It occurred to me yesterday that we have not formally announced the results of the tour that we got back from only 7 days ago.

To go back a couple of steps, let’s talk about Thursday night, March 26.

At this stage, we had just finished a visit to Spruce Grove and Stony Plain, and having talked to my sister and my mother in Edmonton by phone, discovered that our planned overnight at Dawn’s place was not going to happen.  It wasn’t a big deal – only 90 minutes south we knew we had a bed at Cheryl’s parent’s place in Red Deer.  We jumped on the highway south through Devon and that led us straight to… Leduc, and a White Spot for supper.  Kind of funny, when you realize that White Spot is a unique restaurant chain that is a household name in BC, but almost unknown in the rest of Canada.  The fact that we drove right to one of the very few that are not in BC… well it was comfortable.  I made one concession – I didn’t have their “Legendary Burger”.   When in Alberta, you have an Alberta steak.

We meant to stop for dinner, to digest in private the cities we had seen and ask God where our hearts were.  We only brought in two packets – Spruce Grove and Medicine Hat.  Looking back, these were the two we preferred from the start, but having reviewed all the options, we were more certain than ever it was between these two cities.

After sitting down, we both found our hands gravitating to the Medicine Hat material.  We tried to be fair and set up pros and cons for the two cities, but it was clear to us that barring an act of God, Medicine Hat was where we were being led.  There are many reasons, from the superficial to the miraculous.  I’ll start there. (more…)

We finished visiting all the communities we wanted to Wednesday afternoon. The weather out here has been cold – below normal for the month of March. Hence, we didn’t spend as much time “on the ground” as we originally planned. However, thanks to many hands both likely and unlikely, I believe we saw what we needed to see.

We tried to reschedule our stay at my sister’s place in Edmonton a day early since things were progressing so quickly, but then I learned why she had not been responding – she has had the flu for a week. When I finally learned what was going on, she was staying at my Mom’s place because she couldn’t even watch her 2 year old daughter she was so sick. She is in good hands over there though. My Mom is a pretty good nurse when it comes to colds and flu.

So, the backup plan was instead of staying overnight in the Edmonton area, we hightailed it back to Red Deer – which was only an hour and a half south anyway. That’s another neat thing about Alberta – everything is pretty close.

On the way south after seeing Spruce Grove and Stony Plain, we stopped for dinner at White Spot! Heh. They’ve even expanded out here. We prayed and looked at the material we had for the top two, and God brought us to a consensus. The deciding factors were definitely not on our list before we left so this trip was absolutely worth it.

So that was the good news. The bad news…

Cheryl was grateful that we would have another extra day to rest up as she was getting uncomfortable in the long rides. Being at her parents’ place that helped too. So we visited her grandmother yesterday afternoon and had a great dinner of Roast Buffalo(!) and went to bed, planning to leave today.

You might ask, “What is Shane doing up at 4am posting a blog entry?”  The answer would be Cheryl and her youngest brother Sasha waking up at 4am (Mountain) and throwing up into buckets.  Now they are both occupying different couches with buckets beside their heads and not feeling at all well.

So now the challenge, in addition to about 30 total centimeters of snow that has fallen on us since we got out here (don’t know if more fell last night or not – I haven’t checked), we have the challenge of waiting for this sickness to pass.  Which puts us…

Right back on schedule.  If we leave tomorrow morning, that is what we planned all along.

In our heart we may have planned this trip, but the Lord has definitely determined our steps! (Proverbs 16:9)

Finished with a look at High River and Okotoks yesterday. Shockingly, we saw more appeal in the suburbs of Calgary than with Lethbridge which surprised even me!

Something I didn’t mention before about the Hat. Didn’t see any Thai food there, but on the way out of town there was a little village called Bow Island. What’s right there on the main drag? A restaurant called “Bow Thai”! Sweet!

Anyway, back on subject. The waiter, Ryan at the Boston Pizza in High River turned out to be one of the most informative… informants we have encountered so far. He kept coming back with more info for us. Once he came back to tell us about the hospital… and for some reason brought up the fact that it includes a psych ward. Two possibilities there – 1) he thought we needed medication; 2) God told him to tell us because Cheryl’s a psychiatric nurse. I am choosing to believe the latter.

Here’s a video update:

We quite like High River, but not sure about the need there.  The real trick about this trip is separating our own emotions from the will of God.  They could be the same, but they might not be.

I will have a forthcoming video made this afternoon, but I am having difficulty uploading it. Expect something later tonight.

We got out of Kamloops in record time (due to a restless infant and a dog with a full bladder), and were ahead of schedule by the time we finished breakfast in Revelstoke.  But then a new challenge arose…

Check it out!

If you’re reading this, we are on the road.  We plan to post video blogs of our trip as we travel, they will probably go up in the evenings, after we have a chance to upload them.

Here is a great page to see the BC road conditions for our drive there and back.  Live webcams.  (Geez I hope I don’t get bad traffic from saying that!)

Here is a schedule of our trip:

Friday, March 20
Driving and staying in a hotel on the Trans-Canada, probably around Revelstoke.

Saturday, March 21
Driving to Red Deer to drop off the boys at Cheryl’s parents house.

Sunday, March 22
Driving to Medicine Hat in the morning. Exploring Medicine Hat and Redcliff in the evening and staying with church planters — Wilks Family.

Monday, March 23
Morning, continuing prayer-walking and exploration of Medicine Hat area. Evening, driving to Lethbridge and staying with the Farries family.

Tuesday, March 24
Exploring Lethbridge and spending the evening with the Lister family.

Wednesday, March 25
Driving to Okotoks, exploring and prayer-walking. Spending the evening in Calgary with Shane’s cousins.

Thursday, March 26
Driving to Edmonton, and spending the evening with Shane’s sister and family.

Friday, March 27
Explore and prayer-walk through Spruce Grove and Stony Plain. Drive to Red Deer

Saturday, March 28
Drive home.

Keep checking for our video blogs!  Barring technical difficulties, they will begin tonight!

Heh.  In Canada, the above title is actually relatively meaningless.  The only felonies and misdemeanours we see are on American television.  Our justice system uses the terms “summary offence” for a misdemeanour, and “indictable offence” for felony.  But I digress.

We finally received the packet of information from the Spruce Grove Chamber of Commerce yesterday.  It was, in its lateness, the most complete package we have yet received.  It even included a copy of its local newspaper.  Inside that newspaper was some surprising information.  They actually summarize all the activity of the local RCMP office in the paper!

Here in Surrey, that would be the whole paper itself.  We only get the highlights – the murders, the home invasions, the busted grow ops, etc.

In Spruce Grove, the most serious crimes are theft of ATVs (we don’t have one), RV’s (we don’e have one), and cars (there were like 2 in the week).  After that, it descends into a list of eggings (snicker) and inappropriate use of paintball guns (oh the humanity!).

Now that’s a culture shift that is welcome.

I had coffee with a really nice guy yesterday. The more I think about how much time he gave me, a little ole’ misguided Joe who has the audacity to think God might want to use him to plant a church, the more I am amazed. Cam Roxburgh is the lead pastor of the multi-site Southside Church, involved with Outreach Canada and director of the Forge Network Canada. Yet we had a chance to sit down and chat. In my misdirected scattered thoughts I managed to glean some important things from him.

What were they? Mostly in the way of forcing me to ask some hard questions about assumptions. How important are Sundays to new church? How important are big catchment events? How relevant are they to the people we are trying to reach? Is full-time ministry a given, have I looked hard at my reasons why I think that necessary? Those are some of the questions he laid on the table before me and caused me to think about.

Of course, going home, I was prepared to grab hold of such questions and wrestle with them. In my debrief with Cheryl of course, I was still in this “engagement” mindset which rubbed Cheryl the wrong way. She isn’t a debater in that sense, so it took me a bit to get past that and switch gears as it were.

I am excited that he shook the tree for me with regards to getting more information about the settings we will be investigating. I am going to be calling Lorne at Outreach Canada today to see if I can get a better spiritual “lay of the land” for where we are going. Cam also said he would send me some contacts for the communities we are going to, to listen to people on the ground there.

A bunch of quick things, none of which are postworthy in their own right, but relate to our journey.

• Sunday we had a lady in the church let us know that they have relatives in Southern Alberta who have a Bed and Breakfast.  They have hosted church speakers and evangelists before, and she suggested we contact them for a place to stay as we investigate.
• Saturday night I stayed up far too late with an old friend, talking about life and our church planting dreams.  It is good to have people behind you.
• Speaking of good to have people behind you, I had an old forestry school friend join our prayer network this morning!  It feels like my heart for this calling grows two sizes every time someone unexpected joins our prayer network newsletter list. (By the way, if you haven’t signed up for it yet, it’s on the sidebar to the right.)
• One of my own private plans for the scouting trip was to seek God with a 5 day fast before we leave.  I mentioned that to a couple of close friends and they have courageously volunteered to join me in fasting and praying for God to reveal his plans to us on this trip.
• God’s got a number of challenges for me this week, and I am looking forward to meeting them all head on.  From leading an Awana Director’s meeting to meeting with some friends to deal with some issues, this week has some real experience in store for us both!