Visited West Point Community Church on Sunday. The main church is located about 10 minutes away on the bus and they have recently planted an outreach here in the campus. Sunday was the first of their combined meeting held here in the campus, just across the road from College. It was an outdoor service, held on the church lawn, followed by a mission fund-raising barbecue! That’s summer for you over here. Pretty cool experience … I mean a pretty hot experience!
I’ve just finished my courses for summer school. Four courses in five weeks! Last week especially was the most intensive. Had a class with Dr Cherith Fee Nordling (Dr Gordon Fee’s daughter) in the morning from 8am, and followed with Dr Gordon Fee until almost 4pm. A full dose of Fee! The class with Dr Cherith on Contemporary Theology was very ‘enlightening’ as I was introduced to different ideologies of liberation theology and feminist theology. It was interesting to observe how the students interact and see the effects post-modern thought even in our discussions. My friend who also attended the class and I, could sense how important it is for people in North America to be political correct. People get very defensive if you are not careful in presenting your point of view and convictions. It’s a scary thought considering we're supposed to be a group of evangelicals sitting in the same class discussing about theology! I was wondering if we were the Nicene Council, whether we'd have a common platform for discourse!
These few weeks have been amazing – it’s like a chunk of my library has just been come to life and ‘became flesh’ as I met people like Dr Gordon Fee, Prof Bruce Waltke (both sat in the committee to translate the Today’s NIV), Tremper Longman III (part of the translation committee for New Living Translation), Luci Shaw (author of Water My Soul), Paul Stevens (author of Seven Days of Faith) and many others. The next few weeks will be dedicated to finishing up assignments, reading requirements, with papers to write and take home exams to study and sit for. It’s no play-play business.
We have been keeping up with our Sabbath ritual of having dinner together on Sunday, between Michael, Daniel and I - so it’s a Trinitarian meal now that Betty has returned to Singapore. The menu has been improving too. Served mushroom spaghetti with broccoli and chicken (Daniel helped with the chicken). I think Daniel is adamant to see me a cook a complete meal before he returns to Singapore! Then he’ll consider that I’ve graduated.
Summer in Vancouver is very happening. 1 July was Canada Day and 1 Aug is British Columbia Day. So these 2 weeks is the fireworks competition season with different nations coming to display their fireworks presentation. Only thing is they have to start at 10.00 pm because the sky is still too bright even at 9.30pm! I went for a walk last week and chanced upon an outdoor garden chamber music concert just a few minutes from my apartment! So sat there in the beautiful garden environment listening to the quintet playing flute, clarinet, bassoon, oboe and French horn. People pack their dinner, bring a mat or their garden chair to enjoy the music – one or two, even with their dogs! This week marks the start of Vancouver Music Festival so will be packing my lunch and checking out some free classical music gigs downtown. Should be fun.
p/s: Life of a student is not very interesting. This is for those who've been complaining that I've not been keeping up with my Blog - I'm sorry if you think it's full of boring details.
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