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Monday, April 16, 2007 

Sunday Re:Wind<<<

It's 6am and all I hear and smell is popcorn...30 bags of microwave popcorn to be exact! so much popcorn that my microwave won't pop it in the time it says it will because it's starting to die due to overload! All this because my darling wife had the incredible idea to go and buy this popcorn, juice boxes and tons of candy to make candy bags at 9pm on Saturday night!

I stood there popping this popcorn with a pit in my stomach thinking "What on earth are we doing?" I had heard numerous people say "Oh, we're not going...it's 'just' a movie" and they had got me thinking that it would be just me, bek and our kids at the theatre on Sunday morning. That's a lot of popcorn for us to eat to make me feel even remotely satisfied about popping it and getting sick because of it!

We had known that we were showing a movie for "church" for a few months as Dave and Charlene were going to be in Mexico on a holiday (which is where they are right now...lying on a beach). so instead of doing what we normally do, only way worse...we decided to go a different direction and encourage some dialed down community by watching an Imax video. Originally, we weren't going to have popcorn, juice boxes and candy bags because we had just had a continental breakfast the week before and didn't think we needed to do any more. But, leave it to my wife...she came through in a huge way (even though I had the treacherous job of the popcorn!).

At 9:50am, Ryan Peppler looked at me and said "Is this all the people coming?" Oh man...yep. That's all it looked like. The faithful few. But for some reason I forgot that every week, everyone shows up at 10:01 and sure enough...that's what happened. Even though of our regulars decided that watching a movie didn't merit "going to church" but we still had the same amount of people that we normally have. The crazy thing is that we couldn't get people to stop talking in the lobby/atrium. There was such a buzz in the air. We had to start "herding" people in so we could, in fact, do what we came to do:) As people started walking in, their faces lit up as they saw that there was popcorn, juice and candy for anyone who wanted it. The lineup felt like it was actually a movie. As everyone made their way to their seats, the sound of crunching popcorn was hilarious as we're used to having people just sitting there. And for the first time, I got up front a prayed before a movie! It was awesome to see the diversity in the crowd from little tiny babies to grandparents...and everyone was excited to be there.

As the movie ended and we were all making our way out, I had so many people say that they had a great time...that it was really nice to have a change of pace and just be together without any other agenda. It was an experiment, especially doing it during the time when we normally "have church" but it was one of those experiments that boosted momentum instead of breaking it down.

Next week, things will be rockin! Everyone will be rested up (hopefully! Dave and Charlene's plane flies into Vancouver this sunday at 3am! Hopefully they'll show up!) and ready to get back to what we normally do.

Donovan Price will be making his debut on the teaching team as we kick off our new series titled "The upside down way of God" I'll be speaking the following week and I'm telling you, I'm feeling the itch already! You may not be able to shut me up!

I don't know what's happening with TXC, but from what I can see right now, it's something amazing!

What an amazing time! To be honest I wasn't thrilled about seeing a movie at 10am, but I was so glad we were faithful in going.
It was wonderful to touch base with friends, new and old, before the movie started, there was such a relaxed, casual environment.
The candy was great and we loved how this movie showed God's creation in all it's splendor. What a wonderful way to sum things up at the end of the film, when you mentioned that it's clearly evident that we have a Creator who caused all this to be. His timing is perfect in having the coral spawn at that one day each year.

We learnt so much that day and our family spoke about what we learnt at church. We hope , in the future we'll have another "break"!
Jil

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