Monday, May 31, 2010

Last RA Meeting


This is the last R.A. meeting of the year. Someone opened up their house to us as they were gone for the afternoon. Eric Messer (DC) and his lady friend (Karalee), cooked us a awesome meal, which included homemade ice-cream for desert. It wasn't much of a meeting more of just a fun hang out time.

We had a fun game of whiffle ball, it was more like a game of football though, which made it a ton of fun.


The beautiful view out their back window.

Vickery Backyard Ramp

Chris on Deck, Kurtis (my brother) in center

Last fall Chris Vickery and myself went out to a guys house to check out his mini-ramp in his backyard. He had offered it to Chris to take for his own backyard. The next time I met up with Chris he had the ramp moved in already. He cut it into 4 sections (I believe) and had each part moved separately to his house on the back of a trailer. He has been traveling a lot and finally started to have a chance to work on it a little bit. Chris, Kurtis and myself, did a little bit of construction to it. We got the copping in place, on one side of the ramp, with the plywood screwed down. The deck on the ramp is a quarter unfinished on the left side. The right side of the ramp is actually to high and needs to be cut down, it doesn't have a deck, or any copping on it. Chris said that his moto for building ramps is to test it out as soon as possible. So we got the one side almost done, the other side we quickly screwed in the sheets temporally with no framing behind the top 10 inches of the ramp, and the tested it out. Hopefully the next time we get out there it will either be finished, or we will help him to get it closer to being finished.

Canadian Forest Fire

Photo I took of the Shroon Lake fogged by Smoke

I woke up this morning to see that there was a heavy fog on the BI campus. As I walked outside you could smell the scent of smoke in the air. I soon learned from other students/staff that Canada has had a really bad forest fire, and the smoke has invaded our area.

"About 100,000 acres of forest have burned since a May 25 thunderstorm ignited a series of fires. Residents of one central Quebec native community have been evacuated. Some individuals were evacuated because of health concerns, said Gerard Lacasse, a spokesman for in Quebec for the nonprofit Society for the Protection Against Forest Fires." - Boston.com


accuweather.com

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Santa Claus in May

We went out to Martha's for some ice-cream it is about an hour away driving in Owen's broken down car that is apparently running on one less cylinder then normal, with a max speed of 50 mph, 5 mph up hill, and somewhere between 50-70 mph down hill, can't really tell with the broken speedometer.


We arrive at Martha's. I am walking to the shop, when I see this guy sitting in his Red Honda Element, with a huge white beard, and a nice curl to his mustache, wearing red overalls, with a nice little belly. He was the best Santa Claus I have ever seen. I then noticed that his license plate said HOHOHO. As I was watching him interact with little kids he goes over and opens the back of his trunk and starts passing out presents to the little kids who greeted him while he waited for his wife to bring him is ice-cream.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Hammock


We needed to get some homework done, so we got away to the middle of the forest, and took a relaxing time as a group to read a couple chapters in one of our books for school.





Founders Conference

This is the Last week of school coming up. I am about to go home on break June 4th to the 10th then I am taking a little trip to NYC before getting back to school for camp training on the 14th. Over this summer I will be Unit Leading, which means I like a discipleship/spiritual leader/disciplinary type of guy who is responsible for 7 supervisors and under each supervisor is 2 stc workers. meaning I am basically over 14 teens and 7 college students making sure they stay out of trouble, disciple them/train, and have fun with them.

This last weekend of school we have what they call Founders Conference. It is about missions and a little bit about how Word of Life came about. The theme this year is "God's Truth and You" John 17:17. We have a lot of great speakers, Dr. Paige Patterson (ministered in over 100 countries), Dr. Robert Jeffress (written 17 books, radio and television program), Dr. Joe Jordan, and then for Memorial Day, Capt. Eugene "Red" McDaniel (pow, most severely tortured prisoner of Vietnam War, wrote "Scars and Stripes"). The basic sermons have been about what truth is, and how people think it is relative, but it's not there is one truth, no matter if you believe there is or not.



Thursday, May 27, 2010

Camera Repaired: Butterfly


I was surprised today to see that my Nikon D5000 was sent back to me, I thought it was going to take a little longer, though I did feel like it took forever. I have really missed my camera. I am glad it is back for the last week of school, and for my time at home. I was so excited to have my camera back, I went out and took photo's all afternoon, mostly of these butterflies.




Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Spring Banquet


This is the group of friends I went with to the spring banquet, I went with that girl to my right. She seemed to be nervous I was going to wear something ridiculous, but I didn't. I gave kylie some flowers that I tried to match with her dress, I knew she likes eating with chop sticks so I gave her some of those too, and also a poem. I don't really remember what the poem said but basically it went like this....

I don't really know because of when I wrote this
But I am pretty sure I do know
That you look beautiful tonight
I can't really know yet
But from what I know
I had a good time tonight. How about you?
and so on....

The guys

It was a very hot day, all day in classes we where dying, the professor let us remove our ties. Then we had the banquet with suit coats and everything. After the banquet we made plans to go swimming in the cold water.

The man in the middle Bob Grey, My favorite guy on campus. Owen, Pez, and I have a weekly meetings with him. He tells us crazy stories, gives us some discipleship, and we have a good time just chatting.


Mark and his wife Amy, Kylie and myself

Overall it was a really good time. Owen won the Most Adventurous award beating me by about 13% of the votes, however he called me up and gave me some recognition. Then Owen, Kyle, Will, and I got to give out the "Best Mustache" award. We all wore goofy fake mustaches, I made mine out of pine needles. We tried to convince the winner (Eric Johnson) to let us shave off his mustache on stage in front of everyone, but he would allow it.



Sunday, May 23, 2010

Art Festival "Cancelled"


The Art Festival got cancelled this year, due to Destruction Metal being the only performance that entered, and I was the only one to enter any art. In doing so I would like to show you my art anyway. 




Below is the poem written on the window, with an explanation of what it means, and the process I went through to make it.

“Rubbished Frame”

Framed inside a window
Hidden behind the glass
Watching you
Fall Apart

She stands so transparent
Giving herself away
To all before her
Slowly chips away

White Cloak of Paint (Hidden beneath the paint)
Pealed to regret
Under every coat
More is revealed yet

She smiles at you
Her frown shown through
A lie in reply
To every question

Dirt upon her eyes
Blur the window’s shine
Tears down the glass
Mistakes to be ashamed

Undeserving Forgiveness
Replenished her rubbished frame
Looking past the flaws
To the beauty outside the [window] panes [pain]



Meaning of Art
The window, that was once beautiful, represents the life of a girl, who had a close relationship with a man. (Father-daughter, brother-sister type friendship). As he watches her through her life he sees her beginning to slip away. But he can’t do anything but “watch from the window”.
            The girl is completely giving her life away to all that the world has to offer her, maybe even to the extent of sex and drugs. However all she once had and all she tries to possess (through sins) just slowly leaves her with nothing. Her life is “falling apart”
            She tries to hide her sins/pain from you by putting up walls (“White cloak of paint). But eventually everything is shown through, leaving her embarrassed for her mistakes. (Pealed away to regret). Her sins and pain become evident in her life, which is represented by the layers of paint on the window. All the layers trying to cover other things up but in the end “more is revealed”.
            She pretends to be happy but you can see deep down inside, the hurt. As you try to help her, she lies to you to block you off, denying the problem in her life, she hides herself.
            The sin she is in has begun to blur her vision and views in life, distorting her look on things.
            She finally breaks down in tears, to be ashamed of her sins. Christ then forgives her despite what she deserves. In his forgiveness her begins to “replenish her” messed up life.
            Now that she has come to Christ I need to look past her flaws, knowing that she is changed in Christ. “The beauty outside the panes” is in a literal sense, looking at the beauty outside the window panes, the trees the sun and nice weather. In the poem it is referring to looking past the rubbished window frame (her life and mistakes) looking past the pain (panes-play on words) that she caused to the redemption that Christ caused inside her heart.



Making the Art
            I probably put more work/thought into writing the poem and making the art then any other thing i have done. I was in search of making an art piece when I came a crossed this window in a junk yard. My initial plan was to put photo graphs in the window in a poetic way to represent a picture or a story in the whole. Later I decided I wanted to write poetry on the window. I began my work by trying to write a very short simple poem with a lot of meaning. The plan was to have one word written on each window. The window was going to represent my life. I wanted it to basically mean, despite my flaws can you still love me, can you look past the mistakes I make, because I am not perfect, and see who I really am, and see how Christ has forgiven me. So I started my work with the 6 word poetry.

Attempts:
Can you see past the mistakes
Will you look through my pain
Can you see beyond my mistakes
Can you see past my inadequacy

I ended with being determined to use this line: “Can you see past my flaws”. Even though I had the lines picked out I wanted to write  a poem to go with it, and possibly decide to write the poem instead of the 6 word poem.

First attempt at the Poem:

“Can You See Past My Flaws”
Dirt upon my eyes
Blur my window’s shine
Mistakes I am ashamed
Forever to remain

White Cloak of paint
Pealed away to regret
Under every coat
More is revealed yet

Look through the [window] panes
Do you see anything fret
My function unfunctional
The purpose isn’t met

Torn out of the wall
Resting with the waste
Someone to replace
What was my call

Within my rubbished frame
Looking past my blame
Can you see past my flaws
To the beauty outside these walls

            Then one day after taking a long break from the art project, I started reading through old unfinished poems, and some of the lines inspired me, and helped me to get new ideas for my art. Part of one of the stanzas in the finished poem actually came from a different poem I was working on and never finished.
            The plan was to write on the window with a white sharpie. However those are hard to come by and when you do it cost you $5. I ended up decided to go with the painted look, which I decided I liked more. But I wanted white paint, when receiving paint from my friend all she had to offer me was black and red paint.
            The longer the window sat in my room the more paint chips that fell off or people would pick off on me, ruining the project a little bit. As I sat outside painting my window, on the third windowpane (3rd stanza) I was resting my arm on the middle framing, while my elbow rested on the last window below. All of a sudden my elbow went right through the window, breaking the glass.  The plan was to write 6, 4 line stanzas, 1 stanza on each windowpane. Except when I broke the last window I had to make a choice. Do I keep it structured with each 4 line stanza on it’s separate window, however stanza 6 has a broken window, so I either have to write it around the missing glass, or write it will words supposedly missing. I decided if I wrote it with words or letters missing where the glass was it would take away from the poem. My other option was to try to cram the lines from the other stanza onto parts of the other windows that it wasn’t meant to be written on, and that's what I did. At first the broken window was a disappointment to me, but in the end it really worked and brought more meaning into the window with the poem.


Saturday, May 22, 2010

Public Speaking: Sermon #3

This is my final public speaking sermon. I have no more classes where I will be speaking. However this summer I will have the 2 opportunities to preach in front of all the summer volunteer workers and I believe a couple times to preach some where else. When I went to hit my timer I screwed something up, when I glanced down at it later I had no idea how long I have been going for. I ended up going about 1 min. over, which is ok, I just get some points off, that I could have easily kept. I hope I don't bore you, enjoy the 11min. sermon. I had to take 1 min. off of the video because youtube only allows 10min of video to be uploaded.



With my group of 4 speakers, (I went first) we all used the Titanic as one of our illustration. From a discussion we had earlier, that you can use the Titanic some how in any sermon, and we all completely preached on different topics, and it fit in quite well for all of us. My topic was Pride, someone else did Worry, there was on about God preparing us, something like that, and I can't remember the last one. Oh, we also all wore cardigans.

Ollie North with Martin Fobes at the Portage Skatepark


Ollie North PPark Edition from Joel Lytle on Vimeo.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Art Festival "Sneak Peak"


Here is a sneak preview to my art that I will be entering in for the Art Festival this saturday May 22nd. I will be submitting what you see in the pictures below, and I will also be doing a performance with the Destruction Metal crew. The act will be very similar to the video I displayed back in January about the try outs we did except there will be no screaming and maybe a few extra instruments and singers.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

"Bilquo the Elephant" Page 1

"Bilquo the Elephant"

Today I started to draw an elephant and decided I liked him and started writing a story about him. He is the intro to the story about Bilquo (Bill-k-oh)the Elephant.


Monday, May 17, 2010

"Sun's Rest"



“Sun Rest”

Sun’s eyes upon my face
In a rest heats embrace
Outlined by grass’s grace
Coolness from shadows above
Children’s laughter calms my head
Peace of Play, here I lay
Dead on Summers Day

This poem is just about a beautiful day with the sun shining greatly. The warmth of the sun just putting you to sleep as you listen to the laughter of children playing, and the birds chirping. Enjoying the heat of the sun while taking a rest from all other activities. Not literally dead, mentally relaxed. Just having a nice little sunbath.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Open Skatepark Ministry


The first day rained out but this last saturday went really good. There was about 6 skaters who came out. The ages was 9, 14, and 18ish. The park in Glensfalls has closed down, so that might have helped to get some of them to come out. One of the guys who came out used to work at the park in Glens. I know the gospel was shared to at least one skater clearly while others around heard them talking. Summer camp got promoted and it sounds like 3 of them would love to come this summer. We have one more session next weekend. Please be praying for a lot of kids to hear about it and come out.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Photo Delay

I have recently sent my Camera back to Nikon, because of a little issue, with my built-in flash. I don't like using flash, but sometimes I need it. I really didn't want to send it away for such a tiny issue in my head, but I needed it to get repaired. I was trying to count how long it would be until I could take pictures again, and trying to figure out all the good photos I would miss out on taking, and the memories that go with them. Hopefully I can find someone who will let me use their camera, if not, I am sorry for the photoless blogs that will be posted in the future.

New Kicks! Fallen Fortes


I got myself some new shoes today for $35 at Zumiez, a pretty good deal. They feel like the Vans "Old School" but with a little more solid soles, however you still have all the board feel and flexibility. Can't wait to start skating these.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Martin Fobes and Steve Risner at Riley Park

Jackson, MI local Martin Fobes and Steve Risner skating Riley Park over by Detroit.


Martin Fobes and Steve Risner at Riley Park from Martin Fobes on Vimeo.

Spirit Week Day #3


Today was super hero day. Some people don't know the meaning of "Super Hero" we had about 5 Jokers, first off the Joker is a villain, second he is not super, he has no super powers, just a plain old bad guy. And then you had the large group of people who claimed to be in civilian clothes of their super hero. Some I would give credit too, but most didn't resemble any super hero civilian outfits. Paul M. as Peter Parker, took all the photos for me.


Epic Battle against the Villain Ninjas


Probably one of my favorites, is Joe, as the guy from Assassins Creed.

Super Counselor

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

"What's Next"



“What’s Next”

I was just wondering what’s next
Or does life take a blinded step
A worried mind with no control
Who wants to know it all
A rushed complexion
To be complicated further
Farther then before
To go about a blinded bat
Calling to the Lord

Proverbs 20:24 “Man’s goings are of the Lord; how can a man then understand his own way?”

Spirit Week Day #2

This week is spirit week at school, so instead of class dress we get to dress up according to the theme of the week. Yesterday was what you want to be when you grow up. I dressed up like a old man sailor. Then today was decade day, we dressed up from a very old decade back in BC. There was about 5 of us as shepherds (Kyle,Adam, Owen, Me, and Kevin), everyone else from 50's-90's and Kylie from the future.

Date to the Spring Banquet!


I don't like doing things the normal way, I like things interesting and create. I was playing with things on my desk and found some flannel graph and decided I would ask Kylie to the spring banquet using it (The same girl I took to the Ukrainian Banquet). She had lots of homework to do, so I was trying to find a good time to ask without being to much of a distraction from her work. And eventually I decided I would just wait until the next day. However at dinner I figured it out, she was sitting in the slightly elevated part of the dinning hall, facing the lower level. There is a little wall between the levels. I stuck King Dale, and servant girl Kylie up like a little puppet show, on the other side of the wall, dancing them around a little bit, until she noticed and began laughing. I peeked my head over the wall, to see her response, which was "Yes". Then I showed her what I would have done if she said "no".



Ukraine Day #8

Day #8 Friday

This was the last full day, we where going to go out to evangelize in kiev and then we had a special banquet in the Ukraine. A lot of the Ukrainian guys wanted to take american girls. I told them to stay away from my american women. They tried to make a deal with me that they will take the American girls and I can take a Ukrainian girl. I wanted to take Kylie, but I didn't want to ask her like everyone does it, because that is no fun. I really didn't know what I was doing. Owen saw me hiding behind a tree and asked me what I was doing, I told him I was going to ask Kylie to the banquet. Then I got him to help me. There was two benches facing each other, so Owen sat on one, and called Kylie to sit across from him. Owen filmed the experience with my camera sticking half way out of his shirt. I wanted it to feel all secret agent like. So I called to her from behind the tree, when she looked back I told her to look forward and pretend she was talking to Owen, while I talked to her. So from behind the tree I asked her to the banquet. Here is a little video below.



For the last day the whole Ukraine W.O.L. B.I. staff and student body with all of us from New York, headed out in a storm of evangelists to Kiev. We split into about two groups of 50 people, one group went somewhere else, and my group went to this like central park place with some monuments and stuff.
Once we arrived I saw 4 kids skating, so I immediately walked over to them and began trying to talk to them. The one guy spoke english pretty good, but the other 3 didn't understand at all. Two different people shared the gospel in Russian with them and I shared it in english with him twice. We had a good time skating together and built a good friendship based on a common interest called skateboarding. I left them with Gospel Tracts and camp promotions, gave them some stickers from SFNJ (New Jersey Skate Ministry) and got a email to stay in contact. There was no conversion, but Christ was shown through skateboarding.



The one in the red spoke english. I had to leave them for a little bit to sing to draw a crowd for the rest of my group to evangelize. I told him he could come over if he wanted to so he did, and stood up next to me where I was singing.

I'm not sure how many accepted Christ, but I heard about a few of them that did. After evangelizing for a couple hours we headed back to the campus to get ready for the banquet.

Waiting for our ladies.

Me and My cute date

I brought the Apricot Jam the babooshka made for us. Luckily one of the girls on our trip was given flowers in Kiev while evangelizing. She gave all us guys a flower to give to our date. I added some custom flowers I picked from outside the window, and taped a Resees Peanut Butter Cup to it.


We had a time of sharing the things we learned from the past week. Their was a lot of thank you's to the Ukrainian students for their friendship and servant hood.
My roommates for the past week.


My closest friends and their dates.




The next morning at 3am we headed out to leave for the airport, most of the students woke up to wish us a final good bye. The week went bye very fast, it felt like we just got there and it was already over, I wish I had another couple weeks there. It was a ton of fun. It was about 3 hour flight to Munich, Germany. I slept the whole way. Then 8 hours from Munich to NYC.

Learning some Japanese on the flight.




We flew right over Iceland where the volcano went off a few weeks earlier, and canceled lots of flights. I am not sure if we could actually see the volcano however the pilot said that some of the clouds we see might be volcanic ash.

Thank you for your prayers and financial support. I am very blessed to have gotten this opportunity. I would go back if I have the chance again, I enjoyed serving there, and learning for the experience. I don't fully know now, but I know God will use the things I experienced to guide me in the future. Thank You everyone, I hope you enjoyed my blog post about the trip.