Changes, Changes, Oh My!

I've just decided to move to Vancouver for 6 months!


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Our Discipleship Training School was cancelled again, and since I came on staff with Youth With A Mission in order to staff DTS and have yet to, I accepted the invitation from my friends at YWAM NEXIA in Vancouver, who need male staff. I'm leaving my foothills home on Friday and getting into the Greyhound station in cool Vancouver some 15 hours later.

This is a big change, especially since I've gotten pretty comfortable here, living in Turner Valley for the last two years. But I'm appreciating that God is uprooting me, bringing an opportunity to disciple others, so I can finally GIVE what I've been TAKING - knowledge, discipline, joy, love for Jesus and the Bible. (That's why I named this blog Give and Take some 12 months ago.)

My friend Neil and I at Lake Louise in Banff Nat'l Park in the Canadian Rockies

My full-time job will be pastoral care, to help guide students as they learn about themselves and about God in the classroom and later, too, as they learn practically in the mission trip phase (which will be to either Malaysia or Thailand). Some practical things my job consists of would be: reviewing DTS journals, book reports, regular one-on-one meetings with some of the guys, and outreach preparations.

I'm sad to leave my friends and my home, but excited for this next chapter. After these 6 months, I plan on returning to Turner Valley for 6 months to finish out my commitment and my time with YWAM.

Vancouver is a more expensive place to live, and I am dependent on relationship-based support from my church, family, and friends. If you're interested in supporting me financially (which I am in need of) you can donate, either as a one-time donation or as regular monthly support, in one of several ways:**

If you would like a tax receipt and are in America, please send your donation to:

YWAM

PO Box 3000,

Garden Valley, TX, 75771-3000

If you would like a tax receipt and are in Canada, please send your donation to:

Project Funding

PO Box 57100 Vancouver, BC

V5K 1Z0

If you don't need a tax receipt and live anywhere in the world, you can send through Paypal (even if you don't have a Paypal account!) Simply go HERE, and send it to

jamesthellama@hotmail.com

**If you want a tax receipt, you must not put my name on the check itself (write checks out to YWAM), and instead include a note saying “For James Harrison.”

Boyhood

I tapped my feet in the car. The air conditioner was a bit too cold, but I hadn't worked up the courage to say anything yet. I had a terrible night of sleep, being afraid I'd sleep through the alarm and miss this special day.
I was a boy, on a little adventure not too far from where I lived. I was with a man, my father's age. It was Christmas morning in August as he spent the whole day with me, asking questions, telling stories, and laughing!

I felt so special since he took a day to show me around places I had never seen and brought me lunch and bought me McDonald's and asked me questions and told me stories and it was just me and him.

 "Let's act cool and be excited today!" I told myself, not wanting to look nervous or awkward.

 We drove for a couple hours. I love the mountains. So full of life, they're so big they make you feel small and human, like you're not the boss anymore, but just an ant crawling by, unable to imagine what that mountain has seen and heard, felt and smelt in the last thousand years.

I kind of felt like that around my driver. A big man with large hands; much wider than mine, if not a hair shorter. I was young and small.

We trekked around several breathtaking lakes, took our swimsuits to the hot springs, and took the longer, scenic route home for the beautiful sights. He wasn't angry or worried that I slept through the best part, the reason he spent the extra gas, simply letting me sleep.

I was a boy for a day, feeling loved and accepted, as though someone enjoyed my company. I was 21 and this special day was today. The driver was a man from church, desiring to spend a day discipling me. The planner was Jesus, hoping to reconcile in me the incomplete Boyhood stage in my heart. I am a beloved and precious child.

Only now can I press on, hiking further up the difficult and wild, but worn and mapped out trail of becoming a man.

Grace, again

I've been in a slump, days have been long, these last 8 days have felt like a month of grief.

The cause? A sprained heart, a case of guilt, and a lack of discipline in spending time with God.

The solution? For the last couple days, the only answer I've thought of is more discipline; I need to spend more time with God. I need to read the Bible, set aside time to pray and journal.

Though these are great things and disciplines that help transform me, hearing the words of a friend in a song, "You're free, you're free, it costs so much but blind men receive their sight - the night shines brighter, above our scorched horizons, and Christ, Christ, firstborn of many brothers, run-run and tell the others that it's never been any other way," has again delivered me! What is it that I MUST do to remain in God's grace, to be washed clean, to have his favor and be his precious son? Haha, open my hands and accept it! Believe it!

As I wrote this, I left my little room to catch what was left of the sunset. Glancing up at the last streaky-purple cloud I blew my nose and cleared my throat of all that remained, and breathed again the heavens' fruit through open airways. The Tree of Grace that refuses not one its manufactured miracles.