NET In The North...Way Up North! ;)

Hello from iNFUSE #1, coming to you alive from Yellowknife! :)

I bet you’re wondering what’s been going on up here in the North for a while now… well, let me tell you… there was this big polar bear, and he had a coke bottle and well… I’m not authorized to tell you the rest BUT I can tell you that things up here are FANTASTIC!

Our team just got back from an 11-day trip to the upper communities of the NWT. We took two big trucks, and spent around 18 hours driving the winter roads of the north. We crossed four ice roads, and only got stuck three times! Oh, and did I mention that Bishop Murray came with us?!

We started in Fort Simpson where we hung out with the community during their Beaver Jamboree. It was this awesome weeklong festival where they have daily outside barbeques, and they do fun activities. When I say fun activities, what I really mean is HARD CORE games. There were fire-making competitions, log chopping competitions, and log pulling competition. My favourite part was the moose and fish barbeques. Moose was a first for a lot of us, so that was seriously cool! The second day we spent some time at the high school with the students, it was a great day, and the students were all super welcoming! One of the best parts was that our whole team got to stay at the priests house and had the Eucharist present right in our host home!

After Fort Simpson we headed to Wrigley – this tiny TINY town with a population of about 100 people, actually, it’s said that there are more dogs than there are people. We stayed in a school, and put on a 2-hour retreat with the community on the night we arrived. Four little girls showed up! It was a GREAT night, and as my first being Event Leader I had to come up with some creative flow for the night and Rianne shared about what the Lord had done in her life.

Our trip to Tulita was the roughest of them all, but definitely worth it. There we had our first OFFICIAL event, and over 30 people came! A lot of them were Elders, but they really enjoyed watching the youth play all the game and participate.

One of the luckiest parts of having Bishop Murray with us was that we got mass almost everyday on our trip. In Deline, the last mass we played was really amazing. A lot of the youth that had been coming to our sessions ended up coming to mass, when usually they’d be sleeping.Albert, the music guy, played with us, and it was so much fun. At the end of mass, Albert closed with How Great Thou Art, and I don’t know why I enjoyed it so much, but it was truly beautiful – he put serious heart into music leading!

The last day we were in Deline, the community had this awesome gathering in the community center where they had a fish barbeque – Young got the chance to fillet a fish for us, it was delicious! The food was great, and the little kids were a lot of fun. Deline was definitely a once in a lifetime experience, and I think a lot of us felt very welcomed. One thing I’ve definitely taken from our trip there was their calmness. They truly live in the moment, and their culture is very important to them.

Though we were gone for only 11 days, I can vouch for everyone when say that we all got a lot out of it. Something that really stuck out was realizing that we have it way too easy down here… Up in the communities, water is something that’s not abundant, and heat is pure gold… I think our team lived in our snow pants the whole time. Even though it was the coldest place I’d ever been, and farthest place I’ve ever been, I would not have given up the experience to be up there for anything.

May God bless your hearts,

~ Natalie (iNFUSE 1's Blogger)