I'm Officially Official!

As of 10:30am this morning I am now fully accredited within the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches to officiate weddings, and other stuff.

WOO HOO. This has been a 6 month process that I am thrilled to see come to completion! I owe a great amount of thanks to Alex for mentoring me and my wife for encouraging me through this process.

-Tyler

BIG DAY TOMMOROW...

Most of you won't know this...but tomorrow morning at 9am I go before our Denomination's "Advisory Council" to defend my positional paper, and get grilled with tough theological statements for an hour and a half.

Truth be known, this isn't my first time doing this. I tried this process about 6 months after starting here at the church, but didn't have a good result. Because of this, since January I have been chatting theology with a good buddy of mine twice a month over coffee. Needless to say this has been a HUGE blessings to me, and I really feel confident going into tomorrow's meeting.

If I pass, then I am "officially" recognized as a Pastor in the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches, and am then granted the ability to marry people. So it's a pretty big deal. So please say a prayer for me...and good or bad I will update this tomorrow morning before noon to let you know how I did.

Blessings,

Ty

Closer to 30...

Well it seems to me that the running joke with most of my students and friends is to be reminded that I'm now closer to 30 than I am to 20.

HOW HILARIOUS!

So today I was supposed to go paintballing with the men from my church, but it's pouring rain today...so since I was the one in charge I guess my morning is going to be spent calling everyone and canceling.

But the good news out of this is that Charity and I will be able to head out tonight to Chilliwack to hang out with our friends Nate and Kristie (Nate's b-day was on the 14th). Then tomorrow night we're off to my parent's house for dinner. We're heading to the Korean BBQ House (only if it's raining) PRAY FOR RAIN! mmmm...Korean BBQ!

Charity is at work today...keeping us out of the poor house. Or probably earning back the money that she spent on my gift. Either way...it kinda sucks that she's gone for the day...but oh well. I'll see her at 2:30, since she only works a short day today.

Enough of my rambling. Time to get calling people!

Bye!

-Ty

Our Alaskan Vacation

Well we're back from a great week in Alaska. As you can see above this is what our weather was like all week: cloudy. But we were so lucky to only get a few hours of rain the entire week, and this was while we were eating massive crab legs in Juneau for lunch! And to top things off we really had quite calm seas for most of the trip...so thankfully people weren't getting sea-sick at all.

The one thing that really is a draw back on an Alaskan cruise is the fact that when your on your "at sea" days you really can't just sit by the pool and soak up the sun...mainly because it was never sunny and never above 12 degrees the entire trip! So you go a little stir crazy not having the outdoors to enjoy. You end up sitting around a table talking, playing games, and eating. The good thing is as I reflect back on this cruise...I certainly did get to relax A LOT! This was a very good stress-relieving vacation.
Charity and I got to take a historic train ride while in Skagway. It was a little boring, but still had some great views of the mountains and rugged terrain of Alaska. During part of the trip you actually enter back into BC. This was fun to be back in my home province...all-be-it for only a few minutes. The ports-of-call are very heavily focused on jewelry shopping...so make sure if you go to have a high credit card limit. This does detract from the trip...since you really take the cruise to "get away" from a consumer driven lifestyle. One of my highlights though was getting to eat 20 ounces of Alaskan King Crab Legs! Oh man were these delicious!If you've ever watched the show "Deadliest Catch" on the Discovery Channel you'll know how HUGE these crabs can get. Simply put...if you ever get the chance to eat some of these...do it! They were amazing. The really dissapointing elements of the trip were

1) Icy Straight Point: Our first port of call...should really be re-named "Icy Straight Point-less". There was so little to do in this small town...and really could have been left off the itinerary.

2) Hubbard Glacier: The fog rolled in...and the inlet was too frozen still to even get remotely close. So all we could see was a small portion of the glacier from a distance. I would assume on a clear day in August you'd have a much better time there.

It was a good time...and Charity and I really loved spending so much of it with her parents who came on the cruise with us. I highly recommend taking a cruise with other people...it really makes it a lot more fun! I don't know if we'll take another Alaskan Cruise...next time I think we'll try to go some place a little sunnier & warmer!

Head over to my facebook site if you want to see more pictures.

-Tyler

Bon Voyage!

We're outta here! I'll post pics from the cruise when I return! I hope you all have a great week.

Please pray for safety in our travels...and that Charity and I will be able to have a really refreshing, relaxing, and rejuvenating holiday.

As I'm sipping "ice tea" on the lido deck I'll be sure to be thinking of you all. Well...ok...that's a lie!

Bye,

-Tyler & Charity