Tuesday, May 27, 2008

motivation! where art thou?

Well since I've gotten back from my short tree planting stint, its seems my motivation to do stuff I don't want to do has been at this non existent level of frustration. I dread doing some monotonous job for a month just to make money, but I need to work, I need to get out of this house and do something. Part of me thrives in these meaningless jobs, Its fun to push yourself when no one expects you to even try. My health is sort of playing games with me, its seems like my pneumonia is gone, but sometimes I still have a shortness in my breath, fatigue, and still have cold symptoms. it all seems to be gone except for the fatigue, which may just be brought on because of how much i have been sitting around for the past week and a half. I was shoveling dirt today filling my moms flower beds and I had like no strength which in turn makes me want to wait until next week to start working if I end up working at red river soils. But I'm going to try to get a job working with steve at pollard bank note, which im sure has some physical element to it, but probably nothing compared to the physical death that red river soils is the first couple days.

Things I have been motivated about:
BCBC- this is really half of what I have been thinking about this past week
the wilderness- the other half
i fixed 2 snapped poles on my cheap 3 man superstore tent after giving up on the tent last fall, I have decided that it is still a good tent when weight is a issue it has minor holes in it due to a fire being too close. I am excited about my 6 man tent the eureka bon echo 9, which I bought before i left for tree planting. Jeremiah and I are now looking for a canoe to buy we are looking for a used 15 foot aluminum canoe in good condition selling for around $500-700 thought first look at the market hasnt brought up anything, im sure the right canoe will show up somewhere. Ive also been looking at maps and dreaming up routes that I want to take this summer, also considering routes for a trip that I plan on taking june 12-15. I also desperately want to do a solo trip sometime this next month, maybe just like a 3-5 day trip somewhere im familiar with. I really think that I need to take a trip like this to connect on a different level with God, to try to figure out this personal relationship that sometimes seems to elude me.

my goal for tomorrow is to try to get my energy back and maybe get a job one way or another.
i should have been in bed a couple hours ago though so this is all for now
i want to post the topic "abuse of grace" so this is sort of a accountability statement

chad

Sunday, May 25, 2008

now what?

Well now that I almost at 100% health wise and still have 5ish weeks till camp starts I feel kinda lost for what I should do now. Now if I really felt like it I'm sure I could get a pretty decent job then just quit in a month, but on the ethical side of things thats really not something I want to do. It seems that I almost always have several options when it comes to temporary work as I've worked for a temp agency and for another company that deals with a lot of temp workers, but I'm not sure I really want to necessarily work for these places, I mean I will if I don't find anything else but I don't really want to. Part of me is still searching for some sort of exciting job that wont really be about money but more so experience. Now unless I find something that is really meant for me I'm not really wanting to work crazy shift work, I mean I'm willing to work mon- sat days most weeks but I also have a lot of plans for my weekends from now to camp. I am really being too picky with some of this and I'm sure it will change in a couple days, my only real focus of days that I definitely cant work really only include the next 2 sundays. I kind of really actually enjoyed working with my brother in law Steve for that month last november with pinacle staffing, so im going to try to explore that option.

Its kinda of weird to think about what my focus is here, it seems like my focus is on money, which troubles me to a extent. But the reason I am focusing on money this next month is so that it will be possible to do something in the future like go to bible school or ywam. But its not like I am sure of either of those things and have them in my focus yet. so in the end I am focused on the money because I don't have a focus beyond possibility.

Well when Im not thinking of what this next month will hold for me I am thinking of this upcoming year of camp where I am working all 5 weeks which will be a test of endurance. I really am quite committed to this camp so I wonder what upcoming years will be like if I am not able to work at Beaver creek(we will see where God takes me), its been part of my summer since I was 7 (my mom pulled strings and got me in a year early). I am really thinking about what I can do to make Beaver creek bible camp better, and my focus has been on the skill “camping skills” which has been one of those skills that has seemed to slip into mediocrity. So I have taken out a few wilderness survival books and am trying to think of new ideas to add to the basics of fire building, and basic shelters. So that is something I spend my free time thinking about, if not for camp uses then for personal uses since it is now my dream to live in the woods for a period of 2 months being mostly self sufficient. on a side note I really wish that they would sharpen there hatchets, it is pretty common knowledge that sharp knifes axes are much safer than dull ones. and since they only have 2 hatchets it is pretty simple to use discretion in teaching how to properly use a hatchet and then supervising in a controlled environment and then correcting anything being done wrong then giving them some freedom.

So I hope that this upcoming month will be a time of preparing for the future spiritually, knowledgeably, financially, physically, and mentally. I hope that it will be time spent focused on God and what he wants to do with my life, and not personal gain.

chad

Monday, May 19, 2008

my short lived tree planting season in a nutshell

day 1: travel day #1
winnipeg- thunderbay 704km
wake up at around 10ish finish packing my gear, eat some cheerios, pack my car, say goodbye to my mom, pick up some last minute stuff.
start my journey into ontario me and my 97 cavalier, i could write everything that happened between here and thunder bay but i wont.
day 1 by the numbers
17 deer
4 moose
too many birds to count
1 bag of chips
3 cans of green tea gingerale
1 liter of water mixed with a little bit of lemonade
5 opp sightings
slept at the terry fox memorial near thunder bay wielding a axe


day 2/ travel day 2
thunder bay- nakina/cordingley lake campsite 340 km
start the day off at 7:30 drive back into town and pick up some breakfast at mcdonalds hit the road, nothing to exciting happens other than finding out i drove a little over 800km on 55 liters of fuel which is good for my car. it is snowing for like 50 km of the trip stops snowing 50 km from nakina. arrive in nakina, try to find gas station that is supposed to have directions, find out gas station is closed, randomly see a bus that says wilderness group on the side that is picking people up at the train station follow it to camp, it is raining as i set up my tent. i struggle to keep everything dry and in doing so try doing everything too fast and end up making mistakes that end up with things getting wetter than they have to. eat lunch and supper at camp, meet random people, get separated into our crews, i am the first to aquire a nickname "pneumonia" i am called, some people only know me by this name by day 7. sit around a campfire, i wear a straw hat and read into the wild. get to sleep early.



day 3-7
wake up 5am, eat big breakfast, make lunch, leave at 7ish(usually later because nothing goes on time) riding in old school buses painted white driving down rough logging roads , arrive at the block at 8ish,
plant trees: ok so im not going to explain everything because im lazy and i dont think you guys care that much haha but this is what tree planting was like for me. so you get dropped off at your cache( a tarp that is your base camp basically, your boxes of trees go under this tarp) so you have boxes of trees all one species( i did mostly black spruce) usually 500ish trees in one box
, and so from there the crew boss tells you to flag your piece so they give you landmarks or other such things to follow and you make a line with coloured tape to flag your piece of land. then you start planting trees. the hardest part about planting trees for me was not so much physical(though on day 4 when i started to feel sick again it was mostly physical) it was mostly mental. you get dropped on this piece of land and are supposed to plant, there is barely any soil showing so you have too look for soil and you have no idea where you are supposed to plant
, its all so confusing for someone who is usually creative but has a great fear of quality checkers
and doesnt want to replant. they dont really explain it to you that the only thing that matters is that the tree cant be pulled up easily, thats what you have to learn from the few veterans who are willing to share secrets.
5ish -get picked up by bus, 6:30 get back at camp, 7-8 supper 9 bed time again
friday was one of the worst days of my life, i worked pretty hard until around 1pm but after that i was just dead i could really walk or do anything, i tryed to plant as much as i could finished one box for the day which at 9cents a tree and - camp fees was around $31, i didnt do much the last few hours and struggled up the steps of the bus, offered a beer by the crew boss as i gained my balance on the top step on the bus stairs i declined and said i dont drink(which isnt entirely true, i will on occasion drink limited amounts of alcohol, i just mostly dont like beer)
so then we took our bumpy hour long bus ride back to camp while i had a mean headache and was drifting in and out of consciousness
that night was party night, every one had there alcohol that they had gotten the boss to pick up charging it to cash advances( i dont think most of the people made much more money than they spent on alcohol haha) i ate supper and hit the bed because of my rough shape only to be awaken by loud music at around 9 accompanied by drunken chants and yells, must have been around 3 when the party died i was in and out of sleep during that time inbetween.
we had a day off on saturday, early in the morning 7ish i was awaken by the loud buzz of float planes buzzing our camp, they must live in the houses right next to our camp and been anrgy because they seemed to have flown over us every chance they got, i found it funny because it wasnt directed to me and i wasnt the one with the hangover.
went to town did my laundry and other uninteresting things.
by now im tired of writing which probably means your tired of reading but my last day was interesting too in a whole different way.

day 9
same morning schedule as previous week, reports that it is supposed to snow 10cm
work till about 10 no snow yet, cant do it anymore i can barely walk, i have little energy. tell everyone im done, then when they ask if im done
for the day i tell them im done done, they seem to have seen it coming, with my physical state they feel bad for me. i flag down my crewboss tell her the news she thinks im making the right decision. get picked up by someone else in a truck who is going back to camp eventually, ride around in his truck while he works, he doesnt seem to have the same concern for my well being thinks i should tough it out in which i reply, i would but i feel like im going to die. eventually get dropped off at camp in which i go see the boss and tell him that i may still have pneumonia(really i kinda ommited the fact to him earlier so he didnt know i had it in the first place), he seemed pissed that i was even there calling me stupid several times( to be fair i dont think he was having a good day) he told me to pack up and leave(without me even telling him that i had decided to leave) but then later gave me a option of staying in which i declined. so then i packed and left.

drove home taking lots of pictures som of them actually turning out really good even though they were taken with a camera with no viewfinder and take while driving 90km end up trying to sleep in a walmart parking lot in dryden for 3 hours but not having any luck just ending up driving home got gas in dryden at like 3:30 accidentally put premium in my car, drive by a few deer that could have easily jumped infront of me (thank God that they didnt) purposly drive through kenora instead of bypassing it so i can go to tim hortons to pick up a donut and coffee but they dont have any baked goods for sale due to them being in transition from days so i just get a coffee and drive away bitterly. drive the last couple hundred kms arrive in winnipeg unaware that is the long weekend, find my door locked at 7:30 in the morning drudge through the doorway.. and so it goes

ill make a facebook album with the rest of my photos some of them turned out surprisingly well

dissapointingly home

well after a week I started to feel sick again, so i had to decide if I thought that I would get better out there or if i should call it quits while i still could which really was one of the harder decisions of my life at this point. I eventually decided that i should come home. i dont think i would have gotten any better out there, the nights are in the minus temperatures and the days were in single digits and rainy/ snowy. i was sick for 5 weeks before i left, i lost about 5 lbs in that time and really had no energy to work out. so going into this environment with a run down body and then running it down even more while i was recovering from pneumonia was really not a very good idea. in hindsight i dont think i should have gone. no regrets though, it was actually a pretty good experience(well not really but i could see it being a good experience with a different company), and i might do it again in the coming years so i'm not really down in the hole that much, i mean i did spend a but load of money but i can use most of that stuff for camping and other various stuff. as for what my plans are at this point for the coming months, well i think i will try to get a temporary job hopefully something that i can make some good money at with overtime and stuff, i still have ideas of going to ywam or bible school this fall so money would be good for those things. 5 weeks at camp and then working again then whatever happens after that.
i will post more about my experience later but i just got home like half an hour ago, just waiting for people to wake up. drove staright from nakina to winnipeg with 3 hours of rest inbetween
have some pictures hope they turned out

grace and peace
chad

Saturday, May 10, 2008

the official pray for me post

well its 10:46 and im planning on leaving at 12ish, im getting all uneasy inside right now. the antibiotics seem to have helped but not really at a level that i expected, and i keep on questioning whether or not its bacterial pneumonia. if this doesnt heal me from my pneumonia, i am up the creek with out a paddle. I'm really praying that there will be some good people there, though i think solitude would strengthen me in ways. I keep on thinking that this could be a good witness tool, you never know, maybe some of the people will have bitter resentment from the church and im going to try to go there with no judgment and show them that God doesn't condemn them, i'm not going there with any intent to preach to them, im just going with a intent to show them Christ through my actions. today I am driving to thunder bay its a little more than a 8 hour drive, just pray for my safety and that i dont get lost, then i'm going to try to find a truck stop in tbay and sleep there for night and then drive the 4 and a half hours to nakina in the morning. just pray for my safety and health and just pray that i will find ways to show everyone around me that i have something special.

I'm not sure at this point if I will have any outside contact other than mail, if i get a chance I will blog or something.

grace and peace
chad

Thursday, May 8, 2008

medical update

so I went to the doctor today and guess what... I got pneumonia... so now im taking some antibiotics and should start to feel better in a couple days. im glad im still under my parents prescription drug plan because regularly the antibiotics im taking cost $80 but i only payed $23. i just hope i didnt give this to anyone else.. jeremiah was sick last week, im not sure if hes still sick.. because it is contagious. so im supposed to still be contagious for another 48 hours so im trying really hard to watch what im doing and wash my hands alot.
im going to try to sleep a bunch this afternoon then go shopping for some last minute items

chad

Monday, May 5, 2008

farming, lawncare, and unusual tans

well on sunday I got a call asking me if I wanted to help lay down some irrigation pipes so I said yes. so the past two days I was a farm hand of sorts, was at the epps strawberry farm lasalle valley berry farm. so I started at 10am it was still a bit chilly but not too bad worked for about 40 minutes took a coffee break (gotta love that) so after that we finished off with laying the irrigation pipes, that was quite the puzzle, you got to find different pieces to make them exactly the right length. so we finished that and then krista came and we started getting everything ready for planting strawberries, then we had lunch. then we planted, pretty neat process i compared it to guitar hero, basically you sit on the back of a tractor and feed a spoke of sorts that rotates and puts the plants into the ground, you have to be pretty quick to get every one(or notes as you would say in guitar hero) then someone would go behind and make sure none of the roots were showing using a shuffle stomp action( i called that one dance dance revolution) and plant strawberries where someone missed( I got to use my fancy new shovel for that, good practice for tree planting). yesterday i planted strawberries too and some raspberries at the end. it was good times.

on monday i got a call asking if i wanted to do some power raking on wednesday so i said sure. its always good making some random money. so thats what i did today for 4 hours. this lawn was huge but i worked hard and got it done and now im tired cause i got like under 5 hours of sleep yesterday because i decided i wanted coffee at 10:30 and it didnt work very well.

as a result of being outside this past 3 days I am a little tanned and a little burnt. half of my hands are tanned because of a combination of my sleeves and the position i was in the sun, and there is a small triangle on my chest that is tanned because of a unbuttoned top button. ill get some pictures later but for now i think im going to go to sleep and then get everything ready for the final awards at pioneer clubs. I said some goodbyes yesterday which was very strange and hard, its only 7 weeks but still i miss them really bad right now and i haven't even left. Ive got a busy evening and a busy tomorrow, im hoping i can relax on friday, then im leaving on saturday, first im going to a fishing derby put on by my church in the whiteshell which is on the way and then leaving in the evening, trying to get as far as vermilion bay and then leaving there on sunday for nakina. i got to pick up a few last minute items and try to go see a doctor on thursday, because ive been a roller coaster of sick for the past almost 5 weeks. i think im trying to delay going to the doctor because i have fears that it will be something outrageous.

mail is always nice so you can mail me at:

Chad Reimer
c/o Wilderness Reforestation
General Delivery
Nakina, ON
P0T 2H0

god bless

chad

ps. i had a very good bible study on monday so im going to try to develop some of that and maybe post it on friday

new template

well it seems like everyone is getting nicer looking blogs, and i never really liked any of the default ones so I found one at http://www.simplyfabulousbloggertemplates.com/ and it was hard to find one that was manly enough for me so this is the best one I could find.

I don't know what to feel right now, tree planting will be the first time I have ventured off on my own. I am excited that I am doing this, yet I am sad that I'm leaving the people I love. There are no certainties, I may go there and be really good at it and love the people, or I could suck and the people could be jerks. today was the last church service I will attend for a while I think, I dont know if there will be any other believers at camp so I might not have any sort of Christian connection. I really hope that this makes me stronger, It definitely would be a test of my dicipline. It took till today for me to realize how much I was going to miss people, I love the people around me. this seems to be me just rambling on.. but I have such mixed feelings right now. I am pumped that I am going to spend the next 3 months with little to no pavement. I wish I could take all my friends with me, that would solve all my problems.

so pray for me as I am venturing off on my own, pray that this will be a experience that will bring me closer to God.

I'll just leave with a prayer of whats on my heart.

Lord I pray that you will bring me closer to you, I pray that you will guide my steps and help me show others the love you have for them. Lord I want to pray for the camp(bcbc) I pray that would will be with the people who are deciding that they are going to be staff this year Lord i pray that you will be with the new directors as they prepare for this coming year Lord i pray that you will give them wisdom and guide them as they make decision, Lord i want to pray for all the campers that are going to come i pray that you will open there hearts and follow you. lord i want to thank you for all the wonderful friends i have, just bless them as they bless me. i also want to pray that the sickness inside of me will leave. Lord thank you for friends like micheal and ashley just bless them as they are getting married, help them to have a relationship that represents your love for us.
amen