Kraft-ed Single

The other day I was thinking about marriage, it's hard not to when the majority of people I know these days seem to be getting hitched! I was able to make it to 2/5 weddings this summer and there are at least another 3 this year coming up that I know of! To be a 22 year old Christian who is single seems to be extraordinarily weird.

Since I've been home I've received comments such as: "you're not married yet??? That's unbelievable!", "have you found a husband yet?", and my personal favorite so far would have to be "Jenny you're such a pretty girl...I don't understand why don't you have a boyfriend!"

It's not like I don't want to be married and have all the fun stuff that comes with it you know, someone to share life with, the "ooohs" and "awwwws" over a huge engagement ring, and all that other stuff. I would be lying if I said that I didn't think about it every once in a while, I mean, c'mon now, I am human and a girl and I don't know of any girl who NEVER thinks about her wedding day. I can SIGH and wish with the worst of them!

The thing is that people look at being single as a bad thing and I don't really think that it is! I mean we weren't born married and everyone has managed as far as they have (or did) without getting married. If I wasn't single I don't think that I would've been able to do as much stuff as I have done so far in life. I think that I've had an amazing adventure with God so far! I've traveled, I led a 6 month, young adult mission team at the age of 20 ( I'm still digesting that year) and I'm currently living in England working with youth and I love my job. It's been so much fun and I haven't been alone at all on the journey at all. Just because I'm single it doesn't mean I'm lonely. I have met amazing friends and people who I would call part of my family who have blessed me and supported me and who I've been able to have plain ol' immature fun with. In Genesis when God created everything he said it wasn't good for man to be alone, but he didn't say that it's not good to not be married.

I am looking forward to that day because I think it will be great, I'm pretty sure one day I'll arrive there, I really do hope so, but in the meantime I'm not going to look at myself as crippled or only half as good as someone who's married. I'm at a different stage in life but it doesn't mean that God is with me less now. I am always meant to be fulfilled by my Father in heaven whether I'm single or married. I was crafted single for a reason and while I am, I'm going to do my best to be content with life and enjoy every day and love God with all my heart, mind and strength.
And when I get married I'm going to do the same!

Myself

I found this in a one of my old journals. I wrote it just before I left for England last August.

myself
underneath
bitter resolve
shaky
crumbling
fragile, hurting, exhausted
ancient walls
emotional traditions
rusted locks, dominating, hindering, stopping...Frustrated
powerless
generational insecurities
brokenness
....the cry! Between cracks...."from deep to deep"
light!
Hope!
steady...steadfast
spreading
transforming
victorious
strong
unbreakable, Rock solid
truth
security
Love! Love! Love! Love!
..."covers a multitude of sins!"...Loved!
forgiveness
acceptance
new
completely new!
..."the old has gone!"...
..."forget the former!"... Righteous
change
invisible
blinding
evident
cleansing
purifying
refreshing
peace
rest
..."lay down your burdens"...
comfort
encompassing
enduring
endearing
lovely
beautiful
rejoice!
yours!
mine!
all!
...His
Him
..."I am my Beloved's and He is mine..."
life
forever
abundantly
no end.

Guts

They say that if you have cats, one way to tell that they actually like you, is through the amount of presents they leave on your doorstep. Presents being small prey that they've caught while they've been out on the prowl.

My cats must really love me!

I came out of the back door of my house today to do some tanning in the back yard and nearly stepped on a dead bird and a frog. I thought the frog was alive until I realized that while his front half was perfectly intact the back half of him had been smeared into the step. Not a very pleasant sight. Since I spotted these poor animals that had been masticated by my cats it was my job to get the shovel and throw them away. It was a bit of a job to scoop them up onto the shovel without actually touching them and it was rather grim. I had to detach my mind from what I was actually doing.

Later on I was outside taking down the laundry that had been drying for my mom and what did I spot as I was heading back inside? A dead mouse in the exact same place the bird had been. Ohh the poor animals!! So I made a bit of a fuss and yelled about it and then had to go get the shovel when my mom says "oh can you get the bird head and wings from the front path as well?" YUCK!!! I carried FOUR animals to the back grass today!

I'm really hoping that I never have to do that again. It was one of the most unpleasant things ever!

Maybe I should look into getting a dog.

Mafia House

My mother squished a cricket today...she didn't even dispose of it, she left it under the carpet...the one that my youngest brother killed can still be seen underneath the plastic by the computer...I am most disturbed.

I decided to try a new look on my blog. Please tell me what you think!

Peanut Butter Cookies

There is a plus side to having moved downstairs to the basement, it means I have a lot more access to the computer once everyone has gone to bed which means that I should be able to blog a lot more frequently!

Today I didn't do to much but one of the few things I did was make some peanut butter cookies. Well, I tried to make some peanut butter cookies, things didn't exactly go as planned. Now, before I continue and before everyone reading this suddenly thinks "oh Jenny!", I would just like to let everyone out there who thinks they have a full understanding of who I am, know, that against all prior incidents in the kitchen I can bake. I am fully capable of creating culinary masterpieces and I am not the only one to have fouled up when baking something! Just ask the lady in England who offered to BUY my peanut butter cookie recipe because she thought they were so good. That's actually a fact too, anyone who would like proof can ask my friend and
co-worker Lisa for verification. (And those ones were the ones with too much salt!)

Ok so, as I said, I decided to bake and everything was going absolutely smashing when my mom called up the stairs and asked "what are you using to bake on?" I had put the cookies on regular metal baking trays but apparently that's not what she uses anymore because they're not that great to bake on. She had forgotten to tell me and about a minute after she said this I smelt burning! I quickly took the cookies out of the oven but the bottoms had burned onto the pans (very sad face here) Fortunately I was able to save half the batch and bake them on the proper clay trays she usually uses and my brothers were able to enjoy what I had created. I suppose looking at it from the half full perspective it was a pretty good accomplishment and an afternoon well spent!

Did I already mention that a lady in England wanted to buy my peanut butter cookie recipe from me? So all you keen bakers out there who are interested I will be taking bids!

Insomnia

It is 12:55am and I CAN'T sleep...a problem I seem to be having lately. Grrrrrr!
Did I drink too much caffeine today?? Well I don't drink coffee. I know, I'm a North American and I don't like coffee. Honestly I just can't stand the taste. I like coffee flavoured drinks and on occasion coffee flavoured ice cream, but when it comes down to straight coffee and nothing else I can't stand it. The smell is appealing but I'm sorry the taste is vial! So I can rule out coffee as a cause of my problem. I had a root beer but it was Mug's root beer and they don't even put any caffeine in it and I didn't even eat any chocolate today so it it definitely can't be caffeine.
There is a possibility of the bed factor. I moved downstairs onto the pull out sofa bed and it's a bit of an adjustment. In fact I have slept in...10, yep 10 different beds this summer! After a while I find that my brain just gets a bit numb to the idea of having to switch beds and it just becomes an automatic action to sleep wherever I am. However, this sofa bed may take a little more than a numb brain to adjust to it ...the springs are somewhat more present and protruding than in other beds.
Then there are the crickets! You'd think the sound of crickets would be soothing kind of like when it rains at night and you listen to it drumming on the roof...very peaceful. But not these crickets, these ones infiltrate the basement of our house and they wait. They wait until all the lights are turned out and then they make noise and while they're making their noise they're moving around. My brother Stephen killed a cricket that had climbed up on the inside of the plastic that's covering the insulation. It's actually there right now squashed, if I turned on the light I would be able to see it. Maybe it's the thought of sharing the basement with a murdered cricket that's keeping me up or the thought of revenge from the remaining crickets. I was a bit disturbed by his violent behaviour. I asked why he couldn't have just put the poor thing outside and he looked at me with glazed eyes and said "because I HATE THEM! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!" He's spent the last week in the basement so I wonder if I too will come to hate the crickets as much as he does, to the point of violently killing them. Will my eyes glaze over everytime someone mentions the word crickets when a week is up? Usually I just trap them under a cup and put them back outside, will that change?
Will I become a senseless killer?
There is also my cat, Robin. I generally have a fondness for cats, in fact Robin came into our lives about 2 years ago when I rescued a box of abandoned kittens that was left outside a church. I guess you could say I have a soft spot for the furry guys. But I think that tonight Robin is feeling a bit neglected, it could probably be because we've been away at the lake for the weekend and just came back tonight. Maybe he was lonely and really missed us. Or maybe he's missed me for the entire year that I've been in England and is trying to make up for lost time spent with each other. I do not know, but I know that he is on the sofa bed right now sleeping, taking up most of my pillow space and refusing to move!
It could be my sunburn. I spent the day outside in my bathing suit without sunscreen. My shoulders and upper body are pretty much tanned already so I just got darker but my legs hadn't really seen too much of the sun this summer and I forgot. My thighs are pretty red and they're generating a pretty impressive amount of heat right now!
It could be that I drank a lot of water before bed and I keep having to get up to use the bathroom. That is a big hardship because it means that I have to go all the way upstairs (2 flights in this house!) and it means that I have to be quiet so I don't wake anyone upstairs. Going upstairs also means that I have to leave the springy sofa bed and if I have found a comfortable position it's probably never going to be found again.
It could also be the fact that I'm up on the computer typing this blog, that's probably the winning factor at the moment I think. It's working though, I have started to feel a lot more tired since I got on the computer. Maybe it's because it reminds me of work which would tire anybody out! Who knows, but I'm going to see if I've been remedied of my insomnia!

Farewell to anyone out there who also shares my fate tonight!
(I am also very sorry for the obscene amount of rambling)

What a Delicasy?

I can now relate to John the Baptist....this is me enjoying the wonderful experience of eating a grashopper. Mmmmmmmmmm! All I need now is some honey!

Life...or something like it

I have sucessfully made it back to our Nations Capital after 3 intense weeks in Saskatchewan and Alberta and a quick stop in Saskatoon. I still think I'm trying to mentally process everything that has happened in the past month, maybe even the past year. It really has flown by! However, in the midst of my processing I do have a few adventures that I can share with the 2 or 3 of you who actually do read this blog. They are nothing compared to what Kristy-Anne seems to be up to lately, she seems to be turning into quite a "dodgy character" (to use an English phrase), but I shall share them anyway.

Adventure no. 1 takes place in none other than Calgary, Alberta. We arrived at the church me and the team from England would be staying at over the next couple of nights to discover that the youth would be doing a game of fear factor that night. They had set out a container of super worms and a plastic bag of grasshoppers/locusts (I'm not an expert so I'm not really sure if they were grasshoppers or locusts but I do know that they were still alive!) After we had loaded our things into the church and put them away we were standing around these insects randomly chatting and I went ahead and jokingly said "well I'll eat one if someone pays me!" That was a rather silly thing to say because next thing I know I am being asked how much money would be required for me to follow through with this statement. I foolishly blurted out "$5!" but realizing how little an amount that was to eat something live and crawling I quickly upped the stakes to $10. (Thinking back now I realize that I should have stated the amount in pounds since I was standing in the midst of English citizens but I was not that quick on my toes at the time.) Before I knew it there was $10 in change on the table as different people made contributions and I was faced with the reality of actually eating a live grasshopper/locust! So Pastor Lyle fished one out of the bag and handed it to me and I'm afriad that I was acutally quite girly and as soon as it jumped while I was holding it I screached and let it go! It was picked up for me and again I screached and dropped it. The third time I just cupped in my hands and I figured that I'd just better go for it so I threw it in my mouth, hopped and chewed rapidly and got it over with as soon as I could. Honestly, it was not that bad! It didn't taste horrible at all, a bit tangy, and the worst part was that one of the legs got stuck in my teeth. Steve took a very flattering picture of me as well! Maybe I'll post it one day....

Adventure no 2 takes place in Saskatoon Tuesday afternoon I went to the mall in Saskatoon with Steve, Heather, Tanys and Phil and Tanys and I needed to go to the washroom so we found them upstairs and went in. I finished before Tanys and was waiting outside and thought that it would be a great idea to try and make Tanys jump when she came out. Well, not wanting to scare some random person I stuck my head around the corner just to see where Tanys was at and she was drying her hands so I figured she would be the next person out. The dryer finished blowing and I heard her coming and as she walked around the corner I went "raaaaa" and threw my hands up! It was great.....the only thing was.....it wasn't Tanys!!! It was this very sweet, innocent, very young pregnant lady!!! I felt sooooo bad!! I explained that I was trying to scare Tanys who happened to be coming just behind this lady and was laughing so hard at me! The lady kind of just nervously laugh and walked away. I felt soooo silly!

Adventure no 3: My two brothers, Tanys, Steve and Heather and I were in the park across from Tanys' parents taking some pictures and I was wearing my favourite pair of jeans, the ones with all the holes in them. I was getting pretty bored of taking pictures and so inbetween I thought that it would be a good idea to try and do some cartwheels. I didn't get very far because right in the middle of the first one I heard this huge RIIIIIIIIIIPPPP and my jeans split all the way down my leg on the seam that runs up the inside!! I immedietly dropped to the ground on my stomache and was laughing really hard. No one else knew what was going on or paying attentiont to me anyway so they didn't know it had happend. They were trying to get me to get up and pose for another picture and didn't understand what was going on. I explained what had happened and why I couldn't move, I didn't really want to flash anyone so Steve ran across to the house and got me a blanket to wrap around. Well I looked like a granny in the pictures with this knitted blanket on my lap! It was pretty funny although I am very sad that my jeans are now completely unwearable :(

So those are just a few adventures so far. I thought they were some funny moments that might be appreciated. I think that I am going to end this blog here as it's already getting pretty long!

Love, Jenny*

Alberta

These are some pictures of my team while we were in Lloydminster and at Lake Louise in Alberta. We had a blast, I love them all very much and I'm going to miss them very much this summer.

Wow, I arrived in Canada on July 16 and already it's been 3 weeks! Time sure flies! I had an amazing time with my team from England. It was so much fun having them over in Canada and ministering with them. I really do love them all. The first week we were here we went up to a Native Reserve in Northern Saskatchewan called Southend. I'd been there twice before already but never in the summer. The scenery was beautiful. Southend is called Southend because it's right on the Southern tip of Reindeer Lake. We had a great week doing a afternoon vbs with the kids and just hanging out with them.

Our second week was spent in Lloydminster helping out with a 5 day VBS there. The last week we spent relaxing a bit and headed out into the Rockies for a bit of sight seeing.

I can't begin to tell you how much fun I had. There were so many adventures and things to laugh about that I would have to sit down for a week to write them all out. Hopefully once I get to Ottawa and have some time on my hands to relax some of them will be recorded. I always intend to journal everything on a trip like this but it doesn't usually happen.

The team went back on the 6th of August and it was so hard saying goodbye. When you're with people so closely for a time they become like family and I can't wait to see them all again when I go back to England in September.

Anyway I should get outside today so that I do not turn into a blob. There are some more pictures of the last three weeks on my msn space so go check em out!

God Bless!