James & Carolanne

Off to Staff Conference

As of tomorrow, we're off to our annual Power to Change Staff Conference!  For those who don't know, every year Power to Change holds a Canada-wide staff conference where all the Canadian PTC staff get together for a week of inspiration, networking, team building and spiritual renewal.  There are approximately 500 staff (and potentially their families) who will be attending.  (I'm not certain on the exact numbers) Staff Conference is always somewhat of a challenge...

Global Daily for June

Question: Let us know about your activities, ministries, home assignment activities etc. for this summer. Answer: The nature of our ministry doesn't really change much with regard to the various seasons of the year. We do see somewhat smaller numbers at times during the summer, as people are often taking vacations and generally getting offline. We also often bring in a few summer interns to help them gain experience in web based ministry. During this...

Pray for Carolanne's Dad

Please pray for our family and especially Carolanne's dad these days.  Last Tuesday (May 28'th) he went in to the Abbotsford hospital with some chest and back pain.  The Dr's have diagnosed it as having been a minor heart attack however they have kept him there for observation and more testing to find out the cause and to confirm the diagnosis.  In the process, they have discovered that he also has leukaemia.  Today (Monday) he...

Global Daily for March 2012

Each month, I (James) write a short article in response to a specific question or two for our church.  I usually also post these here to give you a sense of what's going on in the ministry.  The following is the entry for this month. Question: How will you celebrate Easter and how do you share the message of Easter with the people where you are? Answer: We are very blessed to have both of...

Global Daily - Jan. 2012

Every month, one of our supporting churches asks us to write in response to a question so that the congregation can get to know us better and pray for us more specifically.  This is our entry for January, 2012. Question: Tell us something from your childhood or early adult years which God has used to specially prepare you for who you are and what you're doing now. I (James) have often wondered at how God...

Global Daily for CHC

Every month, I'm asked to write an entry for the Global Daily for Central Heights Church.  This is my entry from October (published November).  We are asked to respond to specific questions, and the one for this month was "Tell us about a Scripture book or passage that is especially meaningful to you." I (James) think my favourite parts of the Bible are those highlighted in red text.  I love reading and learning about what...

Feb. Surgery Update

On Thursday of last week (Feb. 3) I received a call from the office of the specialist that we have been trying to see, telling me that they had an opening to operate on the following Tuesday (Feb. 8 ) and wondering if I could make it on short notice. Naturally I said yes and quickly arranged for a few days of sick leave from work. Though it wasn't ideal timing, I've waited for quite...

Raising $1000 per Month by June

Many of you may have heard about our recent push to raise $1000 by June, but for those of you who haven't, I thought I'd post an update on what this is all about. We have been asked by Power to Change to raise an additional $1000 in monthly support by June 2011. This is not because we're suddenly going to be paid more, but rather due to cut-backs in P2C's covering of our existing...

Quick Ministry Update

Dear Friends, As many of you know we have been delving more and more into the realm of producing and using evangelistic video content on the websites. To that end we have developed a number of video "channels" aimed at reaching a variety of demographics. As an example, one of the channels we're developing is a "Family" channel in which we show an assortment of videos designed to help families and marriages. The channel covers...

Prayer Requests

Please pray for the hurting people who we interact with on the sites. This last Monday our director shared how she had the opportunity to literally save a young man's life through the website over the weekend. The person was intending to drown himself in a lake, but searched the Internet one last time for the phrase “what happens when you commit suicide”. Our site came up as the first result in his search and...

Suicide and Mentoring

The following exchange took place a few days ago on one of our articles related to suicide.  I am posting it here because I thought it was a really meaningful example of our ministry in action combined with the positive influence of mentoring on the site.  If you like, you can read the full article with comments here. Vandana Mittal: hi.. I love a guy who says he we cant be together because of commitments...

Surgery and Ministry Update

Well it seems that God has other plans for my life than to be healed.  About a week after my surgery was cancelled, the problem reappeared.  Please continue to pray that things would improve and/or heal completely.  Please pray also for us as this process has been quite frustrating.  I'm stuck working from home again due to this and while I've been able to see the positive sides of things, it would still be better...

Surgery Cancelled ... Due to Healing

On Wednesday June 16'th, I received a call I'd been anticipating for quite a while.  The call was from the specialist Dr's office, informing me that they had time to do my surgery if I could come on short notice. The background to all this is that back in March, after waiting for months to see him, the specialist informed me that I would need another corrective surgery in order to attempt once more to...

San Diego

As some of you may already know, we recently took a family trip with our parents (Loren and Becky) down to San Diego to visit supporters and relatives and reconnect with the friends at Mission Valley Community Chapel. This was our first time travelling any sort of long distance with the kids. We were not quite sure what to expect but as it turns out they travel VERY well.  Julia was an angel for most...

Atheist Disappointed in God

We have often talked about how there are so many people who come to our websites for help or with serious questions about life and faith, but hearing numbers just isn't as effective as hearing the actual stories of people we interact with. I received this note recently from our director and though it might be something you would be interested in hearing as well. Earlier today “AwesomeAtheist” came into our chat room and began...