Welcome to Kaleo6

Hello Friends & Family and welcome to my blog,
As most of you know I am now in Vancouver Island near a small town called Crofton attending Kaleo. Kaleo is a 8 month program to develop young leaders combining both school work and ministry together. The proffs come from Briercrest as Kaleo is a program from Briercrest partnered with Camp Qwanoes which is a year round camp. So the proffs fly down and teach 1 week modular courses and in the times where we do not have classes we go on little adventures as I'll tell you about later and as well as we have different ministry opportunities here at the camp by helping out in the challenge course of being a cabin leader and we also had the choice when we arrived to pick a church to intern at during our time here. So now that you know a bit more of what Kaleo is here's what I've been doing...
So I arrived here at Camp Qwanoes/Kaleo on Sept. 10th and got settled into our dorms here at the Pacific Woods Lodge. Thankfully I got the room with the ocean view which has been so nice to see and fall asleep to hearing the waves outside our window. In my room I have 3 other roommates Kristy, Jordana & Shannon. We have bunkbeds so on the top is our bed and on the bottom we have a large desk. In each of the rooms we have our own bathroom and showers too. In our school there is 27 of us students so for the past 8 days we've all been getting to know each other quite well. So far we've done a lot of ultimate frisbee, beach volleyball, guitar jam sessions as well as reading our book for homework and going to chapel together. Everyday we spend here at Kaleo we try to have chapel so it's been really neat getting together and worshipping God together as well as being able to play in the worship team with the other students who are so blessed musically. Some other things we've been up to is training for the challenge course which today I got to help out at. We had a 2 day training session teaching us how to belay the climbing walls and run some of the challenge courses like the Screamer which is a zipline that the kids harness into. So far in the past 8 days we've had 1 band class come for a weekend to practice for one of their concerts nearby, then the past couple of days we've had another school come down and then this weekend Trinity Western University is coming so as you can imagine there are many opportunities here at the camp to help out and serve. Along with that when we first arrived we were given a list of 7 churches to pick and then intern for the next year. After praying about it I felt like God was leading me to go to Cowichan Lake Baptist Church which is about 45 minutes away from Kaleo. So myself and 3 other students will be attending that church as well as 2 Kaleo students from last year. The 2 girls from last year fell in love with the church and were asked to come back so they both decided to move to Lake Cowichan, to rent apartments and find jobs in this small town in order to invest more time into their youth ministry. It is a fairly older church, we were able to attend one of their services last week and it will definitely take some getting used to. It has a very small congregation and none of the youth attend the church so most of the attendee's are elderly. They have a organ that they play for worship to accompany the 3 singers in hymms and some choruses so quite different from the church at home where we had guitars and a piano. But I am looking forward to getting to know the congregation more as well as their youth group. Apparently they have around 20 kids in their youth group however they do not attend church and some as many youth groups come from very torn families so I'm looking forward to getting to know them and meet them this next year!
Well to my latest experience. As I said earlier when we do not have classes we are either serving here at the camp or our church or on adventures and this past Monday (Sept. 15th) we went on our first school adventure. Now this adventure was our hiking trip to Mt. Albert-Edward. We divided our school into 5 teams and we loaded up our backpacks with clothes, tents, food, and cooking supplies and took off. It was approx. a 34 kms hike and even though that doesn't seem too long we got to hike through many different types of terrain. The 1st day was definitely my favorite, our group got to bond so well and it was a great start. We hiked to one of the lakes on the mountain and set up camp then made burnt spaghetti by accident which was quite the hilarious experience. Unfortunately I got the giggles so now our team "Goose" thinks all I do is giggle over nothing. But anyways we camped out for the night then the next day our whole school of 27 plus our leaders went up the mountain to the peak. It was so beautiful, very challenging to get up there but we have a amazing school once again. God has definitely blessed me with the schools i've been both here and in Australia. When I first learnt that we were going hiking I was dreading it so much and didn't want to go at all. I was so nervous that I physically couldn't do it but after hiking that day for 11hrs I was so amazed at how easy it was (well how rewarding it was). So my team Goose packed up and went to another lake then the next morning (yesterday) we got up and took off back to the parking lot. It was such a amazing way to start off the school. We learnt so much about eachother and really really really bonded. At the top it was so neat, after taking many pictures we all gathered around at the peak and gathered together and prayed for our school and thanked God for the marvelous weather. Other years they've had rain and last year snow but for us the weather was so amazing, in fact I burnt it was so warm out. It was so incredible to go up there knowing that not many people get to see sights like that and we all got to do it and do it together.
So that has been my experience of Kaleo this far. On Monday we are headed on a 5 day sailing adventure which will definitely be another team building and bonding experience. So if you could pray for safety and for our group to continue to bond and grow together that would be greatly appreciated. I'm so excited to see how God is going to work in our lives this next year I can hardly wait. So thank you so much for your prayer support as we go through this year together learning, stretching, and growing in the Lord!
Daneille