Odds and Ends

I'm from Saskatchewan so you knew it only a matter of time before I talked about the weather. I know it weird but I actually love it when it rains. I find it exciting and invigorating. Evan the foreman hates rain is really depressed by it. I pray for rain, he prays for sun so I think our prayers are canceling each other out and were getting a mix of sun and rain. But sun is aweful, I'm not one of those guys who dreams about going to the Carribean for a two week holiday and calling it 'school' I'm not just not a fan of being hot all the time. And I'm fairly certain that all of the bugs that were in Egypt ended up in Prince George. It is seriously of biblical proportions. And my bug dope that is 28.5 % Deet is just not cutting it, so I'm upgrading to Watkins which has 30% and serves as a treeplanters false functional savior. But really what I hate is the bugs touching my face. I've taken to wearing one bandana on my head to keep my hair back and on my face so the bugs won't touch me. Evan calls me 'the Terrorist' because I look so ridiculous. My epic treeplanter beard is coming in nicely. I definetly tell myself to 'earn your beard' when I feel like going slow. But as usually my mustache doesn't grow at all. So with my over grown hair and boyish beard its almost as though I'm impersonating a Hutterite Rockstar.

I also fall down alot. which is weird because I've always had awesome balance. But put treeplanting bags on me and I drop like a sack of bricks, at least once a day. Yesterday i fell twice in ten steps. awesome.

James 1:2-4 "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

This is a really kicker verse for me. I concluded some time this week that God was angry at me for making me go treeplanting. Then I recieved a spiritual spanking of sorts and am working through some junk in my life that just needs to go. Painful but worth it. Just like being a Christian is harder but better, so much better.

~CHAD

Warning: Scatalogical Content

As I've said before the food here is really good. But this week for some reason it was a little off one night, only I felt it so it was probably just me. Anyway my crew was hanging out around the camp fire like we do every night and writing jokes and I laughing as often do. [I'm unofficially known around camp as 'that guy who laughs really loud'. Big surprise there.] and I wasn't even laughing that hard but for some reason I started puking. Without warning. Five times. And I haven't puked in three years! It was really random and I would have been killing myself laughing if it hadn't been me. And I was fine the next day.

2 Timothy 2:1,6-7
Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus...It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

Here Paul is imploring Timothy to work hard like a farmer so that he might be a good pastor. It is not a hard leap to suggest that to be a good pastor you need to be able to work really hard. My default is not to work really hard, so I'm kind of learning this the slow way. Treeplanting requires alot of drive and some days [ok every second day] I don't have much drive left. I've spent the last two days reworking my technique because 'Evan the Foreman' thought the way I was planting trees was really funny and brutally ineffective. So I'm learning, painfully and slowly. Heres to learning how to be a farmer.

~CHAD

Just like in the Catoons

The last two days we have been planting on a block that has a ton of piles of slash that need to be work around or dug through. I got the honor of having a really steep piece. So it was very frustrating. The expectations are really high and I'm still just learning [slowly] how to plant good trees, sometimes by replanting them, which is even more demoralizing. And not going nearly fast enough to make money. I figured I need to plant 1000 trees a day to make more than I would at TopLine, I did that once this week...

...and while I was digging and hacking through a slash pile I stabbed my shovel in and a stick came up and whacked me in the face. I yelled and sat down and pouted for awhile. It felt just like in the cartoons where the big dumb guy steps on a rack and hits himself in the face. I now have a really nice sized scratch above my right eye.

Treeplanting continues to be one of the hardest thing I've done. Romans 5:3,4 says if we "rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." This hope is not a kind of a 'I really hope it rains tomorrow because I'm tired of getting sunburnt' hope, but a lasting steadfastness and confidence in Jesus that sustains.

~CHAD

Everything is grand except one thing...

There are many factors that I had no control over about treeplanting, like the food, the people I am stuck working and living with, whether I would sleep at night. But actually all of those things are great. The food is awesome, the people are all decent and interesting [we even wrote a treeplanting song last night] and I sleep way better in the bush than at home, weird. But there still remains an X factor, I'm really bad at treeplanting. No seriously and I've been at this for four days. Were suppose to plant tree is a loose grid thats relatively spaced apart. But I get lost and can't find my previous trees. The phrase ' can't see the tree for the forest' now becomes 'I can't see my trees for the shrubs, slash and swamps.' Yea a bit of learning curve, which feels like a learning steeple.

Gen 3:17-19 - cursed is the ground because of you...thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you...By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread.

This has very much new meaning for me. I've never had to be a farmer of sorts before [my offically title is 'agricultural field work - planting tree saplings'] so this is kind of new. Since this is all cursed because of sin, I'm feeling the effects of the sin and the curse in whole new way. Pastor Mark says that the ground is curse and work is hard so that men will know what God feels like when we is dealing with us being obstinate and thorny and generally disagreeable to His holy ideas. Yea.

~CHAD

Looking to the Bush

About two years ago I remember saying that I would never go treeplanting unless I heard an audible voice from God telling me to. And now I'm leaving to go planting in less than 48 hours. How did I get here? well I didn't have the thundering voice from the heavens commanding me to, but I do feel called to be going. My former pastor talks all the time about how treeplanting was one of the most spiritually challenging and rewarding times of his life, not to mention physically and mental challenging. Challenges are good and I don't do enough challenging things in life. And I need a change of scenery, of which this will be a big one. So long story short I feel that God has directed my path to this point and following him to the bush is what I must do.

Also, lots of people would say that they go on big adventures like this to go 'find themselves' which to me is not only over used but lame and largely unproductive. I fully understand that I am totally depraved and a sinful person. So I am not going to 'find' or 'discover' myself, I'm have a fairly good idea of what that looks like. Rather I am going to go and discover the richness, the wonder and the majesty that is Jesus Christ.

The blog url comes from the Foo Fighters song 'Let it Die' and from Romans 8:13. The hope is that Jesus would put to death my sinful desires and devises and that I would let them die.
Romans 8:13 - For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live

Talk to you from the bush.



~CHAD