Travelogue Blog

Team Calgary’s mission was to travel to Calgary, Alberta to help Dan and Amber Sweaza with their new church—Connect Church--which will have its first worship service on September  11 in a movie theater. We left Elko on Saturday morning about 6:30 and stayed the night in Helena, MT—most of the group sleeping on the floor of a church and a few of us fortunates snagging a motel room and sharing our showers with the “less fortunate.” Our group of 19 ranged from age 2 (Genevieve, my seat mate) to age 72 (me).  

Two of our group inside a
huge metal skull sculpture
across from the capitol bldg.

We got to worship with the church who lent the group it’s floor and travelled on to Calgary on Sunday afternoon where Jared, our fearless leader, got very well acquainted with the Border Guard. After about two hours, much trepidation and a phone call to Pastor Dan (Connection Church), the Guard decided we really were not going to be taking work opportunities from Canadians and let us through.

Waiting at the border

We arrived at the seminary grounds where we were to stay the week—parceled among three homes, two having a bath and a half with washer and dryers and the third with two full baths, but no laundry facilities. Monday brought the rain and we headed for Pastor Dan and Amber’s house to fill bags of candy and label left over door hangars for our task the next morning. 

Houses "cheek by jowl"
9 feet apart

We eventually headed for Costco for the largest grocery shopping spree I’ve ever experienced. Food for 19 bodies plus a Neighborhood Block Party fills at least four shopping carts, as we were expecting around 250 parents and kids to show up Tuesday evening.

Four carts full at Costco

Tuesday morning was door hanger time in the area we’d been praying over for several weeks—Panorama Hills. Lovely homes—very close together, all with a flight of steps. Our teams finished in about two and a half hours and headed for Dan and Amber’s where our lasagna was baking for lunch (I think that was the menu).   

Steps and Door hangers

Then we loaded up and went to our park, unloaded the trailer and started arranging our “stations” Our food tent, the face painting station and the crafts station were busy the full time we were there. The “Bounce House” was also very popular as was the Princess from “Frozen.” Dan and Amber were very happy with the good contacts that came from the Party and the Lord orchestrated a gloomy weather forecast into a pleasant evening.

"Frozen" Princess at
Block Party

Lined up for face painting

Wednesday morning saw our group putting out more door hangars for another new church start that Dan found out about. This church will have its start in November (I think) and these door hangers were advertising a block party they were having the next week.  We finished our task, ate lunch and headed for Hope Christian Camp, a camp of disadvantaged children as well as an outreach to the homeless in an another city. 

Yes, it was part of the
"muck-out"

Our job was to muck out a house used for storage, organize an office space, do a woodburning project, mow a portion of the grounds (when it stopped raining) and re-arrange a bunch of picnic tables. 

Cynthia w/a finished
woodburning product

The rain stopped for a while so we could get the outside chores accomplished and then started again just before we piled into the vans.

Thursday we headed for a First Nations Reservation close to Cochrane where we were staying. John the church planter there has been building relationships for four years, starting as a volunteer at the Food Bank. He has been allowed to teach beadwork (he learned how on YouTube) to the women at the Women’s Shelter (a first) and is now known as Santa Claus at the elementary school even though he greatly dislikes the philosophical idea of Mr. Claus. He tutors kids in math and has come up with an idea that the chiefs have bought into for employment for the men there as unemployment on the Rez is abnormally high. John has gotten permission from the tribal elders to use a pavilion for worship (during the warmer months) which has been discarded by the Sun Dance organizers. 

Working on the
Pavillion grounds

Even Genevive helped

Sweep the floor--yes there's
a huge hole in the room

The grounds are what we worked on that afternoon—cleaning out the fence row, tidying up the grounds and sweeping the floor of the pavilion. We left the Rez, enjoying the beautiful scenery but saddened by the poverty of the people.

Friday was Play Day as we headed for Banff, Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. Saw lots of beautiful mountain scenery complete with glaciers and shopped until we dropped in Banff. Also climbed into a canyon where several of us reached the Lower Falls (1-1/2) miles) and one of our intrepid group made it to the Upper Falls, a 3 mile trek.

Jared, Skye and
Moraine Lake

Lower Falls of
?? Canyon:) 

The catwalk above the
water impressed me!!!

Saturday saw us heading for Anaconda, MT where we received a warm welcome including dinner. We stayed with church members and I got to stay with my new friend, Teyrl, who turned out to be a native of Anaconda and lives in the hamlet of Opportunity, Wisdom being the first tiny hamlet outside Anaconda’s city limits.

The road signs say it all

 I didn’t hear the stories behind these names, but I’m sure they’re interesting. I have to say that I find the beautiful mountain scenery between Great Falls and Butte, MT to be as awesome as the imposing peaks of Banff, but I’m grateful to be able to enjoy looking at them all—something a flatlander from Missouri only dreamed of in earlier years.

Anticipation still resides in my heart as I look forward to hearing how God works at Connect Church in the next months and years and how He will draw the hearts of the First Nation people to Himself.

(As a postscript to this lengthy missive, if you go to my FB page, you can see many more pictures of our trip as Jared collected pictures from the team and tagged us all.)