Missionsfest Vancouver

This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Vancouver to represent the school at Vancouver Missionsfest.

This is one of the best events of the year for us to get out and connect with alumni and prospective students. Missionsfest is held at Canada Place in Vancouver, right down on the water at the beautiful Pan Pacific hotel.

I'll start with a short commentary on Vancouver. First off, after 10 years living in Saskatchewan I've now officially been totally ruralized. I hate the city. H-A-T-E HATE. Vancouver is a large-scale Hamilton really. So many one way streets that make driving an absolute nightmare. I used to be able to handle that, and even still I do okay, but now it just stresses me out. Thankfully our hotel was about a 5 minute walk from the venu so we had to do very little driving.

Secondly, Vancouver sucks. I'm sorry to any loyal Vancouverites out there in blog land but it really does. I arrived in Abbotsford on Thursday afternoon and left Monday morning and in between that time I saw nothing but gray skies and constant rain. After 4 days of that miserable weather I was ready to take a deep swim into the big ocean. They've had this weather steady for over a month now. I couldn't handle rain all the time like that. Say what you want about the flatlands of Saskatchewan, at least we get to see this thing called sunshine on pretty much a daily basis.

As for the Missionsfest event itself, it was a good time. Briercrest is coming up on its 75th anniversary (2010) and it's always amazing to me when I go to these events and meet alumni who went to the school back in the 40's and 50's. This weekend I met a lady who was an alumnus of 1951 and she still had vivid memories of her time at Briercrest.

These types of weekends always serve as a reminder to me of the value of what we do here. We're providing opportunities for young people (and old ones too if they so desire) to come and study in an environment that encourages them to make God the centre of everything they do. We invite them to come and learn in an environment that will help equip them for a lifetime of service to Jesus Christ.

So many of the people I met this weekend have had profound influences on so many other lives and their time spent at Briercrest helped them build the foundation from which they now serve God and others. I was reminded of the value of what we do here, of what I do here, and it served to blow some much needed wind into my tired sails.

Vancouver has a lot of rough spots but our time spent at Missionsfest definitely made for a diamond in the rough experience.