I get a great deal of satisfaction when I make something. I'm not really a crafty person since it always takes more time and planning. One thing I intentionally took time to learn to do recently was make home made beer. I was surprised how good it turned out and how community is built in the process.
There's not that much to it. These are the basic ingredients. 
There isn't much precision to homebrewing. Just measuring temperatures at certain points. You get some great aromas during this process. After boiling everything and checking some temps we add the yeast to the mixture and then on to fermentation for about two weeks all together. 
After fermentation you add a sugar solution to your beer and bottle it. From a 23 litre container you get about 50 pints of home made beer. It works out to be about 50 cents per bottle after cost of equipment. 
This gets you instant popularity amongst many of your friends. 
I'm so excited to come home I could almost barf. I have had a lot to anticipate and wait for this advent season. Good food, friends, family, stories, and best of all eggnog. It's gonna be awesome.
Man, I love learning more about myself.
One of the things that is inteded about our experiences is that we discover more of ourselves and what God wants for us.
Recently I took a test called Stregths Finder 2.0. This is a test designed to uncover your strengths and what makes you stand out from others. It also gives an action plan of how to use these strengths throughout your life. It is great. I dicovered that my five top strengths are:
Adaptability- this means that I am a go with the flow sort of person and that I discover the future one day at a time.
Empathy- which means that I have the ability to sense feelings of others by imaging myself in their place.
Maximizer- says that I seek to transform something strong into something superb.
Developer- this means that I recognize and cultivate the potential in others and that I derive satisfaction from small improvements.
Positivity- (I especially like this one) this says that I have an enthusiasm that is contagious.
I am pretty pleased with these strengths and hope to be in a position to use them to their fullest potential now and in the future.
The time is quickly approaching to go home to Cincinnati for a couple of weeks and we couldn't be more excited to reconnect with friends and family and get some more vision for what is going in our lives when we go home for good. We miss home a lot, but while we are here God has blessed us with a great community of people that have filled in as family while we are away. We have spent so much time together and done a lot of life together it is hard to imagine that in a couple of months we won't see them on a daily basis and discuss hard questions life has for us.
Last night we had our usual Monday night meal where we all gather and enjoy dinner together and just hang out or play games or whatever. Last night we tried to make it a little more special in light of the Christmas season.
We sang a few carols led by Deric's redneck twin brother...
We decorated and ate too many cookies and played a few games that I didn't have the attention span for. The only thing this party didn't have was some spiked egg nog. But there are more Christmas Parties yet to be experienced this season.
It was great. It's amazing how God weaves people into our lives. I was reminded how others are put in our lives while we are away to love and care for us as family would. It's not always easy or enjoyable, but it is worthwhile and necessary.
He looked amazingly terrible with those teeth. I love his goofiness.
I just watched Princess Bride and was reminded of how precious our wives are. I know this sounds like a no brainer, but it's easy to forget about that sometimes. We should be willing to lay our lives down for our wife. I was thankful for the simple truth this evening that my wife is a person to be cherished and fought for.
Boy am I lucky to have her. 
This is actually me and Carrie horseback riding on our one year wedding anniversary.
I want to be more passionate and dedicated in life. Not like this guy but you know what I mean.
This is what my good friend Wikipedia says:
Hospitality refers to the relationship process between a guest and a host, and it also refers to the act or practice of being hospitable, that is, the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, with liberality and goodwill.
Hospitality is also known as the act of providing kindness and comfort to whomever may be in need.
Haha. Just a joke. Nobody take that seriously. I LOVE GAY PEOPLE!
This is one huge thing I feel that has been laid on my heart to explore during my experiences in Vancouver. How do we show hospitality to those who are different than I am? What could it look like to be hospitable to strangers and friends? We should give others the best we can. If we are going to give food to someone, give the best or at least something you yourself would eat. 
This will change the world.
I feel challenged to: be creative, employ the gifts available in our community, be inviting, put Christ on display to the world (in a non condeming way), be relevant with out abandoning truth, and enjoy life.
Today started as an early morning down to Bellingham. I had to pick up Deric and Amber this morning. Any time I have to cross the border it can be a little nerve racking to say the least. Although I have a visa to get back into Canada they question me like I am some sort of criminal.
One of the worst visits to the border was with my buddy Ryan. The man fired questions at us and was over the top with his rudeness. He even crumpled our papers up and threw them back at us, and then told us to go inside for further questions. All in all we escaped with little emotional damage and we even got all of our firearms and explosives across the border. Yippie Horray!
Luckily this morning they didn't ask me a thing. They just handed me my passport right back and they even said "have a nice day". That is monumental for the Canadian Border Patrol to say to an American. It just doesn't happen. In order to get the job, they must have a burning hatred for all Americans. Or maybe that is just the way it is for all Canadian citizens. I have met one woman here who said that she loves Americans. That was cool.
We Americans need to throw out some crazy insane love to these Canadians to break down the streotypes all the Canucks have up here.
How would Jesus love the Border Patrol?
Unfortunately this is the reality of so many people in the world. Even here in Canada people in our community are dying of Aids at the same rate they are dying in Africa. People are not getting the help they need to treat the virus. Although many people are sending relief to African countries and other parts of the world, the people there are being oppressed and probably not seeing any of those funds. The first step to action is getting educated.
www.ijm.org
can be a good place to start.
Yesterday I just happend to watch the old family favorite...Remembering the Titans. What a great movie. It's funny, cus I have actually had racism on my heart a lot lately. I'm not sure if it's because Vancouver is one of the most diverse cities or what. I have begun to really search myself and ask myself the question, how many people do I really KNOW that are different than me? Probably not too many. Since being in Vancouver I have found some difficulty in getting to know people who are from different parts of the globe. Cultural differences and accents and other things require more effort to really break through and get to know a person that is totally different than me and my midwestern way of thinking.
A few clips to illustrate differences and what it could look like to over come those things.
I never thought of myself as subconciously racist, but maybe I am. I spend most of my time with people who are as similar to myslef as I can find.
A few lines from some recent bedtime reading...
"Tolerance allows us to survive; love allows us to thrive."
"Stereotypes exist because we are not willing to form friendships with others who differ from us"
"If we aren't willing to diversify in order to connect to God's heart, then we should be willing to diversify ourselves to show God's heart to those in our lives who do not yet follow Christ."
"When we choose to reach out and love everyone around us, we will experience a glimpse of heaven on earth."
Well my friends we have entered into the imagination posture of our learning here. We are now starting the life compass process. This is something that takes our whole past and all sorts of stuff and hopefully we will get a better idea for what God wants for our future. We get to do all this in the midst of community and it is wonderful...sort of. Actually it can be pretty painful and difficult. At least those of us who might have led a life that is not exactly "normal" or somewhat painful this can be a difficult process.
I have never been so uncomfortable in my life. I'm sure that is sort of the nature of this experience. But man it hurts most of the time. People ask us if we are "happy" or enjoying life to the fullest. I can honestly say that we are enjoying life as best we can, but growth does not come without pain. I wouldn't trade this experience for the world.
Let's face it...life as I knew it is gone. I have no close friends. I have no cars to go where ever I want. I have no house or place to call my own. I don't have that spending money to be crazy with. I don't even have decent appliances or utensils to cook with. I have lost my identity no matter how positive or negative it was.
Not to mention the ones we are building relationship with here. Most of them are extremely poor, drug addicted, mentally ill, dying from disease. It makes my crap seem more insignificant. It puts things into perspective. I really don't need that other stuff, no matter how much I think I do. Most of the people in the world are extremely poor. The kingdom of God crashed into my comfortable life and messed it all up.
Yeah things are good..
really good.
Just what is life going to look like for me and Carrie?
I'm going to try my best to think big.
I can't wait to see all my loved ones.
So I came home the other day and found this. 
Only in Vancouver is this the norm. Amazing.
I thought this might be a sight I might see like once while being here. It's December first and the snow greeted me as I woke this morning. 
A great thing for any winter day is some good soup and bread (to be shared with neighbors). I am smelling some fruit of my labor as sweet aromas come from the amazing soup simmering in the kitchen. It is beautiful. This weekend is being known as the homemade craft weekend. You can make all the wonderful things in your life right at home with the right ingredients.
This weekend we are making some of my favorite things in life: Beer (about 50 bottles worth, cost $25), Scarves, apple butter, cards, amazing food, and some other stuff. More info to come. Tis the season to give until it hurts.