First impressions

Yay!! I arrived in one piece! First impression: where are we going? It seemed like we were on the 401 going from TO to Mississauga for a long time. And it turned out we weren't staying there, we're staying in a college dorm that's converted into a hotel in the summer. It's pretty nice for a dorm, it's situated in a new-ish graphic design college. I haven't had the chance to take a really good tour of the place, but it's pretty nifty.

I still don't know exactly what we're doing - orientation is tomorrow, so I'll keep you guys posted. I do know we're helping a church called The Sanctuary in Mississauga, but I'm not sure how. We met the pastor of the church: Brett Porter and his wife Kathryn and their kids: Ashton and Clayton. I like them; they seem like really solid people. You know how sometimes you meet people, and although they have different personalities, there's just something about them that makes you think: "that person is Awesome."? Yah, I've just met a few of those awesome people.

Other first impression: I'm the only Canadian on my team, which makes me by default the "Canadian interpreter". My team consists of 5 other girls from different parts of the US, but of them, 4 come from the South (Georgia, Kansas and N. Carolina). I'm pretty confident I'm going to come back home from Toronto with a southern drawl. Most of our conversation centered on "Chick Chalet" (which sounds like high end KFC), idioms (I learned Canadians think "love on someone" means to have sex with them??) and food (even the Southern girls didn't know what 'chicken fried chicken' was.)

Cultural differences aside, I have a good feeling about this team- I think we'll get along just fine. There's the whole gamaut of personalities and skills, and I think we'll learn a lot from each other. But who knows? Nothing hard has happened yet so we're pretty much all on our best behavior. (ok, maybe not best - decent behavior??)

We chatted about how we each came to be Jesus followers, and I was struck with how non-linear each of our stories were. God does work in mysterious ways. What kind of person would I be if my parents didn't think we should become "more Canadian" by going to church? (They thought that Christianity = western thinking, which would result in us not being ostracized for being Asian.) Thank God that He sees more than we do.

In between stories, I managed to slip in a few 'eh's which seemed to make them happy. So, all in all a day well spent.

My prayer list for today:

- Unity amongst the team: our personalities are very different and I'm sure we'll approach this new experience differently. Pray that we'll all give each other and ourselves some grace.
- Ruth, David and their daughter Kelly are going to be helping us (we're not really sure in what capacity) because they're leaders in The Sanctuary. But when we leave, so are they - they'll be moving to Indiana to work in Sports ministry. (Dave is the chaplain with the Toronto Argonauts.) Pray that the move will be smooth, and that they'll know how much to invest in us while simultaneously preparing for their move.

Thanks you guys! I hope things are going great back home ^_^
Love, Joyce