"The Newest Phenomenon in Television"

So I was watching TV the other night and this ad came on TV. "Coming soon to CTV (Canadian Television), the newest phenomenon in television, BRO-TOWN. Crazy! Bro-town starts in September on Canadian television. Now I wish I had bought some of the Bro-town t-shirts in NZ. I didn't buy them cos I figured no-one would understand them here.

Spiritual Formation

This week I am on a one week Spiritual Formation retreat which is the first course of my Masters. I got the syllabus the other day, and there are 5 books to read, and 9 essays to write. I have to have two of the books read before the retreat, and 3 of the essays written before the retreat. The books I have to read are:
Richard Foster, Prayer, (276 pages).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (122 pages).
Bradley Holt, Thirsty For God (129 pages)
M. Robert Mulholland, Shaped By The Word (166 pages)
James Bryan Smith, A Spiritual Formation Workbook, (82 pages).
(In the syllabus they tell us how many pages each book is! Cool huh!)

Preaching

I preached for the first time at Church this last Sunday (August 6th) on Ephesians 4:1-16, and because it was a long weekend in the middle of summer, I spoke at two congregations...the congregation that meets at 8:45, then our congregation which meets at 11:00. It was my first time speaking in a church to adults for a few years, and it was also my first time doing the same talk twice in a row. Doing the same talk twice in a row took a bit of getting used to! But it went okay, and I got some good feedback. And they seemed to understand my accent okay as well.

Visa Update

I currently have no passport. I got a letter asking me to send my passport to Australia so they could stick the visa in it. Hopefully that means I am getting my visa soon, then I can start earning some money! So for now, that means I am in Canada with no passport, so hopefully there are no sudden funerals in New Zealand! (If you work for Canadian Immigration and are reading this, then my name is Robert and I live in Vancouver!)

Greek Update

Greek is done! I have now finished a full year of Greek in 11 weeks. This course was the pre-requisite for getting into my M. Div. It was full on, but now it is done. I haven't got my final mark back from the exam, but the people who get the result told me that the Greek teacher said "I just finished marking Jamie's final exam and he did wonderful. I haven't compiled his overall mark but I'm guessing that he completed the course with flying colours. He is more than able to continue studies in the In-Ministry MDiv." Yay for me!

July 29th

Saturday July 29th was my Birthday, so we went to the local waterfall for the day. Seriously, the thing is massive! I hadn't been to Niagara in the summer since 1995, so we spent the day walking by the waterfall, then we sat on the grass near the waterfall for a while, then we went to Hard Rock cafe for dinner. Hard Rock cafe was good, but really it was nothing compared to the one Rachael and Fran ran at Family Camp.

The House Situation

We have now been in Dempsters house for 6 weeks, and we are loving it. They get home in the first week of September, so we have to move out then.. we are planning to back to Allison's parents house and live in their basement until we decide where and when we want to buy a house, and how much we can afford to spend.
Here are the photos of the Dempsters house, and of the road sign that Scott has in his bedroom. Somehow he managed to smuggle it out of New Zealand in his suitcase.
Dempsters house
Scott's road sign