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!!

Hey, There's a conspiracy going on here...

this is my third time trying to blog. the first time i wrote and in depth 3 page long blog post about my trip and was almost done when the internet screwed up and smart mister me got my post deleted. grrr....so then i typed a quicker, but still fairly good post and was getting to the end when BOOM power went out. i'm not lying. this seriously all happened. and i think my uncle is conspiring to keep me from blogging. but now i will finnally get out a post. i'll blog about my trip later, i'm sick of writing about that. i'm gonna blog about what i've been thinking about lately. lately i've been thinking about...goths! i love goths! there is nothing hotter than a pale chick with black hair wearing a corset. seriously. i love finnish chicks. they all seem to want to be just like Tarja Turunen from Nightwish. so i like finn girls. so here is an image of my dream girl, you mix Amy Lee from Evanescence and Tarja Turunen from Nightwish and you get my dream gothic girlfriend. if you want to see some of the scary goth stuff that makes me love goth chicks watch the live video of Evanescence "Bring Me To Life" on Yahoo! and the Nightwish video "Nemo" on YouTube.com. i don't know why i just love chicks in corsets. so just a tip to any girls out there, get a corset and wear it the next to you see me. part of why i say that is because i've never seen a chick in a corset except in movies or music videos. and also because chicks in corsets are hot. 2 good reasons to wear a corset next time you see me. a nice scary black one like the ones Amy Lee and Tarja Turunen wear. i never knew you could buy corsets except from "ScaryGoths R Us" but i've recently been told it's becomeing some odd fashion thing. so...go buy a corset.

so anyway another reason i've been thinking about goths is i swear i'm somehow destined to be a goth because i love goths so much. only problem is i would never be a proper goth because goths hate everything and never smile and never laugh. they grimace and chuckle grimly. well i've never heard them "chuckle" but whatever they do it must be grim. and i love everything, smile always and laugh at everything. wait no, i don't laugh at you, i laugh with you. but anyway i have a dark gothic splinter in my heart which will never be allowed to bloom...sad.

Anyway, that makes me think of the time someone predicted i'd be the anti-christ. well, kind of predicted. i have my own interpretation, you tell me yours. i was at MIT (mission training international) for training before we came to estonia and for the first week i hated it. the teen teacher wasn't there and i was the only teen anyway so i justed hated the first week becausei had to alternate between the kids class and the adults class. and i remember distinctly in that first week going to one of the adult classes and the dude was talking about how this would affect the kids, and just telling us the basics about TCKs (Third Culture Kids). and he was telling us missionary kids are so great..."they make great leaders...so culturally diverse, in fact i believe that the antichrist will be a TCK". and he had been pacing up until this point and then stopped in front of me, looked at me for a second while i gave him an angry "i hate you for existing, i don't want to move to estonia" look. so i interpret that as him saying "a TCK will, i believe, will be the antichrist. hey look, chris is a future TCK and i predict future antichrist. look at how angry he is. let the anger flow through you...feel the strengh...join the darkside!!!" well actually the last part sounded more darth vader but you get my point. so anyway, i'm the future gothic antichrist, i just need to find a pale finnish girlfriend in a corset first. anyway, whatever. just so you no i'm cracking up as i write this. that whole time at MTI was one of the weirdest of my life. but anyway, i gotta go now, so...Cya!

Love and kisses(?!?!?) from america,
Chris

Welcome to America!!!

I'm ALIVE!!!!! i made it to america!!! i totally rock!!! let me tell you it was great. i'd never been a plane alone before "And I gotta tell ya, it was really great Except that I had to sit between two large Albanian women with excruciatingly severe body odorAnd the little kid in back of me kept throwin' up the whole timeThe flight attendants ran out of Dr. Pepper and salted peanutsAnd the in-flight movie was Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore And, oh yeah, three of the airplane engines burned out And we went into a tailspin and crashed into a hillsideAnd the plane exploded in a giant fireball and everybody died Except for me You know why? 'Cause I had my tray table up And my seat back in the full upright position." thank you mr. "weird al yankovic" for that quote from his song "Albuquerque". i guess that might be considered plaguerism but...who cares? really it was great, i had lots and lots of fun. it's so much more easy to fly alone then with a big family stuck to your butt (no offense). the only problems i did have is that my one plane from heathrow took forever to board and then once we started boarding they loaded everybody at once creating a huge bottle neck. got to go, write more later. bye!!

"Goodbye...." Contact Info

That's a phrase i've used far too much in the last few days, and just a few hours ago i said my last big "GoodBye". my friend Maret (from the pictures) went to finland today and by the time she gets back i'll be in canada. so that was my final big bye, first there was my friend Ats, the Andrei, then Liis...and last but not Liis (joke) Maret today. so now i really am going, and there's no turning back. to canada i go...funky. so anyway while i'm away i want lots of E-mails, or letters (some people like them better because they're more "personal") but don't expect me to respond to letters except through E-mail because i have REALLy bad hand writing. but you don't know how to contact me? really? that sucks, i guess i better give you some kind of contact info. so here you go.....

Chris Clark
Battle School
July-August 2006
Vancouver, Canada
The Salvation Army 614 Corps

http://www.armybarmy.com/events.html#battleschool
http://www.armybarmy.com/pdf/BattleSchool%20brief.pdf

http://www.chrischronicles.blogspot.com/

e-mail: chrisjohnclark@juno.com
MSN: kurisu_dude@yahoo.com
Skype: kurisu_dude
phone: [372] 56469016

204-133 POWELL STREET
VANCOUVER, BC
V6A 1G2
CANADA
Captains Stephen Court & Danielle Strickland
sixonefour@lightspeed.ca
http://www.armybarmy.com

that is all the info you should need, please do send me E-mails and stuff because i will need it. and i'll try to blog while in canada but i don't know how often of for how long i'll be able to get to a computer soo....yeah. today is wednesday and i leave Estonia Friday morning. tough. so yeah, CONTACT ME!! send me nasty letters full of anthrax or computer viruses but just send something. so anyway, Cya!!

Last picture....awww....Friends....

Don't we look nice together? isn't it funny how i'm so much taller than her? i never really noticed until i saw this picture. but anyway, there's your awesomely cute final picture, hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures, and hope that maret won't kill me for posting them.
Cya!!

How many teenage Estonian girls does it take to change a light bulb?

Two, my friends Liis and Maret! don't they look cute? awwww...Liis will kill me for putting on this picture but i think they both look very nice. don't you agree?

Angry Maret!!

Maret claims she only had this look on her face because she almost dropped her flowers, i think it was because she wanted kill the camera man (ME). either way this is another awesome picture. and according to my friend Liis in this picture Maret looks "hot"! not that i agree or anything....;-)

Just to embarrrass Maret...

Here's a picture of Maret's mom giving her a big graduation kiss. despite the fact that i'm sure maret will be upset that i put this on i think it's a nice picture, so there! ;-)

Congratulations!!!

Hey, this is my friend Maret Parkja (remember her birthday in may?) looking all pretty for her 9th grade graduation! which is celebrated in Estonia so me and my family went to see her graduate, and no matter how much she denies it i still say she looked good in that dress. i'm gonna put on some of the other great pictures too, i was the one behind the camera so of course we got some great ones.

I'm sorry i haven't blogged in forever!! Been really, really busy!! But this i just HAVE to write about.

today i woke up around 7:30 then spent half an hour trying to fall back to sleep. then at 8 i gave up and came upstairs to go to the bathroom. while in the bathroom was looking at the "Salvationist" magazine in there that our cool regional commanders, the tyrrells, gave us and i noticed something, there was an article about Estonia!! and not just that, it was about the time the black pool songsters visited (i didn't like them much, far too british ;-)) and we had the võru corps opening. now i think that's pretty cool that we got even a quarter page article in a 24 page magazine. but as i read this article i was appalled to see how many errors were in that quarter page of writing. now may i point out this happened last year too, when we had the Tartu corps opening. the good corps opening. MY corps opening. there was a nice little article, i think even longer than this one, but it was so chocked full of crappy untruths that i was quite unhappy with whoever wrote it for quite a few days. but i never did anything to correct those errors. so now, if you just so happen to have a copy of a May 2006 "Salvationist" magazine then let me point out the mistakes on page six, i was there, i know what happened. the group did NOT carry out a so called "programme" at "kopgata" church, to my knowldge there is no such place. it was at kolgata church, duh. please check your spelling. i mean come on, "P" and "L" aren't even that close!! and also just a minor thing...it makes no sense to say "this preceded a visit to tartu, where the group carried out a programme at kopgata church (spelling...), when they were met by tartu corps officers Evelyn and Timothy Clark." wait a minute, don't you mean "where they were met by"? jeeze, and i thought i had a lot of typos...moving on. võru, just so that you all might know, is not all that close to that latvian border. well, it's closer than tartu but farther than valga. i would not say close to latvian border, i would say mid estonia. so there's another strike for you, man who is thier editor? they should hire me!! ;-) and also, though it was nice of you to give tartu credit for other people's work that is a little something called being dishonest, and i believe in giving credit where it's due. it says here "...young people from tartu and kopli, who presented dance and mime depicting the easter story." whoa, hold on there. young people from tartu? dance and mime? not yet, if i was still going to be living here in 3 months i'd be working on that but...anyway so tartu did not dance, neither did we mime, we watched and i became a human coat rack for the dancers stuff (quite a fun job actually seeing as how the dancers where girls) and it was Narva and Kopli corps that danced and mimed, because for some odd reson they have a wealth of teenage girls. and you should not say young people from kopli, because kopli is not a city, not a town, it is just a samll part of Tallinn city and i doubt that barely anyone in that group was actually from kopli, better to say from tallinn. and also Captain Ave Kalme is NOT the first women officer to be commisioned in estonia, she is in fact the first officer of any sex to be commisioned since we were allowed back in ten years ago (darn soviets kicked us out...) and that is all the little errors i can find. so anyway i am quite annoyed with publications because it says right in the bible (luke 16:10) "unless you are faithful in small articles in small magazines about small coutries, you won't be faithful in large ones." well i'm pretty sure that's what it says, because wasn't jesus talking about magazines? well anyway i'm gonna move on before i get beat up for blasphemy.

so anyway now it's official, well it already was but not it's just a few days away, on friday i leave on the boat to go to helsinki to fly to london to fly to boston to spend a week chilling with family and running around america to see everyone and then off from boston to chicago to vancouver. whew, lots of flying. anyway so just wanted to let everyone know that i'm going, and when i get back i won't live in tartu anymore, i'll live in tallinn. part of me doesn't want to leave tartu, tartu feels so much more like home than anywhere in america ever did. and i'm not sure i want to leave to go to the big capital city. but i have a few ideas of how i can survive it, i'm thinking i might try writing artcles for YS (young salvationist) i mean hey, i've done it before. so why not again, and then instead of blowing the money on video games and yugioh cards i'll blow it on bus tickets to tartu and lunches at 7 päeva, which neither of those is expensive so...yeah, sounds good. and also i can apparently get money for putting other people's adds on my blog and make money that way but i want to ask all you firstm would you be offended if i had adds on my blog? i would still write about my life and cool stuff but there will just be little adds in the corner begging you to click them. so give me some feedback on some good get money quick schemes, i just think i'll play to my strenghs and do some writing and stuff with my blog. but anyway one more thing before i go...

Wierd Al Yankovic? come on, of course a guy as cool as me will listen to someone as cool as him. i mean come on, pretty fly for a rabbi rocks!! but at the moment i am only slightly mad at him because i have been privately working on my own comedy version of james blunt's already hilarious song "you're beautiful" and i had really gotten quite far with my version (with the working title of "i'll kill you") and he stole the chance from me with his parody entitled "you're pitiful" why didn't i think of that? duh!! how dumb am i?? and he added such cool stuff! you know how for some strange reason james blunt (that big joker) comes in a little early with "my life is briliant..."? well wierd al does the same thing but adds a little "huh? was that too early? sorry, you wanna start over?" which just adds to the coolness (i never would have thought of that!! *kicking myself*) and then the la la la part he goes "la la la loser!!" which is just soooo cool. but anyway i'm wicked jealous because i thought my little version rocked too, but whatever. so now i got to go. Cya!!