British Student .ca

Last night I went out to a very nice French restaurant and learnt enough French to order Escargot à l’aïl as a starter, Canard confit for the main, and later Crème brulée as desert. That’s a bit daring with the starter, but the garlic sauce was just amazing, and I quite like escargot (snails) that was in it. Canard confit was duck with a sweet sauce and vegetables. French cooking is so amazing I think it could make me love any food, even beetroot which I previously hated. The quebecois waiter wasn’t so amazed at the effort I made to speak French well (for the benefit of the blog I don’t know how to spell ‘please’ in French, but I said it well).

This morning church was hilarious because it was the children’s Christmas Nativity Play, or Christmas Pageant as they call it here. Baby Jesus was played by a girl, the wise men/kings carried a younger king in a box, which broke by the time they made it to the front. I think there were a few angel sheep, and the computer froze for the video map. But we all went with the flow and it was brilliant, a lot of hard work must have gone into that.

After the service I left the building to see snow falling and a thin covering of the pavement. Wahoo! I was so excited and now I have a big burst of energy. I might be visitng Alberta over the Christmas break, so it will be good to climatise to the cold. My weather widget currently says 0°C as it has been for the last few days (without snow), 1°C in Newcastle/Durham, and 4°C in London. But here we have snow, so it’s better.

I’ve made the decission to be a believing christian since 2003. At the end of last year God seemed to give me a fair few messages that I should go to Canada (although I take credit for discovering the opportunity and suggesting the adventure). Those messages were in various forms and included: coming away from prayer with a potential advisor in mind who later turned out to be far more suitable than I ever knew; involved staff I didn’t want to deal with suddenly being away from meetings; church prayer announcments from people that didn’t know me, detailing exactly my current application situation. So it should be important to find a church to go to in Canada where I can be spirtitually supported when I get distracted from the God that helped me get here, have other people (and musicians) to worship with, and be parrt of a community that isn’t just fellow students.

In 2004 finding a church near home was scary on my own, but simple. I ruled out the 6 churches within half a mile of me due to silly reasons, and asked my cool class mate, Matt, where he went. That took me too a church a 10min bus ride away and Matt wasn’t there on my first week. I was about 17 so happy to meet adults, but the youth leader subtly(not very well) made some guys sit with the ne kid. When I moved to Durham for university it was even easier: go to one of the well known churches each week with your new christian corridoor mates or the many christians you meet, after 3-4 weeks you’ll naturally fit into a church (or go for the longest lie in).

Moving to Canada in 2009 is harder. I’ve never understood denominations well, but here it’s changed. Evangelical, “happy clappy”, charasmatic, is very different without reserved British people. Searching Google for “churches in Vancouver” brings up a small random selection of the Greater Vancouver area. On my first Sunday I went to Costal Church in Downton Vancouver. It was lively but large, and an hour away by foot-bus-subway doesn’t place it where I’m living.

Asking other christians where they go was harder. There are many christian student groups here but I’m getting bored of the same old introductions and actual christians are much more diluted in more than double the number of students Durham has. I did some more searching on Google, and combined with promotion of some local churches by UCM (University Christian Ministries) I made a list of churches to visit that were closer to downtown. They’re described in the photos below.

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