if grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.

what a week it's been. i started out the week in eager anticipation for all that God would do in our group during this week of 24/7 prayer, and was blown away. i don't think i have any idea beyond a small glimpse of the things that have happened in the prayer room this week, and the things resulting from all of our time spent there.

i continued to cherish the hour-long slots i'd get in the room, some spent in solitude and some spent with others. the times varied as far as focus of prayer and overall experience went, but it was always valuable. the walls quickly became plastered with prayers, pleas and praises. as the week progressed they became more and more covered, in hurt and hope and incredible, heartfelt responses to both... there was some serious work being done in the hearts of all of us... a new level of transparency and vulnerability being brought to the group.

as i saw the prayers and questions and read people's encouragement displayed for the group to see, and as more and more incredible conversations happened, i realized that we're all starting to be united in our dream for this group - or rather, God's bringing us together with the glimpses we're getting of His dream for us. i can't even explain it, but spending time with God every day in a room full of photographs of the people we're sharing this year with gave all of us a renewed desire to dive deeper with these people, to abandon everything holding us back from striving toward God's best for us this year, to get to know each other on a whole new level and boldly love each other in ways we've perhaps been afraid to - or at least, i had been.

and something really awesome happened: i shared my story! i wouldn't have thought it would take me so long but it was incredible. as frustrated as i'd gotten recently at having not shared yet, i've realized the timing was right to do it this week; as well as being able to explain significant occurrences in the prayer room, this week saw bria and tim share their stories as well... i think all three of us were pretty reluctant/anxious towards sharing, but it was time and it was sweet and God is good. i love the change there's been since i shared; i walk around feeling known, conversation seems far less restricted, and there's such a shift in my dynamic with people. it's great.

a verse that my good friend james gave to me following my testimony was Galatians 5:1 - "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." this verse has proved to be a real encouragement as well as a challenge, one i'm grappling with a lot and praying on. there are so many areas of my life lacking freedom, where i have consciously and tangibly separated myself, for years, from "the free kids". but God, my Father and my Rescuer, set me free so that i could be free. i knew this year the chained ways in which i still live would be challenged, and i'm ready to ask for help for the first time, and to fight this and pray through it and surrender it all to God, and be set free.

on the ministry side of things, i had my first "QFX" session this week, which is where we work alongside a qwanoes staff member for our camp ministry course. i'm working with michael down, whom i served alongside on the qwanoes staff team for the last three summers and who is now serving as follow-up coordinator. tim, nicole and myself were given insight and influence on projects in development to help with follow-up between summer camp counsellors and their campers. it's a part of the ministry that's really important and needing attention, i think, and michael's got a rad heart for it, so it was a good time for sure.

as for church, if you could please be praying as to my role on sundays goes? at this point, jessica, nick and myself have been sitting in on the services, but i know that jessica and i have been wondering if perhaps we'd be suited for the sunday school ministry. we'd talked to kevin, the youth pastor, about it (sunday school is all the way up until grade 12 at st. andrews), and kind of let the idea fall by the wayside, but i kept running into these two boys at church on sunday, and they seemed so stoked to be have an older guy taking interest in them, and while the conversation was so basic and so surface-level it got me really excited to see God at work, and i couldn't even really see how he was working. so if you could pray that it would be clear to me/us if we should be getting involved in the sunday school ministry and all that, that would be sweet.

another major prayer request is for the totality of our family here. this past week brought a lot of hurt to the surface, a lot of it from peoples' pasts but some of it in the present, and prayers for healing would be incredible. there are a couple of people who are unsure whether or not they're coming back for second semester, and the rest of us are heartbroken at the thought of being any less than 28 in number. please just pray that they'd be back here next semester, that the things jeopardizing that - a variety of obstacles both personal and health-wise - would be removed, and we'd be blessed with another semester spent with them. honestly, i cannot imagine coming back an incomplete group, and the thought is giving me a lot of unrest. please pray!

also, i'm overdue on two assignments. neither are exceptionally difficult, and i've got one of them almost completed, but there's been a lot of stuff going on that's called for attention, academic, spiritual and interpersonal... please just pray that in the midst of the course we're doing now (foundations of church ministry - i love it. so much. it's fantastic.), that i can get them in by this sunday. i haven't had a late assignment yet, but these two kind of sat untouched while my old testament lit paper took up most of last week.

i appreciate your prayers and your encouragement. peace be with you,

matthew.

i realize just how beautiful you are, and how great your affections are for me.

oh man, what a week this has been. o.t. lit has come and gone, and today we had our final exam. as much as i enjoyed the course, i was sick all week and don't think i retained very much because of this... so we'll see how i did on the exam.

otherwise, things have been going a million miles an hour. there's been so much going on, it's hard to process it all. this weekend was the senior high retreat for qwanoes, and i served primarily as an all-star, and was super-blessed to have so many friends from back home (and my brother! so rad) here for the weekend. a bunch of guys from the small group i led last year with my church's middle school youth group came, and it was such a blessing to see them and be reminded of all that's going on back in coquitlam. it was so cool to see God working in the connections made between campers and counsellors.

church yesterday was also a really sweet time. there was a guest speaker, a guy from the young life ministry actually, and as i sat there i got so excited for all that young life is doing and all that was being said about this generation of teens that needs to be spoken. i was also made very thankful for the things that made my adolescence atypical: the guy spoke about the longing that the majority of teenagers have to spend meaningful time with adults, and the fact that only 2-3% of a teen's time will usually be spent with adults (all these statistics raising the question of how they are supposed to learn to actually be adults)... and i became really thankful that i was blessed enough to be an exception to this trend and have an abundance of mentors pouring into me through my last two years of high school especially. it's also made me continue to chew on the idea of working with young life; i'd been entertaining the possibility earlier this fall and a bit this summer but pushed it to the side, but it's really something i'll need to pray about.

this week is the 24/7 week of prayer, and so far it's been incredible. i've had a few hours in the room (hour-long shifts, with one or two of us in there at all times) so far, and it's been incredible to see the things that are being offered up. the walls are becoming covered with transparent prayers and requests and questions and celebrations... it's so great. me and tim started 'er off yesterday, and spent a lot of time sharing things with each other, things that i think we both really benefitted from bringing to light. we shared with each other, knowing that when believers come together in his name, God shows up. it was cool.

later on yesterday, i had my first solo time in the room, which was great as well. there are portraits of each of the students lining the room, and i spent the majority of the time walking around the room, praying for each of them. it was incredibly encouraging when i realized that, with two or three exceptions, i've grown to know almost everyone enough to offer up substantial prayers for them. it was an incredible time, and i spent all day today eager for the hour me and matt were going to be in there.

i didn't really know what to expect as far as spending the hour with another person goes (me and tim were in there more to fill in the time between when our whole kaleo group met in there and when the first person on the schedule came in, so it was much less than an hour), but it was a really sweet time in which me and matt shared parts of our stories with each other, prayed for each other and for k7 in general, walking around the room and looking at the things that had been put up - broken pleas, huge encouragements, hopes for the year, and prayers that we could echo and respond to. it's mostly anonymous, and we both contributed to it ourselves, but such a good lens with which to view our group, transparent and raw and full of things to pray for, expectant. i know that for me at least, the things i've put up have ranged quite a bit in content, and i'm realizing there's an abundance of things for me to express, both thankful things and broken things, and situations or struggles that need light brought to them, hope delivered to the hopeless. i'm eager to see what comes out of this week, and honestly an hour a day doesn't seem like enough.

however, there's tonnes of other stuff that needs seeing to this week. i have one paper due tonight (midnight) that is about 75% done, a far larger one due friday that has yet to be started, then two books that must be read, one requiring a response and the other a four-page paper, two days after that. i'm starting to feel the pressure, and i'm fairly certain i did poorly on the exam today, so if you could be praying for the academic side of things as well i'd be really thankful. i'd love to know what i could be lifting up this week for you as well, as i've got no shortage of time in which to do so! so just let me know.

grace and peace be with you.

my hope's not in me at all.

immediately following mine and james' return from the packed week known as reading break, it was time to finish up the major hermeneutics paper. which meant being up until six in the a.m. banging it off. this is college, i guess.

the day following, the junior high retreat at qwanoes began, during which i served as a counsellor. i was really blessed to have three campers from my church back home in my cabin, as well as one of my campers from this summer. and! i was really blessed to be ambushed at midnight the first night (my birthday) by justin and jeremy, who led my cabin on a middle-of-the-night adventure that ended in pizza and mcdonald's and a group of kaleos and friends wishing me a happy birthday. it was so great.

and then came the morning, and i was sick as junk. i don't even know where it came from, but i spent my entire birthday sleeping essentially. not going to lie, i think it was a gift. i wasn't actually too choked; while physical circumstance wasn't ideal, my heart was still golden from the night before, aided by the large amount of great friends from church back home who were serving on the retreat as well.

and now we're starting old testament literature! today was our first day, and it was great. the prof is rad, and the lectures are really interesting. i honestly wasn't expecting to like it this much, but i'm already understanding why many former kaleos have called it their favourite course. this is sweet.

on a personal note, i think the time is soon advancing for me to share my story. it's becoming an increasing frustration and a heavier burden day-by-day; last night i got ridiculously little sleep, feeling more than heavy-hearted for the lack of things i've vocalized, for the things i've shied from or swept under the rug with this group. to be perfectly honest, this needs to change. i need these walls gone, i need to be legit. i don't know that it's ever been so hard, but i don't know that it'll ever have been more worth it. that's my way of asking for prayer, friends.

ps. it wouldn't be matthew newton's blog without a plug for whatever album just came out. hello hurricane, by switchfoot. amazing. go get it. right now.

i like to make myself believe, that planet earth turns slowly.

i decided part-way through tonight's events that i would have to blog it, but for reasons far more trivial and irrelevant than the story that ended up coming out of the night. i think God gives us stories worth telling, and then there are stories we think are worth telling and this is both; it starts as the latter but ends up being one that needs to be told, so please bear with the shallowest of it. it gets deeper.

i really love taking people on adventures, especially people who aren't from bc/vancouver/lower mainland. and so tonight, being privileged enough to have james, a k7 brother from ontario with me, i took him for an adventure.

and it was sweet. we borrowed allana's mom's lexus v8, we roof-jumped sfu, took sweet pictures and got all hopped up on adrenaline. the night was sweet, and had it ended there it would've been sweet enough.

then we decided to go to vancouver. as tomorrow will be all-homework, more or less, and the day after that we're peacing it back to kaleo, we had to be sure to go to van city, at least to see it. neither of us were tired (we slept till almost 2 p.m. today) and we were already in burnaby, so we drove downtown. we drove through hastings to get near robson, and we parked behind a silver car at shangri-la, and checked out robson, only to realize it was almost 2 a.m. and so the only thing open was mcdonald's and some coffee houses, and so after grabbing a white hot chocolate from blenz we headed back to the car. two guys were walking ahead of us to the car parked in front of us. long story short, it ended up being lucas grabeel from high school musical and smallville and a lot of other stuff. me and james are both pretty keen on hsm, so that was really sweet. didn't get to talk to him; we didn't recognize him until he was in his car and pulling away, but this all made the night sweeter.

then we went driving around trying our luck for further encounters of the hollywood kind, and ended up following trailers and film equipment trucks to the set of some disney movie they're filming in stanley park. we got some pictures with new york city yellow taxis. the night was getting even better.

we did some more random exploration before deciding to call it a night. here's the real story worth telling. in my attempts to drive down gastown rather than hastings, i ended up somewhere between the two, in an area very clearly belonging to the downtown east side. we passed a police station, and we passed a building called "victory house". the words stuck with me. victory on the downtown east side. it's needed. it's hell down there. we pulled to a crossing and got set to turn right. i saw a girl on the corner across from us, leaning against the wall. she can't have been twenty. i doubt she was even eighteen. she stared right into my eyes and smiled the most wrong, broken, inestimably haunting smile i've ever seen. i groaned, not out of annoyance or judgement but out of a sheer inability to put to words all that i felt in that instant. i turned right, kept going, and james had seen it too, had felt it too. before i could even begin to process it, i was stopping so that a man could cross the road. he was big, rougher-looking, and stared right at us. instinctively (and i hate this part right here) i locked my door, and told james to as well. he saw, he knew, and we sped out of there. a song came on the radio that i loved, but i turned it off. i began to pray, to talk and plead with and question and cried to God. there was nobody else to talk to, nobody else i could expect to put my desperation on. james was there, and james heard all of this, and there's something to be said about that, but i wouldn't have said the same things, my heart wouldn't have moved the same way, had i not been talking to God. i prayed the entire way home, and while it wouldn't be appropriate or perhaps possible to share it all with you in this way, please ask me about it. and, i suppose, this is my prayer right now.

Father,

i never want one of your daughters to think that i am coming for her in the way that girl i can only imagine was thinking i was coming for her. i never want, for one second, for anyone to think that i'm driving downtown at night to pay a girl to tolerate me thieving something of inestimable value from her. i don't want to lock my door and force an identity on someone i don't even know, to accuse them of motives that they may or may not have. i don't want to lock the doors and reinforce racial or class divides, i don't want to condescend and i don't want to add to someone brokenness like this. i want none of this. only You can save the downtown east side. only You. on the same street that victory was pronounced would You please bring victory that we cannot. keep my heart soft and breakable; it's been so hardened to all of this for far too long. let me not run from these daunting battles against lies and brokenness and drugs and poverty and homelessness. it would be a lie to run away.

" a break to read, or a break from reading ? "

friends,

so right now is reading break. i can't believe it's november already. six weeks of kaleo have flown by - and i'm eighteen in 5 days! crazy. actually, i'm currently sitting at allana's house (my former abode) with fellow k7 james, watching spider-man 3, procrastinating reading, and getting ready for a birthday dinner with friends tonight.

i already filled you guys in on our trip to ucluelet last week, and the time since then has been spent mostly completing spiritual formations work, all of which was completed and turned in yesterday. in the midst of this, we've been having chapels and such which are pretty much my favourite thing in kaleo. so much victory, God doing so much. it's been incredible.

things at youth group are always changing and always interesting - we do different things every week, and this last week was spent playing capture the flag at a farm and singing sweet worship in the barn. as it is reading break, i wasn't at sunday service at st. andrews, but managed to make it to coquitlam alliance back home for ethos, the new young adults night, to catch my good friend cameron dailly preach it. so good. the sermon and the ministry and the community; there was so much to discuss and think about far after leaving. also it was incredible to see everyone again - a lot of people i haven't seen in two to four months, which is crazy to think about but gives so much to catch up on.

contending with all the catching up will be reading, the official focus for this week. so... pray for that. there's lots of distractions. speaking of, the dinner's coming up in less than an hour so i'm gonna peace.

peace.

matthew.

ethos.

i'm ready to let this go.

i'm ready to let God be the God of the things he is the God of
and the God who gets rid of the rest.

who rescues me from the rest.

who redeems me of the rest.