a month's worth of craziness

okay, so it's not such a great idea to have a blog if you're only going to update it once a month. sorry about that. as you can imagine, the last month has been full and demanding; here are some of the highlights:

m and the girls joined me for the all-church retreat of lighthouse christian church, which was held out in auburn, wa (near seattle). the trip out was one of the worst in our family's history: delayed in montreal (due to bad weather in chicago), missed the connection (the final flight to seattle for that night), spent the night in o'hare airport, flew to st. louis (that's right, missouri) early the next morning, and then finally proceeded to seattle — where all four pieces of our luggage were lost. after waiting in line, then filing the appropriate report, our bags were miraculously discovered in the airport, and brought to us before we left the airport, some 90 minutes later. in the process, we missed a couple of long-anticipated appointments with old friends (and what was sure to be a memorable lunch at daniel's broiler, on the 21st floor, great view of the mountains and lake washington, and so on).

of course, all of that trouble (i.e. spiritual warfare) could only mean that the retreat was intended by God to be a good one, and he didn't disappoint. entitled the life God blesses, i spent the weekend working out of john 15 and focusing on a life of abiding in Jesus. the worship was wonderful and the messages warmly received. in between, we enjoyed renewing old friendships and starting new ones. the beauty and aliveness of the area (it seemed everything was green!) were refreshing to my soul. we closed out a great weekend with a terrific thai dinner with pastor w and his family, and n, a missionary friend on temporary assignment in the area. the return trip was, thankfully, uneventful.

b and n have been busy bees. n has just finished her exams, and is happily done with school for the year. she has played the violin in three performances in the past month — a couple with the youth orchestra and a recital with other students, at which she played both solo and with a chamber music group. at the latter, one older gent kept insisting that she was the best performer in the house, and who would i be to disagree with an elder?!! b is still in exams for almost two weeks (!) and is studying hard. she took the sat for the first time earlier this month, and has begun downloading university admission applications off of the internet. her soccer season has started, and the team is 2-0-2; she hasn't said a lot about it, but i'm sure it's fun to win a bit after last year's train-wreck of a season.

cmds at mcgill finished out its year with a bang, first by hosting the spring version of dinner with doctors, then with a goodbye potluck at the end of may. we have already started to put together our plans for the fall and the new class of medical and dental students.

i spent a week in toronto at nvest, a staff training event for inter-varsity's staff ministering to university undergraduates. i wouldn't normally get to go, as the international student staff typically have their own training, but in this case, an exception was made so that i could prepare for my role at urbana 2006 — teaching a large manuscript study in ephesisans. it was a terrific time in the scriptures, and we even found some time to enjoy the delights of toronto (including some amazing meals and shopping in one of to's five chinatowns). and you haven't really watched the stanley cup finals until you've done it with a group of canadian hockey fans. these people take their hockey very seriously…

and last but not least, the world cup has begun. i would say that gives us a reason to cheer, but given the results of the first american match (a 3-0 drubbing at the hands of the 2nd ranked czech republic), that seems a bit overstated. next up: italy. here's hoping the us side bounces back!