some pics

                                                                                                             

home is where the house is

so i think that this is what happens to most people, but im horrible at keeping this blog up to date, i hope your still interested. anyway, what has happened here in the past few weeks? well we have had a coffee house, the inaugural edge spring melt down. it was really good, we had three singer song writers come in, two locals, Jodi king, Derek Voth and Nova Scotia's Jonathan Bryant. it was a fun evening, starbucks donated a ton of fresh bean and treats and we had the edge's own very gifted and experienced barista's Caleb Elias and Andrew doerksen pumping out delicious beverages. and i would say that for the very first time hosting a coffee house, this was fairly successful fundraiser. that is probably the only big event, but now that the sun is out, our days have changed quite a bit. we can skate outside now which is super dominant!! we have taken a group to the new fort Garry skatepark, and have taken our club session one time to the plaza at the forks park. and we are planning a few more trips to parks, with the bbq or course, over the summer. 

i also moved out to a new home, on home street. our slogan is "home is where the house is." i have 3 new roomates, who are all rad characters. and i live 50 times closer to the edge. its a super nice neigbourhood actually. lots of kids running around all day, at least when the weather is nice, and a park just down the road. there are coffee shops and grocery stores only a blocks walk away so i can pretty much always walk or bike anywhere i want to go. love it! oh and im full time at the edge of course, now that school is over. 

God bless

patrick 

i won't back down

It is thursday morning April 9th. I am cycling the usual route down wellington and across the train bridge into Omand park. I want lots of speed to ensure an easy hill climb onto the bridge, and so i pedal hard, picking up a lot of speed. As i begin the ascent the path becomes rough as i go over the jagged, still quite frozen, sheet of ice covering the hill. I manage to make it halfway up the hill, but i lose control. i panic, and suddenly i am launch forward. First my ribs smash against handle bars, then my my legs scrape over as well. in split seconds time if in myself scrunch up in a ball on the cold, hard, sharp ice, with my bike coming to a rest on top of me. I lay there for a few seconds unable to move. in my chest i felt a piercing pain. slowly i pushed my bicycle off of me, sat up and leaned against the chain-link fence. i could feel the ice i was sitting on begin to melt and seep into my pants. my wrist hurt, one of my knuckles was bloody and my other wrist scratched up as well. my arms felt weak. "the meeting" i thought, "i have to get to the staff meeting". I struggled to pull myself up, gripping the fence for support. once i was standing, i began to feel a little stronger. "I can still make. I left a little early, so i can take it easy the rest of the way. walked across the bridge, and pushed off. i made my way down portage, sore but managing. I bike through the U of W and then take Ellice towards the exchange. I feel the the blood flowing through my body again, and my cycling adrenaline has returned. As i approach princess street, i merge into the center lane to avoid the construction zone. the car in front of me speeds up a little, and i, seeing the light turn yellow, follow suit. "i'll make this no problem, especially if i can draft behind that white SUV." suddenly the white SUV hit the brakes. Unable to stop at such an incredible high speed, i swerve my bike around the white SUV but failed to do so with my body. my shoulder is wrenched sideways followed my my waist. the impact cranked my saddle 90 degrees and i slip off catching myself as i stumbled in line with the passenger door. i look up at the driver with shock written all over my face only to meet similar expression on the face of the driver. She steps out and i apologize immediately. we examen her car but there isn't a scratch, or if there is, it isn't visible through the dust caked exterior. "Are you OK though?" she asks. i was, or at least the shock and adrenaline was convincing me that i was. she gets back in her car and drives off, and i slowly ride the last few blocks to the Edge. A sit through the meeting with my bruises swelling and overall just feeling a little ruffled. after the meeting, i head over to the richardson building to pick up phil. We bike to church for the maundy thursday dinner and then spend the evening with some friends in wolesley. then on my way home, the final blow is hits me hard. i take portage avenue down to sargent sundaes and cross the bridge into assiniboine park. i follow the path that goes straight through the center of the park, and i see a city temporary road block sign pushed off to the side of the path, as well as, a puddle behind it. the surface of the puddle is frozen and cracks under the pressure of my tires. the puddle gets deeper, and i feel my bike slowing from the resistance of the ice around my tires. i push hard on my pedals but it's no use. i stop moving and hold my balance still pushing on the pedals. no dice. my feet fall through the ice and i am standing in ankle deep cold water. i see and island in the puddle, which was actually much more like a lake. and i jump to it. but my feet are drenched. i looked up and at the puddle, there is no way i will be able to cross this without getting even more wet than i already was. So there i stood, dominated by the puddle. i turned and ran back out of the puddle the way i came in and decided to bike around the park. i make it around and start heading down shaftesbury. "this is ridiculous, i hate biking" i think to myself. i just got destroyed on my bike ride today. actually my thoughts might have sounded a little more pissed off than that. but i suddenly find myself grinning. "what am i saying, i love biking, i just had one bad day." thats when i began to sing. "no i won't back down, gonna stand my ground," no joke, i just started singing out loud. "you can put up at the gates of hell, but i won't back down. no i won't back down, though the world keeps on draggin me down, i won't back down." where would i be without johnny cash. i roll into the CMU parking lot, and put my bike in the shed. life is good. God is good.   

God is awesome

5pm, the sun is still up because the days are getting longer, tomato soup was warming up, and i was putting grill cheese sandwich number 12 of 16 on the pan. suddenly, Cliff Heide, the leading authority at the Edge skatepark comes barging into the kitchen. "we need to come up with some more food fast, a whole ton of guys just showed up" he announces. panic struck me, "but we only have 16 slices of cheese" i responded. on any other day, this would have been a sufficient amount for everyone to enjoy one sandwich with their bowl of soup. But not this time. Hoj and I said a prayer, Jesus, you fed the five thousand, now allow us to feed the 35 kids before us. we then quickly hit up the pantry to see what we could do. we found a bag of macaroni, and pour it into the soup. then we cut each sandwich in half. it was a bit nerve racking, i definitely did not want to be short of food so that someone wouldn't get a meal. that would have been a horrible experience. when the time came to eat, we all ate received a delicious meal. no one complained that there wasn't enough; everyone was satisfied. after the fact, i thought about what happened, there wasn't 12 basketfuls of leftovers to be cleaned up, but 16 sandwiches cut in half still only equals 32, and unless i was missing something, there were 35 of us there that at and were satisfied....

just got another newsletter printed and i will send them out this week. i just have to go pick them up from the printshop. but in the mean time, some pics

TJ seshing the mini

Austin giving the thumbs

Akeem

ok, so its been a little while since my last post, but here's the latest in Edge skatepark activity.

the sad news, our dear friend and colleague Evan Peters has resigned his position here at the edge, we love you Evan! and we will miss the wisdom you bring to our crew. In extremely exciting news, Caleb has returned from his honey moon!! it's likely that you don't know who he is, because you probably live in another province, but he works here and is awesome! congratulations BIG C and Bonnie! 

Now, we have been busy here at the edge. Cliffs home church in winkler has been readily supplying us with meals on wednesday nights, and cookies and tea for desert, oh and, today, one of the Starbucks locations here in the city has offered to give us all their day old's, so we have tones of tasty treats coming our way. a few kids have been asking about our junior volunteer program and have joined up. which is awesome, we are spreading God's word, and His kingdom is visibly growing here at the edge. it has been really exciting to see and be a part of, as well as, encouraging for someone like me who is still quite new to new to vocational ministry. it seems like a lot relationships are being transformed, and there is a ton of excitement here these days. God is dominantly(if thats a word) present!  keep us in your prayers, and i will try to keep you updated as often as i can. 

todays club lesson

a lot of kids have been asking about the 2012 doomsday theories that are flooding the internet these days, so todays club lesson came out of matthew 24:36-44 and Luke 12:35-48.

they were all over it. 

till next time

these are all of club night, hopefully ill get a hold of a few pics of some skating going down. 

Hoj is killin it!!

not everything gets caught on camera but here is a bit of whats happened lately

the mice are invading as of late! war is on, peanut butter bait has been place and the traps are ready to snap! we have caught a few but im sure their are many more. 

In other news, we, as staff, recently went on a weekend hike to Cliff's little cabin in the woods. if you don't know, cliff is the big Boss man here at the edge. this trip was definitely one of epic proportions. we basically drove out to pembina valley until the long and empty farm road we were on decided it would end, put on surrels, lots of clothes and our big packs loaded with sleeping gear and food. then we ventured off into the great white unknown in knee deep snow, windchill factor probably being -40. well actually we walked for about an hour and a half across some farm fields, and cliff knew exactly where he was going. when we arrived we found his cabin to be a small bunkhouse with 4 beds and wood stove. it was everything we needed. at this point it was already late in the evening so we unpacked, snacked a bit and enjoyed each others company. the next morning we went for a hike, wrestled in the snow, restocked the fire wood for the next visit, shot some cans with cliffs shotgun, and bonded over Gods glorious creation. 

Genesis 1:20:21 And God said, let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. and God saw that it was good. 

we served dinner during edge club last night and it was so rad! roast beef and baked taters!! all courtesy of cliffs church in winkler. the new kitchen is DOMINATING. one other really cool thing about it to was that the attention span of a kid with a full and nourished stomache is a lot more attentive than one that is full of their evening chocolate bar.

its a new year! i'm back at the edge and killin it! we got our first big meal for the club night meal program on wednesday, so stoked. things are moving here though. at the last staff meeting we collaborated all our visions for this next year and came up with a fairly detailed planning document. This year is gonna be GOOD. two big plans im thinking about are: new promo vid! (i think i might actually be the one who is going to take care of that project, might even start brainstorming right after i finish this post, who knows..), and the internship program. this was a vision of ours last year already, but we had some un-forseen complications. well, the two guys who were going to do it dropped out last second. oh well, just more time to make better preparations. so much has been done for this already, much more will be done asap! speaking of un-forseen complications though, this morning we arrived here to find what cliff likes to call "niagara falls." so im not sure why the falls decided to relocate in our park, but it went down. so we have a leak in our roof, good times! but edge staff crew just grew again, Andrew doerksen, also know has HOJ, will be here as another part time staff member, he is legit and as they say "throws it down." so thats the latest, come check out the edge! we are all over visitors!