swedish emily

i was talking to my sister emily yesterday and today. apparently she was homesick,and im the only one who can soothe her :) hehe. i was talking with her and her cool friend catie last night, and i got to watch them on webcam. i got them to do some silly random stuff, i think catie liked it. heres some pics of emily on webcam with her AWESOME new hair cut (jk) she gave me a tour of her room too,

this is a pic of her and her random plant that she things is cool .. check out her hair

hahah, i was trying to get her to do stuff, but she wouldnt. i got her to laugh at this random fat dancing kid.

i kinda, kiiiiinnndaa miss my sisters! but its ok, im getting a new one tomorrow! our exchange student patty is moving in tomorrow for 3 months, right now she lives down the road from it. it shalllll be intersting having another sister.

today ive done nothing....except my clm portfolio...and for those who have taken clm , you feel my pain !!

prom prom prom

last weekend when i was in the city with friends i went prom dress shopping and couldnt find ANYTHING i liked!! i tried on one dress that i didnt even like that much, and was a size 12 anyways so i didnt even have to take my clothes off to try it on. i was starting to get really nervous because it seams like everyone already had theirs, and if i couldnt find one in the city, how could i except to find one in the valley!! but on wednesday my mommy picked me up from school (yaya i got to miss last class) and we went to 2 stores. i found one at the 1st store we went to, but it was pink...and im not really a pinky kinda girl. then we went to one last store and i found one that i really liked. my mom didnt really like it at first when she had seen it on the rack, but she likes it better now. im glad i was able to find one that i liked!

today i had to go and get it fitted with my shoes. you'll all have to wait and see what shoes im wearing ! HEHEHE ;) my mom didnt quite like my idea... but whatevs

heres a pic of my dress .. not the most attractive day of my life either so yeah. i was hesitating on whether or not to put a pic up, but whatever who cares.

im started to get excited for prom , even tho its not mine. im not so keen on the whole dancing thing tho. meh
leave some comments on my blog so i know people are acutally reading this. I'm begining to think that Briggins is the only person who reads it (and my parents, but they dont count) (brigs; notice anything special about that sentance? i used capital letters :O !!)

easter weekend

this weekend i went to bedford/sackville again. not only was it easter, but on saturday it was mikels birthday. i dont think i have any pictures along with this post--sorry.
i got in sackville on friday, right before the easter service started. after that a couple of us went out for lunch to eat at swiss chalet. that night annie had a whole bunch of people over to just hang out and eat food. it was fun :) then i just stayed there for the night.
on saturday, mikel me luke annie matt and amy all went downtown to look at some prom dresses. amy already has hers, so she was taking me and annie around. we couldnt find any that we liked .. and i still havent. i guess i better get on that. haha. that night mikel had a bday party at his house. it was fun, and we got to eat tons of food again :) the guys watched movies and played games while the girls just sat around and talked and whatnot. i went to kristens for the night, and then we went to church together in the morning. i had to come home yesterday (sunday) so mikel drove me home. thats pretty much my weekend right there. i had a 6 day weekend too because on wednesday it was orientation day, so we didnt have any classes so i didnt bother going. and then on thursday it was a snow day :) niceee.
last night i slept for for about 15 hours. it was awesome !!! hahaha. tonight i have to work, and watch people blow their money on chocolate YAYA. :\
hope you enjoy your easter weekend :)

ALSO -- if you havent already, go and check out my previous posts :)

go missions las vegas 2008 (5)

so wednesday was our last FULL day in vegas, so it was our free day. we woke up super early, and headed off to dennys for breakie. but the person at dennys said that they didnt have enough people/waitress's to feed us, so pastor mikes van went to ihop while ashleys van stayed at dennys. i got to go to ihop, which was suppppper yummy! i was soo stuffed.
it was a fairly long drive to the grand canyon, but well worth it ! we drove across hoover dam, where they are building a highway/road over top that'll be really cool. you might be able to see it in some of these pics. i think it was like a 3 and a half hour drive, in a van of 12 people. yess, it stretches your patience (especially if your sitting by annie and you want to sleep JK). haha, but it was alot of fun. to get to the canyon we had to drive on a dirt road for like a hour, and it was really dusty. it felt like we were really in the desert for once.
heres some pics on the way there in the van. some of them it might look like its raining but its just the dirt on the window

after a long drive we arrived at the canyon. you park your car, and then a bus picks you up and takes you to the first of 2 stops. the first stop had a glass overhead floor that you could go on (if you paid 30$) so most of us opted not to. we got some really awesome pictures and it was about 5000 feet to the bottom, and they said it would take 10 seconds for you to hit the bottom if you fell; which is always heart warming. it was super nice and hot there and i managed to get a nice burn which im proud of !! :D

heres some pictures for you to enjoy.

all the layers

Joanna and Beth

LONNNGG way down, so hard to capture in a picture

the glass walk thing mentioned above

Annie, Beth and Jessica (mentioned in previous posts)

team pic

and heres a video of some birds catching bread..but you cant see them catching it so enjoy the sceenery.

all in all , the whole trip was awesome and i wouldnt change anything about it. it was awesome to see God work in not only myself, but in my team mates. i cant wait to go on more mission trips; both short and long term ! :) hope you enjoyed all my info about vegas and everything else :)

go missions las vegas 2008 (4)

(check out all the other vegas posts before reading this! :) )

on monday we got to sleep in again until 7 30 :D (other days we had to be in line for breakfast at 6 55 am EKK i know !) we didnt have any breakfast at all that morning because at the ywam base they had a 'special bunch' prepared for us. when we got there, we each were given a number and there were 6 spots. one table had AWESOME food with people to cut their food and everything, and then there was a table with p b and j sandwiches and juice. and then it just got worse from there. (rice, bread, dirty water, eating on the ground) and then there was one group that just had to sit there and eat ... well air i guess. and then another group of people were at the garbage can. i was really excited when i got # 2 -- p b and j sandwiches! i love them, (i usually eat them with cheese, but there wasnt any :( haha ) so i ate like 1/2 of my sandwich and then put some of my crusts in the garbage can to see if people would eat it (pastor mike ended up taking it out and eating it) so then kevin (ywam leader) 'demoted' me to the garbage can to eat. but dont worry i ran back for a handfull (actually) of my sandwich with most of it getting smudged on my face by kevin. i found some good stuff in the garbage can. i didnt go hungry. i found some stuff to recycle, and i ate part of a english muffin that people at the 'rich' table dropped, and some apple.

we were told to fast for the rest of the day until supper came around. im glad they had good food at the shelter that night !! haha. doing that activity made us really thankful for what we have and how greedy we really are. a whole village in some poverty filled place would love to eat like just one of us for a day, and we throw so much food out too! one of the ywam leaders also read us some statics too. i cant remember the numbers, but the amount of money that is needed to end poverty is less than the amount of money that women spend on makeup in a year. ending poverty is possible!! good thing i dont buy any makeup.

we also learned about the 10/40 window/focus. check out http://www.1040window.org/ . the 10 and the 40 are for the longitude and latitude lines on a map. the people that fall into the 10/40 are people that have never heard about the gospel. check out the site. heres a pic of the 10/40 window.

they also talked about missionaries there, and ywam in the window.

that night we went to the strip again. outside the bellagio hotel by the fountains. they are way cool, and i ll put a video up furter down in the post. we did 'stomp' while the fountains werent going off. stomp is making beats/music with garbage cans and sticks. 4 of the guys from our team did it, and crowds of people would stop on the side of the road to watch/listen. then the rest of us would go up to the people watching and explain to them what we were doing, and ask them if they wanted free prayer. that night i was with jessica and we had a really good time. we got to talk to a lot of different people, and it seamed like a lot of people we asked were Christians, which was awesome and they were very encouraging and suported us too, but we were going after the a's and the w x y's, not the z's (read last post to understand) stomp was a lot of fun to do, and we pretty much got a chance to join in and help.

this is a pic of marc andrew, matt, dan, and ryan doing stomp.

this was our last out reach , which was really sad. we all had a really awesome time, and didnt want it to end. even as we were walking back to our vans, some of us couldnt stop asking people if they wanted free prayer. it was awesome. i miss it already.

one more post left to sum up the rest of the trip! im getting good at this whole blogging thing eh?! i bet briggins is proud of me :)

heres the video of the fountains like i promised !

next post-- grand canyon !

go missions las vegas 2008 (3)

check out my previous posts before reading this if you havent. :)

so, monday. after breakfast, we did graffiti abatement, where we went with some workers from the city and they got us to paint over graffiti that people had tagged over all these cement walls. we got to wear these really cool white marshmallow like suits to keep some of the paint off of us, but the paint was still able to seap through.

team pic (nova scotia, and montana (another group of about 7 that was with us for the week)) check out the mountains in the background

us in action

later that day after lunch, we did free prayer on fremont street, which used to be the old strip. it was really cool there, they have the worlds biggest big screen in the world. i have a video of it playing too. annie was my partner for this again and we had a lot of fun together. we talked to a lot of people and got into it a lot. free prayer was probably my favorist part of the trip. fremont wasnt overly busy so it was a bit easier for people to hear us which was nice. here the video, its not the best quality in the world but you get the point.

heres a picture of tiff (one of the leaders from ywam) holding the free prayer sign.

later that night we did 2x2's and we could do whatever we wanted in order to talk to people. me and annie decided to do free prayer because we really liked doing that. it was a bit harder because we didnt have a big sign or a cross to use as a prop. we did it on fremont again, and we had a lot of fun. we asked pretty much everyone we could.

heres also a picture of us eating at the shelter, where we usually ate if we didnt go out to a restaurant. eating at the shelter was dificult at times, seeing all these homeless hungry people that would let us all butt them in line. it was especially hard seeing all the little boys and girls there too.

i ll probably be able to finish up the whole trip in 2 more posts !! stay tuned--grand canyon :O

go missions las vegas 2008 (2)

on saturday we had some lessons that prepared us for talking to people about God, and what to say and how to say it. we also got to practice what to say with other people on our team. they also talked about the engle scale which is just the alphabet written out. a's are people that have never heard about God, and the gospel. and w x y 's are people who have heard about God, but havent given their lives up to God. and then z's were us; the Christians, the people living their lives for God. They told us that many people hear the gospel between 4-16 times (or some crazy number like that) before they become a Christian. so even if we didnt see results of people turning to God, our conversation might have helped push them a little bit further along the engle scale. they also reminded us that even though people might not want to pray with us, they might be reminded/encouraged to take the time to pray, and might have a connection. i thought that was really helpful, and a good reminder.




on saturday we also did casino intercession in our small groups that we were placed in (a group of about 6-7 people) and we were given a sheet and a certain casino to go in. on the sheet it was just a couple of things to do while we were in the casino, and to pray for certain people (workers, waiters, janitors etc.) but they wouldnt know that we were praying for them. we were also told to watch people while they were playing the slots, and see if they were laughing/smiling. this was interesting because it was fairly dificult to find anyone who looked like they were having a good time.

after supper we did surveys. we were given a clip board with paper that had a list of questions to ask people like 'do you believe in a god?' 'if you do, what do you think he/she looks like?' / 'if no, why do you not believe in a god?' and questions like that. surveys were a bit hard to do because most people were walking around, and people didnt want to do the surveys. i was with annie for this, and i think we were both fairly unmotivated after asking quite a few people. we did get to talk to some people, but we were still shy about going up to people and asking them if they wanted to do the survey.

on sunday we went to a church way out in lv, kinda near the mountains i think. it was the nicer part of vegas with a lot of desert, and no casinos (that i could see) which was really nice. the church that we went to was called 'destiny church' and theyve only been open for about 2 months. we made up about 1/2 the congregation. i really liked the church and the people there and the pastor are doing a lot for the church. it was nice to be there.

us outside the church, it was in a school gym

we all look really clean. i think for some people this was the only day they took showers. honestly. (me not being one of them)

after lunch we did ABC street intercession which was walking the streets by the new ywam base. its in the 'ghetto' (as sam, one of the ywam leaders called it) and the las vegas government or whatever you call it, is trying to shut down the only exit from the highway that gets to this area of the city. its fairly run down, but this area had SO many churches. we went around in our small groups, and when ever we felt the need to pray we would stop and pray for what God wanted us to. i liked doing this, and it really gave us the opportunity to see the side of vegas that many people dont talk about/know about.

that night we also did the 'cross walk'. we split up into 2 groups and walked back and forth on the strip, in opposite directions. 2 people at the front of group would be carrying the cross, and everyone else would be behind, about 10 feet. we'd stop people in our 2x2 partners (mine was annie) and ask them what they thought about the cross, and what it made them think about. me and annie, well maybe me more, got really into this, and always ended up having to run to catch up to the rest of the group. we had a couple of good conversations with people, and saw some peoples differing views on it. people couldnt stop commenting on the tiny wheel that was at the end of the cross, which was fairly annoying. haha.

(above)getting ready to walk the strip

(below)walking with the cross (i love ryans face in this one haha)

i liked the cross walk more than i liked the surveys. it only got better as the week went on. after every 'activity' we did, we would get together to discuss everything that went on, and what we thought about it. we also got to share with the rest of the group about the conversations that we had with people. some people had bad experiences with the cross walk, so we got to discuss those to, and try and forget all that bad experiences, and move on.

go missions las vegas 2008

here goes my first attempt at a real blog post .. with pictures and everything. this could be long. haha. this almost might take a couple of posts..

so over march break i went to las vegas on a missions trip with a team of 21, youth from rock church in sackville. it was exciting to be going on a trip with no parents :D:D im pretty sure everyone was nervous (but excited) to go.

after a bit of trouble, (cancelled tickets, and 2 hour delay in chicago) we ended up getting at the rescue mission (homeless shelter where we stayed at in lv) at about 2 30 am (6 30 am NS time). thankfully pastor mike let us 'sleep in' until 7 30, which was nice. that day we went to the 'dream center' which is pretty much a wear house filled with stuff that companies donated (items that people returned because they thought there was something wrong with it) we bacially had to sort through the stuff and take of the paper that was attached to them saying why they were being returned, and cross out the bar code. the items would then later be given to homeless people. it was insane to see the amount of stuff that people would return, and there was nothing wrong with the item.

i really enjoyed going to the dream center and helping out, it was a lot of fun, and made us all see how .... i dont know what word to use. but we should be thankful for what we have, and im glad that companies donated these items to go to good use.

after that we went to the new ywam (youth with a mission) base that they just bought which hasnt been all done up yet. we went there to get ready for sack lunch give away. sack lunch give away is when we get into partners and everyone makes 2 lunches; one for your self and one for someone else. then you go up to a homeless people and eat a lunch with them and talk with them. me and jessica greenwood were partners and most people decided to give away all the lunches and not eat one for themselves. (we had eaten 3 times that day; mcdonalds for breakfast, and then they gave us mcdonalds again at the dream center, and then we had lunch at the shelter) we walked for about 20 minutes to a park where a lot of the homeless people 'hang out', i guess you could say. sack lunch give away was a bit challenging. it was the first out reach task we had really done. the first person we went up to was a olderish man, and he invited us to come sit on his cardboard box with him. we were talking to him for a couple of minutes, and then his wife/girlfriend/i dont know what to call her, came over and started swearing and yelling at him, and me and jessica. me and jessica didnt know what to do..so we just sat there. she was just yelling random things like ''you arent supposed to keep secrets from you wife'' and then someother choice words. then the man, fairly embarrassed, was like 'girls im really sorry, im really sorry' kinda hinting for us to leave, so we got up and left, and me and jessica started balling our eyes out. later we found out that the lady went up to one of our leaders and was getting mad, and saying stuff like what do you think you canadians are doing here. and i guess she was mad that we 'two young girls' were sitting with her husband with our legs open Indian style. (we were sitting cross legged, and i guess she took it the wrong way and though we were prostitutes) eventually we moved on from that and gave one lunch to a lady that had just gotten a ticket in the park (for being drunk i think) so she couldnt stay to talk with us. we then got to sit down at a picnic table and talk to a lady. she was a huuge talker and it was hard for me and jessica to get a word in, but that was alright. haha. it was hard to hear that she didnt know where her kids were, and she hadnt talk to them in awhile. as the trip went on, we realized that a lot of the homeless people didnt know where their kids were and hadnt talked to them in quite sometime.

that night we had a scavenger hunt on las vegas boulevard (the strip). it was a lot of fun, and we were in groups of 4 ; it was me, beth doucette, (yes, confusing with 2 beths) annie, and alisha. it was a lot of fun, and we got really into it. we had to take pictures of random things, and take some videos too. i really think we could have won, but after a couple of days annie deleted most of our pictures (they hadnt found the time to check peoples cameras to see who won) so only like 1/2 of them were there when they went to check them.

i think thats a long enough post for a bit, i'll try and do another one today maybe. i'll post more pictures later too. if you have facebook, all my pic's are there, so check them out if you want to.

new blog

i decided to make a blog because everyone seams to have one these days. and its annoying to have to tell everyone every story like 100 times. it might take me a while to get used to how this all works but im sure i ll have lots of help from the blogging king briggins. hope you enjoy my blog. (btw--im doubting this will last very long haha)
i ll be posting some stuff soon with pictures from my trip to las vegas, and what all went down while we were there. stay tuned!