Missions Trip To Mexico Baja

This summer, a team of 23 people from Heartland Fellowship will leave for a missions trip to make a difference in the lives of the poor in Mexico. The team will go to the Baja of Mexico, near Vincente Guerrero, where they will visit and work among the impoverished in work camps.

The economy is depressed and the dry desert is a harsh place to scrape out a living. Farm workers stay in work camps, and work in the fields hoping to make enough to provide for their families – but they make only about $20 a month.

Our team is planning to build a house for one of the families from a work camp. We are also planning to feed the camp for one night while we are there. We are also planning to host a vacation bible school (VBS) for the kids of the camp.

The team has been working all year to raise money to cover the trips costs. After car washes, bottle drives, and work days, each team member is within reach. Yet, we still need to raise money to purchase building materials for the house, purchase food to feed the camp for one night, and purchase craft material for the VBS. Please pray for the team and our preparation efforts.

The family in the picture are the people we will be building a house for. We will be partnering with Stoney Creek Expeditions.

Chilliwack City Wide Service

The city-wide worship service is June 24th, at 11:00am at the Prospera Center. Heartland's Sunday gathering will not be at Vedder Middle School, but will be with the rest of the city on Sunday. See you there.

Chilliwack Bruins Open House This Saturday

The 2nd annual prospera centre open house is on June 16th, from 11:00-3:00. It will be a great time.

Star FM will be on location throughout the day that will feature free entertainment, activities, and demonstrations by local organizations, including a barbeque, free public skating, and road hockey with the Chilliwack Bruins.

This is a family event, so come grab a hot dog, and play a little road hockey with some of the Bruins players. Don't forget your camera - Bruiser arrives at noon!

Ecclesiastes Rant

I've been studying Ecclesiastes a bit lately in prep for a series that will begin this Sunday and run through the summer. It is a rant, but a rant with wisdom.

The underbelly of the Ecclesiastes rant is the possibility of a meaningful life. It seems that for life to be meaningful – or to put it this way: our aspirations and deeds to be meaningful -- there would need to be a predicable outcome.

Those who seek God and work hard to be honest in this life should be rewarded and the wicked punished. The hardworking Calvinist, the one Covey would approve of, should get to enjoy the benefits of his work (we have all heard of someone who died the day after they retired). The one who seeks wisdom should be rewarded and something should distinguish the wise from the foolish in death. A person would expect in a meaningful life that there would be a reasonable correspondence between deed and consequence or virtue and reward. But Ecclesiastes writes what we all have experienced: life is not fair, there are contradictions, and life is certainly not consistent -- why would an elite athlete die early from a heart attach, while an inactive. overweight smoker live to be 80?

Even in his writings he contradicts himself. Imagine that, writings about contradictions have contradictions within themselves -- is this a cool teaching method? It’s similar to explaining redundancy as the act of repeating yourself and saying the same thing over and over again by saying it multiple times. Get it?

Life doesn’t makes sense, nor does this blog, nor does the writer of Ecclesiastes. Frustrated by the incoherence in life the writer calls the world “senseless” or “absurd.”

Fraser River Flood Watch For Chilliwack

Residents of Chilliwack have been preparing for a possible flood. The snow packs this year are larger than most, and with the arrival of warmer weather, the Fraser river is rising. There is a real time river height monitor that can be found here.


The city of Chilliwack has been working hard to prepare people for the possible flood. The city's web page tells you how to interpret the river height graph. Here is the flood response guide from the city's web site:


More information about the possible flood from the city of Chilliwack can be found here.

Highway 16 Near Legate Creek Opens

From the Terrace Standard concerning the mud slide on Highway 16 near Legate Creek:

HIGHWAY 16 east of Terrace continues to be open at intervals each morning, afternoon and evening.

The times are 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., 2 to 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. with traffic going through in alternating single lane fashion.

The closures are necessary so work crews can continue to clear away a massive mudslide that came down and blocked the highway the morning of May 28.

There's no indication yet when the highway will open for good and to two-lane traffic.

Traffic has also been flowing over the only other east-west road corridor in the northwest, a logging road known as the Cranberry Connector.

Just Skin For Ben

Ben's chemo treatments are slowing and he is functioning normally. He's even on the baseball team. Ben has now lost all his hair due to the chemo, so after the first buzz we knew it had to happen. So yesterday afternoon Patti pulled out the razor and we went down to skin. It took awhile to get it all smooth. It feels numb, vulnerable and just odd.

Matt is getting involved. He will be taking part in the Relay for Life in Chilliwack. On Saturday night he and his friends held a fund raiser to generate cancer awareness and raise funds. If you want to sponsor Matt, you can do so here and enter Matt Vanderkwaak for participant's name.