"I never knew Jesus was so powerful"

Ok, so I took some great photos on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the sun was shining. After leaving Port Renfrew we took an interior road to Lake Cowichan. It used to be a rough trucking track back in 2002, and the rental agreement for the car then stipulated we should not take the car off the road. In 2009 the road was paved. We had wanted to take it in 2002, so ten years later we did.
I didn't really take photos when driving apart from pulling over for this shot:

Unfortunately, it's not completely in focus. Oops.

We found the cutest little hotel in Lake Cowichan called the "Boutique Waterfront Hotel". The manager gave us a room for $69 instead of $99, since we were the only customers. It came with a hot tub, and was very old fashioned and wooden in appearance.

Thursday turned out to be a rainy day. We had hoped to do some walks around the Cowichan area, possibly near the River Cowichan, where apparently there are views of a canyon. The steady rain however stopped us from doing this. We did take a drive in the rain though to the other side of the lake. I remarked how the weather combined with the trees (not Australian trees, but imported English trees) made the place feel very similar to the outer Melbourne suburbs.

Our sightseeing appeared to be over, but we had a chance meeting with some people we are connected with. A really fun family that used to live in Hay River have been supportive and prayerful for our work over the last few years. It turns out they are now living on the island in a place called Duncan. We arranged to meet up and go swimming with them. 

Before meeting up, Melody and I met some local indigenous people on the streets. On Wednesday we had met an indigenous person in Honeymoon Bay. I learnt two words from him: Ichanwayo (how are you?) and Itsanawayo (the reply- which I failed to get the full translation for). We share something of Jesus with that first man. The next day on Thursday we met a girl, Tammy, on the street. We were sitting down for a picnic lunch on the park bench. Tammy (19) was kind of running from home, or at least her alcoholic parents had booted her out. We had a really good chat with her. We got on to talking about the spirits, and she expressed her very real fear of them. I knew just the story to tell her. I told the story of Jesus casting out the legion of spirits into the pigs, and the man who had been violent, howling and constantly breaking his chains now calm and sitting at Jesus' feet. Tammy was excited- she had never heard such a story before, she never knew that Jesus is powerful. Tammy was desperate to keep in touch with us. Above all things we told her to chase after Jesus, and that he would take care of her. (It turns out that she is on facebook though.)

Later as we met with our new friends, we heard stories of the church almost preventing them from speaking to indigenous peoples about Jesus, because of all the hurt caused by the residential schools system (similar to the stolen generations in Australia). But it was not Jesus who hurt these people, and now they are being prevented from hearing about the only one who can set them free from evil spirits and heal them from the pain that white culture has caused them. When will we ever learn to stop patronising people?

We had a blast with Koos and Aubrey, we didn't expect to get on so well with them. We are really glad to have made some new friends and to see them involved in reaching people so similar to our own world in Siberia. (God Bless you guys!)

Today we are on the ferry back to Vancouver. Melody pointed out that we (1) drove the rental car back this morning, (2) caught the bus from downtown Victoria to the ferries at Swartz bay, (3) are on the ferry now, (4) will catch a train to the airport and (5) fly on a plane tonight. That's five forms of transport in one day. Pretty impressive. We have two months in Saskatchewan coming up.