Mt. Washington Snow Trip!

Here are a handful of pictures from our amazing week on Mt. Washington. On the slopes and back in the chalet we spend wonderful times sharing, playing, working, and worshipping together.

Wednesday was an adventure trekking through the snowshoe trails. (Marissa Burns)

View from the Hawk chairlift.

Nicely framing the peak of Mt. Albert-Edward (which we conquered in September!)
from the top of the Boomer-Rang chair. (Nancy Pike) 

An interesting chair full of snowboarders.
(Michael Gordon, Kathleen Bergsma, Tanner Kooistra, Keith Sheppard, Trevor Martin) 

(Erin Lawrie, Hannah Ayton, Makayla Bryson, Erin Karklins, Kathleen Bergsma, Bec Rodda)

Taking turns preparing and cleaning up meals with Laura.
These guys were excellent grilled cheese flippers and cookie dough rollers!
(Matthew Wigmore, Graedon Rust, Tanner Kooistra)  

Relaxing and playing games in the chalet. (Viktor Karklins, Michael Gordon)

Looking forward by looking back

There won't be an update on the blog next week.  Why?  Because we'll be at Mt. Washington skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing!  Next week the students will be loading up into vans and heading to the area where we did the Mt. Albert Edward hike for a five day snow filled adventure.  Rather than staying in tents we'll be enjoying a beautiful chalet complete with hot tubs for a time of wild adventuring, of great conversation and opportunity for growth.

This year students will be helping to prepare, cook and clean all of our meals under the very capable supervision of Laura Sherwood who runs the kitchen here at Qwanoes year-round.  It will be one of the may ways they have and will get to take part in leading on our out trips (it's not just a week's vacation after all!)

Being away for a week in such a comfortable setting also creates great opportunity for deep and insightful conversation as well as both planned and spontaneous times of worship.  I'm very excited to see what will come from this amazing opportunity.

Oh and then there's the skiing.

In case any of you staff, students, family or friends are wondering what is Mt. Washington like we only need to take a look back to see what we have to look forward to.  I've posted a few videos made by a past student (who happens to be my brother) of his time skiing last year at Mt. Washington.

This first clip is a video he posted on his blog which was a mashup of clips he'd taken throughout the season with a camera that can be mounted on his ski pole or his helmet.  It shows a variety of the best terrain that Mt. Washington has to offer.

Videos created and owned by Philip Karklins at www.PhotoByPhilip.com

To see more check out http://vimeo.com/philkarklins/videos

(All content is (C) Phil Karklins, do not use without permission)

This second video is for the park rats among us showing my brother Erik Karklins -another alumnus of the Kaleo program- as well as Phil again enjoying Mt. Washington's Terrain Park.  When you watch it make sure you don't miss the clean backflip off of a tiny jump; it amazes me every time!

Hopefully this will get you excited to hit the slopes or simply excited for our students who get to have an amazing experience this coming Monday to Friday.  If green circle is more your colour than double black you can always check out this video of somebody skiing for the first time and having a lot of fun with it.

There will be a lot to look forward to in the next update including how this trip went, the "One" Cowichan Valley youth rally the students are running this Friday, and the tale of a curious van that appeared yesterday with Pac Man painted on the side of it.  Be praying for physical safety travelling to and playing on the slopes next week and that it be a time of growth both individually and as a group.  See you in two weeks!

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

That seems to be the case with our students as they dove right back into classes!  The students came back with wild tales of shooting down Christmas trees, wonderful family gatherings and trying to balance the desire to sleep all day with doing pre-course work for their upcoming classes.  One by one the students all returned to camp by planes, trains and automobiles (well no trains but we did have a few ride in on ferries).  

Once they arrived the students dove headfirst into Pauline Epistles with Professor Carl Hinderager.  

If you look closely you can see we have a few visiting students joining us this week.  It's been a great opportunity for some locals who are currently doing courses long distance through Briercrest to do a few mods here locally as well.  While anybody can take advantage of this opportunity it's been very advantageous for those working on or going to be working on a degree from Briercrest.  We even have a few this week who have done several classes with us in this way so far so it's nice to see some familiar faces.

Carl has been challenging the students all week to look at the epistles (letters) of Paul with a level of depth that many of them aren't used to.  I spoke with a student the other day who was starting to see how reading these letters as whole letters rather than scattered verses out of context makes a huge difference in terms of understanding.  Instead of disjointed thoughts Paul's works become much clearer and much more challenging as you can't hide from the verses you don't like!

We're very blessed to have Carl here as this is the first time Pauline Epistles has been a part of the Kaleo program roster.  Seeing what an impact it's had in just a few days it has clearly been a great addition

Keep your eyes peeled as we look forward to more wild adventures including our big Mt. Washington ski trip, a journey to the mainland for Missions Fest and the upcoming youth rally here at Camp Qwanoes our students will be running for all of the Cowichan Valley!  Be praying that the students can get right back into the swing of things academically, can once again throw themselves into the ministries they are involved in, and that they can slow down enough to take all of what they're learning in.