Steppin' It Up A Notch

Every now and again, I hear a song that describes my life in some way. I will add this song to what I call the "Soundtrack Of My Life" and hopefully when my life in this world is through, people can listen to my soundtrack and know what my life was about.

There are also times when a song perfectly describes something I'm going through at some particular time. One such song at this point in time is the song "Whatever You're Doing (Something Heavenly)" by Sanctus Real. This song may yet make it onto the soundtrack of my life but right now it describes my life. God is doing something in my life, with my spirit and soul and sometimes, like this song says: "it feels like chaos", or like a heartache of conflicting emotions. This process is described in the Bible, somewhere I'm sure, as like gold being refined in fire. It's tough, it sucks but it's necessary. I know God's in it; He's having me work through things I've swept under the rug and I hope that at the end of it all, I will get some closure on certain issues.
Anyways, here are the lyrics to the song:

It's time for healing time to move on
It's time to fix what's been broken too long
Time to make right what has been wrong
It's time to find my way to where I belong
There's a wave that's crashing over me
All I can do is surrender

[Chorus]
Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
but I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Reevaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow your will
or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is you want from me
I give everything I surrender...
To...

[Chorus]

Time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I've wanted to say for so many years
Time to release all my held back tears

Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but I believe
You're up to something bigger than me
Larger than life something heavenly

Whatever you're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but now I can see
This is something bigger than me
Larger than life something heavenly
Something heavenly

It's time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out

Posted by Phil at 10:14 PM 0 comments  

... when you're having fun, so they say. Well, I can definitely say for sure that January flew by waaay too fast, but I can't really say it was fun, at least the last couple of weeks weren't that fun at all. There were some fun moments, but overall not a very enjoyable last few weeks, all I did was work, sleep and eat, literally. I was going to post this a few day ago but never got around to it and now that I am getting around to it, I realized that one year ago today, I was walking around in London, England sightseeing, just a day away from being in Rwanda. Well, I don't really have much else to say.... I just woke up and am still pretty tired....so uh ciao

Posted by Phil at 11:27 AM 0 comments  

First of all let me apologize to all who consistently check my blog for updates, as you can see, I have not written on it in a long time. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the year that was 2008.

I can still remember waking up on Jan. 1, 2008 and the first thought that crossed my mind was that 2008 was going to be a great year. And it definitely was, along with being filled with plenty of adventure. It also contained its share of ups and downs as any period of time will. Looking back there are things I should have done that I didn't do and things I did that I wish I hadn't. I won't elaborate too much on that, well, because I can't change what is past, all I can do is move forward and hopefully I have learned from my mistakes.

If there is one thing I learned this year, it is that God is my Jehovah Jireh, my Provider. God provided for me in the good times and in the difficult times, sometimes at the last minute but was undeniably faithful in doing so, and often when I know I didn't deserve it. He provided for me financially, which allowed me to have some awesome adventures. He gave new friends along the way to share in the adventures, and more recently the most awesome new roommates, who are also my new brothers (which really required me to do no advertising on the availability of rooms in my house). I don't think I will ever understand how or why, God, being who He is, can bless someone like me, who fials Him everyday, with His love, presence, and guidance. But that's who Jesus is; He's my God, my Saviour, my friend and the one I serve.

Looking ahead, it definitely seems troubling times face us all; with the growing global economic crisis and political unrest in the Middle East, as well as here in Canada (albeit a different kind of unrest, but who woulda thought eh?). A few months ago I was thinking about the economic crisis nd it occurred to me that I never would have imagined that a recession or depression would occur in my lifetime. Supposedly, experts on the subject say that we have learned enough from the Great Depression of the '30s to avoid one now.... I wonder if this really is the case.

Even so, I have no fear of what lies ahead, whether good times or bad, because my experience from 2008 has taught me that God will be faithful, no matter what. I hope that you will be able to find faith and put trust in God to be with you every step of 2009 and pull you through whatever circumstances may come your way.

Happy New Year to you all, may you truly be blessed with God's love and presence in 2009.
I believe 2009 is going to be even better than 2008 was, WHY?! (Well that's a silly question.) Because we are going to Step It Up A Notch! (or maybe even a few notches) :)

Posted by Phil at 11:39 PM 0 comments  

I just spent an amazing weekend in the mountains with my two best friends: Jesus and Andrew. Even though it was raining, we had an awesome time mountain biking. Another epic ride to add to my log, not that I'm really keeping one, it seems all our rides are epic in their own right. I am always amazed when I am out in God's creation, I love it out there and I am always drawn closer to Him. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera and the one on my phone doesn't produce very high quality pics. So you'll just have to use your imagination on this one.
Friday night, we camped in Didsbury and Jesus was so good to us. When we got there, it was raining lightly. We found a decent spot to set up our tent and it stopped raining. Pretty much as soon as it was set up, the rain started coming down again. On Saturday, we decided to go to Kananaskis Country instead of Drumheller. The rain was coming down real good in this part of Alberta. We were soaking wet before we even started riding. We didn't travel a long distance but it took a little while, partly because I'm out of shape, partly because it was wet. Even though the ride was short in distance it was good because we didn't break our bikes or ourselves. Afterwards, we went to Canmore and sat in Tim Horton's to warm up, read some books and talk about life. I finished reading a book that I have been reading called "The Shack", it is an excellent book, I definitely recommend it.
On Sunday, our ride began at the Canmore Nordic Centre. There are so many trails there, I don't know how many we were on. Some of the views are fantastic! There was one spot that I must tell about, it wasn't scary but after it happened it was like, 'Whoa! did that just happen?' So, we're riding down this trail and I can hear the sound of water running downstream. And sure enough we come to it and it is what it sounds like. Andrew gets to it first and crosses to the other side on foot to see if there's anything rideable on the other side. So I'm standing near the water's edge looking around, taking in the scenery. Andrew starts throwing some rocks into the water to make a little bridge to make it easier to get across. So I look around to see if there's anything on my side to throw in, next thing I know he's pushing over a dead tree from the other side towards me. I look up when I hear the crack and instantly raise my hands to cover my head as I realize the height of the dead tree. The tree falls quicker than my reflexes and is on the ground before my hands get any higher than my shoulders, and just barely grazing the side of my arm. Had it fallen six inches to the left, it would have hit me square on the top of the head. After a few seconds, I thought to myself: "Whoa! I just almost got hit by a falling tree!" Unfortunately after riding about 50 feet on the other side, the trail becomes unrideable so we have to turn around.
Normally, I'm more wary of the technically challenging parts of the ride because I know I'm not that good and rain always makes things more challenging but this time, I found myself more frustrated with the straight parts because they were the parts that were uphill and aerobically challenging. We got in a good 4-5 hours of riding and once again headed over to Tim Horton's afterwards.
Today was our lazy day, I know I was pretty beat from the ride yesterday and neither of us really slept all that well so we decided not to ride. We decided instead to drive. We drove up from Canmore towards Nordegg on Hwy 40 which ends up becoming one of them logging roads. After the paved road ended, we were on gravel and it reminded me of driving in Rwanda: very bumpy. We were pretty much the only ones driving on the road and the guys we passed going the other way were workers and I'm pretty sure they thought we were crazy especially since we had bikes on the back of the SUV. We saw a lot of deer and even though it was bumpy and slow going at times, some of the scenery was magnificent.
Spiritually, some of the things I'm taking away from this trip: a little bit better understanding of who God is, and re-learning how to let Him "BE" part of my everyday.

Posted by Phil at 9:30 PM 0 comments  

... to the tune of 54 mpg (4.36L/100km), booya! Take that Prius hybrid (supposedly the most fuel efficient car available: rated at 48mpg or 5.1L/100km). If I can pull off this kind of fuel efficiency with my regular driving style, just imagine what kind of numbers I can roll in if I actually tried this thing called hypermiling.

Anyways, I can't believe May is almost over, it's gone by way too fast. So I'm currently working at Totem Building Supplies while I continue my search for engineering work. Someone in marketing or whoever sets the price obviously failed grade 3 math. Why would anyone buy one of these:
(a 2 pack of BBQ lighters)



















when you can buy 3 of these for less?

Posted by Phil at 6:36 PM 0 comments