believe it or not i'm...alive!! ahhh!!!

i've been at battle school for what feels like an eternity and i'm loving it. i'm sorry i haven't blogged or e-mailed most of you, it's just really hard to get to a computer long enough to blog. i'm gonna try to give it all to you in a nut shell. okay, here we go. B.S., fun, air force, ground force, street combat, isiah 61:4, 614, Brent, Jordan, Eddie, birthday, salvation army, drugs, needles, danger, more fun, soccer, water balloon fights, bonus blessings, war room, prayer, and one never ending party. did any of that make sense to you? well to bad, that's battle school. okay, i'll explain a little. well as much as i have time for. first of all you all know what B.S. stands for right? i mean everyone knows that, right? if you don't know i'm not even gonna tell you. you must be really stupid. don't you know that B.S. stands for Battle School? i mean it has nothing at all to do with bulls...right? well anyway that's our little joke, i say to my friend brent "yo brent, we've been at battle school for a few weeks now, so tell me, how are you feeling about B.S. (battle school)" and then he gets a real thoughtful look on his face and goes "well i'm loving B.S., i just can't get the taste of B.S. out of my mouth. i mean seriously, i love B.S. i just love the closeness and fellowship we have in B.S., it feels like B.S. is all around me." and then, trying not to laugh i cut in and say "yeah, i know what you mean, B.S. is a sweet smell i just can't get out of my nostrils. i must admit, i truly love B.S." then we laugh our heads off at the shocked expressions of those watching, because what else could B.S. stand for? it must be battle school. right?

i hope no one was offended by that last bit, we were asked to stop that little joke because our crazy leaders thought B.S. stood for bull st, but seriously, what sick mind would come up with that? anyway, i love battle school. i'm one of 4 other really cool battle schoolers. we have Eddie, who looks and acts ten but just turned fifteen. then Jordan, our only girl and loads of fun. and then Brent, the "modern day prophet". and me, the "Estonia boy". we've got it all at battle school. and we also have our own battle school seargent, Lisa, from austraulia. who keeps us all out of too much trouble. anyway, here at battle school we have many odd terms, such as air force, ground force, and street combat. no, none of these things involve killing anyone. that would get us in tons of trouble. air force is prayer walking, dropping bombs of prayer from our spiritual bombers, yup, thats air force. oh yeah, and what makes it cooler is we pray out loud so it can sometimes lead to street combat type encouters. and street combat, which is one of my personal favorites partly just 'cause of it's awesome name. but also it's walking around and talking to random people on the street and pray for them. which is wicked good fun, half the time you get cursed at and the other half you get someone thanking you. both halves are equally fun. then we also have ground force, which is basicly whatever manual labor our fearless leader (Johnathan Evans) has for us to do. we tore down wallpaper one time and scraped paint another and oh so many fun backbreaking things.

then we also have isiah 61 verse 4, which is our theme verse or whatever. because we're at the 614 corps, and so i need to tell you what the verse says. "They will rebuild ancient ruins, repairing cities long ago destroyed. They will revive them, though they have been empty for many years." (isaiah 61:4 NLT) so basicly we're here to rebuild the crud out of whatever gets in our way. because we're living in the worst part of canada, maybe even the worst part of north america, this is bad. drugs everywhere, watch your step for needles. and the police are almost powerless. it sucks. but i love it. i've made so many friends. there's fred, phil, matt, that guy at re:cr8 who's name i don't remember...there's so many. that's one thing, if you're down here helping people, like with the salvation army, then you're safe, you've got buddies all over. i can't walk down hasting without seeing a friend. and i'm not talking about other teenagers, i'm talking about my addict buddies. i love 'em to death. so yeah, that's what i do. and by the way, re:cr8 (prounounced like re create, as in to create again) is our little cafe we have thursdays to sundays were we have free coffee and tea and then juice and hot chocolate for a quarter. it's great. i absolutely love serving at re:cr8, something about walking up and saying "what would you like today sir?" and having them crack up that i called them sir. "i'll have a double-double" okay, two sugar, two cream, add coffee, stir, and...presto! it's coffee time!

now what else was there...ahh yes, oppenheimer park! the fortress of evil that we're tearing down stone by stone. oppenheimer park (or needle park as it's known by it's resident addicts) we're down there 5 days a week exocuting operation restoration, we're trying to win this park for god. first we did a jericho style walk around the walls for seven days and then scream. which was wicked fun because everyone stared at us. and basicly what we do there is incarnational ministry. in other words, we just be there. we pick up trash, play games, try to get kids to come because even the addicts are pretty respectful and won't do drugs around kids. and it's a park, it's supposed to be a place for kids to play. so we have loads of fun down at oppenheimer park. and i forgot to mention this, we also have...the war room, it's our awesome 24/7 prayer room, we all take 3 hour shifts and pray. i love it. they have this huge rack of CDs with everything from Matt Redman to P.O.D. which rocks. so you can get down to some serious intercession in there. i really love it. and i always try to secure the 11pm-2am shift on saturday 'cause that's 9-12 am on sunday morning in estonia. so my corps prays for me as i pray for them, it's a prayer party! and so if you want to pray for me and the rest of battle school as we pray for you e-mail me any prayer request and i can put it on our prayer wall and get all of 614 praying for you and all that coolness. and my e-mail is chrisjohnclark@juno.com.

but anyway i'm gonna go soon but i just want to tell you about 2 of my newest friends who i should write about because they will read this. first off there's marcjon. yes, it is the world's coolest name. prounounced like mark-john he goes to new westminster citadel corps and is wicked cool. we met him one sunday and brought him to re:cr8 and he's been hanging out with us ever since. he rocks. and then there's robyn. "rockin' robyn..." she's loads of fun, her 17 th birthday is on august 8th. and she's great to hang out with. she's really short so she reminds me of all my estonian girly friends. and she's just fun. she's been helping out ay re:cr8 too. we all love marcjon and robyn a lot. but anyway, i need to now. Cya!!