I don't normally like to use this blog too much for personal updates, but I realize occasionally it's OK. So here goes, in totally random order:

1. God gave me a dresser. This sounds very silly, but it's true. I went out for a run the other night and walked up my street to cool down. Just a few doors up from me, a very large dresser with two missing handles but four working drawers was sitting on the sidewalk. I immediately pounced on it.

When I first moved here, I didn't have a dresser. Some friends from church kindly gave me one, but it was really too small, though it has worked in the meantime. This one is adequately large, if ugly. To boot, my new housemate needed a dresser, so the old one did just perfectly for her!

2. Financial issues have been proving massively stressful lately. It feels like I'm on a downhill slope, sliding further down, and receiving deathblows along the way (mixed metaphors, I know, but there you are).

I've come to the conclusion that freelancing is not working out right now, despite my best efforts, and have been job-hunting. Much as I hate the regimentation of a 9-to-5, sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and even free spirits need discipline.

The good news is that I have an interview with a job that looks really promising, later this week. I'll keep you posted.

3. I have seen God's provision for others; my new housemate, Sara, who just moved from New Brunswick, got a job within one week. So hooray for jobs!

4. Lots of crazy and wonderful things are happening with the group in Montreal. God seems to be moving and working and bringing things and people together in marvelous ways. My pastor, Chris, will be traveling there in a couple of weeks, along with me and a couple of other people from the church. So I'm looking forward to that.

I think in large part the financial situation is forcing me, again, to trust in God and to cry out to him for what I need. It was getting me seriously depressed, until I felt convicted about that: stress and worry aren't glorifying to God or useful to us. I know he'll come through, quite how remains to be seen; but he has always proven faithful in the past and I have his promise for the future.

I'm still high from an absolutely fabulous weekend at the Newfrontiers Canada leadership conference. We had great worship, great teaching from Chris McLean, Roger Bye, and Joe Crummey, and wonderful fellowship as we prayed for and spent time with one another.

The most exciting bit was our visitors from Montreal. There is a group of young people there who are experiencing a real move of the Holy Spirit. Kids are getting saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, and healed. They're not formed into an official "church" per se, but they meet for worship, prayer and fellowship. God has brought about a connection with Newfrontiers in Canada, with the purpose of encouraging and helping them in whatever ways that we can.

Two of the young people who came from Montreal were guys who have only within the past few weeks been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. Both quit drugs, alcohol, and smoking. One had been so violent and badly behaved that parents wouldn't allow their children to hang out with him. Now he's passionate about Jesus and they're both growing and radically changed.

I personally feel that God has given me a connection with them and I feel an urge to help them, pray for them, and do whatever I can to support them. I'm deeply grateful for their friendship, prayers, and encouragement to me.

The weekend ended rather spectacularly with a sledding trip to Toronto's Riverdale Park. The weather has been warm lately and many people have been sledding, so the hill is quite slick and icy. Somebody built a jump at the bottom, and several of us hit it, with predictably disastrous results. One guy has his arm in a sling, one girl had the wind knocked out of her, one guy has his back and foot hurt...and I'm sure there are more I haven't heard about.

I hit the jump on my first run, went flying into the air, parted with the sled, did several revolutions in the air, landed on my back, had the sled land on top of me and then bounce off. I felt fine yesterday but today have symptoms of a mild concussion: a quite peculiar feeling. No more sled jumps for me!