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Hello everyone,

Even as the first rays of daylight were filtering through the clouds and spilling into our little Willamette Valley, I was setting off on my trip to Vancouver, British Columbia. The car I was in had three other people: Kennedy, Mackenzie, and Preciosa. These are friends of mine from Grace City Church, the church that I attend in Corvallis. Before we got on the road, I said a short prayer for the group, asking for safe travels and a fruitful time in Vancouver. Then we were off. The open road and ten days of mission work lay ahead.

The trip was safe, smooth and entertaining. I introduced the rest of the car to a game called Contact which I learned while doing outdoor trips in college. They enjoyed that, and we were on great terms for the first leg of the trip. They scolded me when the traffic got thick and I was focused on the conversation more so than the Google Maps, but with a bit of rerouting around Tacoma, all was fixed and we resumed our journey.

Crossing the Canadian border was not difficult. We had uploaded our various legal documents a day ahead of time, so we just scanned some barcodes, handed over our passports for a moment, and they waved us along. And with that, we were in Canada.

It’s been many years since I was in this country, and on that previous trip my eyes weren’t well tuned to pick out the subtle differences between my land and theirs. This time, I noticed that many of the houses here are smaller and more architecturally complex. Surprisingly, there is more stucco and brick on the exteriors up here, and less wood. This is faintly suggestive of European styles.

We reached our hotel in the early evening and had some down time before meeting the mission group participants over dinner. It’s quite a varied group: we have people from New York, Philadelphia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Washington, and of course Oregon. The man from Florida, Josh, is hilarious. He told us some Florida Man stories. One involved an alligator that a man passed through the window of a Wendy’s drive-through! He has a real zest for life which I suspect will make this trip a lot of fun.

My roommate is from Kentucky. He had been out exploring the city all day and when he got back, we met up before dinner in the room and started talking. We’d been talking for about five minutes and I had just asked him how he had come to know God (I’d been sharing my story) when he said “Sam, we have twelve days and I certainly want to tell you about it. But right now I’m just so darn tired.” Well, sure enough, he was snoring in about three minutes. His name is Mark. We talked for a bit at dinner and he has a calm, upbeat demeanor – he assured me we’ll talk more when we get a free evening.

Well, the Lord has been very good to us so far. We have made the trip safely and everything has gone as planned. Tomorrow, the plan is to meet the local ENC church missionaries and walk around Simon Fraser University. In the evening, we will attend the local ENC church. It is led by Pastor Greg Mitchell.

Much love from Canada -

Sincerely,

Sam