back/only in the US of A ...

We have left Mexico and are en-route home to Vancouver with a few days with family in Bakersfield on the way. Hanging out with Jess' brother is always interesting! Yesterday he took me pistol shooting. Matt was impressed with some of my clusters from 10 yards (see the evidence below). Notice the name of the establishment (very NRA!) and the bullet exploding out of Matt's gun.


Read our final post (for now) on the EOC blog: Who says Jesus doesn't heal the sick anymore?

you do the math

There are 300 odd million people in the USA. About 30 million in California (that's more people than in Australia, and almost as many as the whole of Canada). What would be the chance of running into someone you know from another country, in neither of your home towns, while you were both on separate road trips? I don't know ... you do the math!


"NO WAY!!" were the words I said loudly and over and over again when Andy, a Regent friend strolled into the IN-N-OUT Burger bathroom at the Lyons exit off LA's 5 freeway.

Andy, Jess and I are in a community group at college together. Our group had talked about the things that we miss from 'home' that we can't find in Vancouver ... IN-N-OUT was high on all of our lists. So i guess, for an unplanned rendezvous on a CA road-trip, IN-N-OUT was as better bet as any.

It was great to see Andy and meet his Mom, it reminded us of the new friends we have made in Vancouver. It will be good to be back there in 2 weeks time.

Fish heads, fish heads . . .

I ate a fish head this weekend.

In my mind, pushing the squishy, black, greasy eyes out of the skull with my thumb and onto a tortilla, along with its small remnant of a brain, and cheeks, would probably be the definition of “taking one for the team.”

This was the situation . . . We were at the end of a three-day, evangelistic/commissioning/baptisim/worship extravaganza in a small church in the middle-of-nowhere Baja. Literally the middle of nowhere Baja – on the state line between north and south, the 28th parallel to be exact. The congregation had been incredibly welcoming and hospitable, keen to get to know their very foreign visitors. On Sunday, after 15+ hours of church services, they had a huge seafood feast, of clam and calamari ceviche (raw fish “cooked” in lime juice), calamari cream, fresh oysters, and fried fish. Fried whole fish. With the tails. And fins. And heads.


As in much of the world, the head is considered a bit special, the thing you serve to guests. It ended up on our plate (we had already insisted on sharing since neither of us were too keen to pick the fish off the bones and pry away the fins). Andrew refused, despite the urging of one of the elders who had struck up a friendship with him. So, it was all up to me. Just me and two black, roly-poly eyes. I figured, with enough hot sauce I wouldn’t be able to taste the eyes looking up at me from the tortilla.

The hot sauce didn’t work.

To read about the rest of our weekend adventures, check out Andrew’s post and pics on the EOC blog.