Firstly we finally arrived two days late! We were stuck at Gatwick for almost 2 days as our flight was delayed by 30 hours!! Then after arriving in Calgary we had a 7 hour mini bus journey - so a long few days.
So the house we are staying in is a 5 bedroom house with 14 guys in it-that's not forgetting Kiri, she just doesn't sleep here!!! The house is constantly filled with laughter and we eat so much food every meal time!
We have started our daily routines on weekdays whereby we get up at 7.30 and have 2 hours to get up, have breakfast and spend the time in prayer and starting on our daily readings (which is about 8 chapters a day in the Bible and then a chapter of another book). At 9.30 we worship and have a morning study session- so far these have been the best times for me- and we just wait on the Lord ... It’s awesome!
After this we go for a 2.5 mile run and then hit the gym for a bit. After a bit of spare time and after having lunch we have another study session. These are really amazing encounters with the Holy Spirit and sort of have the theme of a housegroup...
After this we split into two groups and either stay behind at the house and cook and clean, but mostly we bake tasty cakes! Or we head down to the family ranch and do chores and work down there, in reality we just ride the quad bike round and chop trees down with chain saws! They have around 100 cattle, 7 horses, 4 dogs and 2 cats, so there’s plenty to do!!
Saturdays have been our adventure days. We started off with a hike of about 8 miles not far from here, which was knackering as many of us were still jet lagged! The second and fourth Saturdays have been snowboarding trips and the other Saturday consisted of shooting rifles and shotguns in the morning and then being dropped off into the Saskatchewan wilderness and then having to hike, hunt, build a shelter , a fire and make tea!
On Sundays we have been enjoying going to the Church which Josh and Joel's parents are pastors of, it's called Crossroads and has a great balance between being open to the Holy Spirit and a good solid bible teaching, so every Sunday we learn lots. The soul edge guys have also been getting involved with the music as we have 4 guitarists, 3 drummers, 2 bassists and a pianist! We have also enjoyed the wonderful hospitality and cooking of Mama and Papa Erb at the ranch!
We then had an Erb family friend called Hugh come to visit the church and spent a day with us at Soul Edge. He taught us all about prophetic ministry and really opened my eyes to how important and awesome a gift it is. Since then many of us have been gifted with prophetic pictures, words, visions and dreams-so exciting! We have also had days of fasting and prayer, which have been awesome to give days to the Lord and we have all truly been blessed through these times.
On the ranch we have also been put to more use that just mucking around on the quad!! We have been feeding the grain to the cows, moving cows, and chopping wood! We have also been horse riding and taken the sledging on the back of the quad to new extremes with troughs and inner tubes as well as building quinces in the snow, so not too much hard work! We have also just had a very cold week, too cold to run on one day as it was below -30! Every day we are also privileged to Jael and Jesse baking us amazing cakes...(they are Josh and Joel's younger sisters)
In the house we have been up to many antics: including alpha dog fighting, whereby teams gang up on others and pin people down til they submit, although this has now been stopped as it got too competitive! We have also continued our weekly quiz nights where the forfeits have been laying in the snow in boxers for 1 minute, running round the outside of the house in boxers and wearing a cape whilst snowboarding for the day! One night we also had a power cut and played an interesting game of sardines, as there are not many places you can hide 12 people...
We have also had 2 birthdays: Steve's 21st and Rich's 19th. Steve got baptised in a hot tub to celebrate which was awesome and his testimony was inspiring whilst Rich had the day on the slopes! We have also had a pudding evening with some couples from the church and are starting to get to know a few Herbertians, who are all so friendly and welcoming. We are also starting to get involved with the community in various youth groups, which is great to get to know a bunch of kids who are just good fun and just have the opportunity to share the love of Jesus with them. The fact that we are English and in a small town of only 500ish, we sort of stand out and is a good place to start conversation...
Personally i have enjoyed challenging myself in the prophetic and relying on God's word spoken into me. It's so cool to be a vessel of what God wants to say to people and myself and such an encouragement. I have enjoyed spending more time in solitude with the Lord and he has gifted me a song, which was an answer to prayer. we spent a morning of confession as well, which took hours but was one of the greatest feelings of freedom from sin many of us had experienced, and bought us closer together as a group of disciples. We are just excited to keep exploring the word of God and growing deeper in our faith and stronger in our relationships with Jesus and with one another.
Finally as I write, we are preparing for a week of snow hiking and camping in K Country about 7 hours from here. It getting late and we are up in less than 7 hours so i sign out...
God Bless you and thanks for reading and well done for getting to the end :)
Ollie.Jeffs.Olz.FM.Jetso (or wateva u fancy calling me)
