppa." And "this one's for you, Al." I wanted to share that with you, and didn't realize that I hadn't yet.

So Al, this one is for you.

Round 'n Round and the Rise of a New Power

Hey everyone. We went out to see Spiderman 3 a few weeks ago (best Spiderman, although that really doesn't say much), and I was just thinking of all the superheroes out there. And none, not even Batman, compares to the Mighty K. Welcome to the rise of a new powerful superhero - Mighty K. As you can see from some of our pictures and videos, she has several superhuman strengths.

One is the ability to run the "round 'n round" with no sense of stopping. The round and round is Grandpa and Grandma Smith's house, which is built so you can run round and round in circles. Whoever designed that place originally should be given a Medal of Honor.

Mighty K's second ability is "bubble-blowing". We broke out some of the bubble blowing gear in the last few weeks, and Kaelyn and I sat on the couch blowing bubbles for a good hour. Some would pop in her eyes, and all over the place, but she didn't care. When momma got a hold of us, there was soap everywhere. Now that's a special ability.

The last ability is her fearsome roar when she says the word "muscles." "Mussssssosss!" I can see the fear in your eyes already.

So these last few weeks we've spent away from the house as much as possible. I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger that we were facing at the time, and because of the public nature of this blog, I didn't feel it was appropriate to share all that's going on. Now I can.

We've been working through one major issue in our lives - our senior pastor has resigned, effective June 17. As a result, my job description is vastly changing to more preaching and less student ministries. We're trying to keep that in balance, and I am certainly feeling the weight of many sermons at this point. Oh well, should be fun. I also have fully realized my total lack of desire to be anything senior pastorish. So that's a good confirmation. In fact, several people have asked me if I would step into a senior pastor role, to which I reply, "Yeah right. No."

So that's mostly what we've been dealing with. With that, we've managed to hole up for a bit because of the weight we've been carrying. We got away a few times to Michelle's parents, and a couple of times to my parents, so some of these pictures are from those visits. We've really enjoyed being able to hang with grandparents (and uncles and aunts too!), and it is really huge to my heart to be able to see Kaelyn play with kids her age (her buddy and cousin Tristan).

So we're still waiting on a few pieces of news - whether Michelle gets into school, what our summer will look like, and a bunch of other things that could help to dictate the outcome of our next couple of months of our lives. Good times.

The weather is finally warming up around here, which makes me pretty happy. We've been spending a lot of time on the swings at the park and listening to Kaelyn exercise her vocabulary (which is huge now).

All that to say, summer is finally here! Yay! We hope the weather is nice in your area, and we'd love to hear from you! I'm excited to share my growing backlog of pictures with you - I've been holding out - so here are some more of our Smith Scene. Have a great day!

Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Swings

I'm sitting here listening to our parrot-girl as she copies everything Michelle is putting on her grocery list.

"Cheese buns." "Cheeze baaaaas."

"Berries." "Beezeeeees."

"Meat." "Meat." (nailed that one)

"Juice." "Joooooooos." (nailed that one too)

"Pickles." "Pickohs."

"Sour Cream." "Sowah Keem."

Very cute.

We just got back from the "aaaihs" and "wheeees" (slides and swings) and a great park just a few blocks from us. I'll have to catch up on some of my pictures. I haven't wanted to post them all at once, so every post there are good pictures. So as I get the ones of Grandpa and Kaelyn playing in the yard, I'll post them up. Grandpa Smith has been visiting us for the last few days, which made for a fun week. Today Kaelyn has been asking, "Where's the boppa?" (Where's the grandpa?) Yesterday Grandpa, Daddy, and Kaelyn all made it to the park together and made sure to hit a lot of slides and swings then too.

So today we're laying low and just relaxing. My knee is pretty sore from a good day of football yesterday, so I've been icing and tensor bandaging all day. That and reading. And swinging. A very productive day.

The picture of the little one in the walker, for those of you who don't know, is my little nephew Tristan. He's testing out the best thing I have ever made with anything Lego-like. It's my small child walker. The best part is that he actually walked like an old guy when he used it. That picture was taken at Easter, when we were up at my parent's place.

We're all looking forward to the end of the week. It's been an exceptionally long week, and once tomorrow is done, we'll be very happy. Then we're going to blast out of Hinton and go visit Michelle's parents. That'll be very good.

Anyhow, I'll update you with some pics, and then get back to my very busy day. Video games are on the agenda, or perhaps something even more productive, like sleep. Or more reading. Or looking on Canadian Tire's website for a hammock stand. Let's hope for the last one, that would be great.

The first picture you see is from yesterday when we went swinging. The rest are from a few weeks ago when we were up visiting family in Meadow Lake. In the last few, Kaelyn is on her Easter Egg hunt, followed by her and Tristan playing with their new sidewalk chalk in Grandma and Grandpa Smith's basement. Oh what fun! Hope you all have a good week, and I'm hoping to post a whole lot more on here in the coming future!

A Special Treat this Week!

Well, we're here in the second best part of the week (Sunday afternoon usually being the best, because then I get both Sunday aft and Monday morning to look forward to). Mondays mornings are great - for us it means french toast and long coffees. Those are good things.

So this morning I figured out how to post things on YouTube. These are the videos that I've posted; hope you like them!

Nothing too incredibly new or exciting to report at this moment. Life is busy as usual, Michelle is still waiting to hear back from the U of A, and Kaelyn continues to amaze us with her vocab. My work has been kind of fun and challenging lately. On the fun note, I am in the process of creating a 47" x 95" poster for a board. It looks amazing so far. On Saturday, I raced out to a lake that has a view of two separate mountain ranges and took 30 pictures of them. They look great, and that's on the background of the huge poster. So hopefully it'll turn out!

Zoe is, as usual, sleeping behind my chair. I just realized that (too late) as I moved the shair backward to give me more room. Whoops.

Sorry for the short post this morn. Things are unfolding around here (at least we think) and over the next little while, we'll probably be able to fill you in. Mostly minor stuff, but as my brain wakes up, I'm remember what it is too.

As for us, we're going to spend the next week laying low and taking some time to relax. I say that now, and I actually hope it'll be reality. Hopefully over the next week, we'll let you know how things are going around here, but if you don't see it here, make sure to give us a ring!