Day tripper yeah

So yesterday after my last entry, we were all given a tour of the TACF complex. The church consists of two buildings; the School of Ministry Building and the main church building. The School building is much larger than I initially thought. There are loads of offices tucked away on one side of the building, which I hadn’t even really registered was part of the our building. So we saw all of that and tried to set a new record for the most number of people in Pete Lazare’s office (we did quite a few!). I also found that being Jonathan’s sister has it’s advantages. One of the guys in the Youth net office was giving out free CDs and one of his questions was “What is Jonathan Clarke’s full name – i.e. middle name?” Well naturally I was the only one who knew!! Lol. So I got a CD from the “Fresh Wind” conference in 2003. I’m currently ripping fresh wind at the moment (of the possibilities for jokes is going to drive me crazy!), so I will tell you if the CD is any good at the end of the post, if I remember. From the School of Ministry offices we went over to the main church. Despite having been in for the soaking on Tuesday, I, again, had no idea how huge it was. I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, so I am going to have to go back at another time and take some pictures to show you just how vast this church is. I was gob smacked! Jonathan said there are about 1,200 people on an average Sunday. However at conferences such as Fresh Wind (which is being held in two weeks, and at which we will be the ministry team :S more about that at a later date) there are so many people that even with the overflow rooms opened up there isn’t even the space for chairs, everyone has to sit on the floor. Once you see the pictures you will get an idea of just how crazy that is. The stage backdrop looks like an American talk show back drop, and in fact they did apparently get it from a TV studio who didn’t want it anymore. The kids’ church is located in the ark. Now the ark is a HUGE 3-D model of the ark and some animals which covers an entire wall of the church. You enter through the ark doors and behind it are a number of other large rooms all kitted out for Kids’ church. The children even have their own soaking mats and the room has a black light that can be turned on to make all the paper stars handing from the ceiling glow purple. It’s so cool. I’d do you all a photo tour at a later date.

After the tour a group of 10 of us decided to go and find a shopping centre and have a poke around a few shops. For some reason the others decided to go to the Eaton Centre which is right in down town Toronto. It took us about an hour and a half to get there!!! The bus was stupidly hot and crowded, and after riding the bus all the way to the end of the line we then had to get three subway trains!! So each one of us was regretting going by the time we got there, deciding that a closer mall might have been a wiser choice. We then had to go and find some food because we had left before dinner. So after setting a meeting time and place we split up to find food. We went to go and get Chinese :) which was cool. Rather strange eating it with plastic forks and knives which struggled to even pierce my sweet and sour chicken balls. I was so hungry though I cleaned the plate entirely before you could say “bent cutlery”. Then it was time to hit the shops. I discovered a small flaw in my shopping plan rather quickly, my bank card was in my other purse, the one I didn’t bring with me. So I had about $50, OK I thought I can just budget carefully and just get the bear essentials from my list (this ruled out the waterproof boots I wanted to get :( oh well have to go again on Saturday for those). I found out that not only are the Canadians a bit strange at not realising travellers don’t have change, but they also haven’t understood the concept of including VAT. So in England the tax is included in the price on the price tag. In Canada however the tax isn’t included, so you always have to allow for 15% extra to what it says on the label. Now mental arithmetic is not my strong point, never has been, so this was a rather inconvenient truth. I had to work out what 15% of the $7 my new hairbrush cost before knowing if I had enough. The hairbrush by the way is amazing. It has got just the coolest squidgy handle. It moulds to your grip and you can squidge the whole thing around. Needless to say I spent the subway journey home squidging my brush handle!! Lol. But I got myself some shampoo, colouring pencils and pens, glue and a pencil sharpener, as well as my hairbrush, so I was happy.
The journey home was infinitely more fun than the journey out. For one we only got one subway train, we all started singing the little mermaid and veggie tales songs at the bus stop and then on the bus we made a friend. I felt a bit sorry for this guy actually, here he is minding his business when Lisa taps him on the arm and says “Excuse me do you mind if I have my picture taken with you?” He said he didn’t mind, so a few attempts later there is a picture of him and Lisa sitting happily on Charlotte’s memory stick. We then all started chatting to him about where we were from and after a mildly awkward pause we managed to explain what we were doing as well. His face was a picture when we told him that this tight night group of girls had only met a maximum of 2 days earlier and many of us only that day. It’s amazing the closeness that a shared experience brings to a group. I’m not sure if he was relieved or disappointed to leave us all, but he happily gave us his name so we could add him on facebook and tag the photo. This is a bit of a strange occurrence for me, I never dream of giving out my details to random people and certainly wouldn’t add stranger from the bus, but hey that’s me. We all agreed, as we huddled on the bus for one final group photo, that this was certainly a memorable first trip out!!