Africa!

As the title suggests, I’m going to Africa. Or rather, I’m planning on it. There are a lot of logistics to sort out, and a lot of things that I still need to figure out. But I’m going to give you what I can. When I was younger, I was taught the 5 “W”s, I figure they’re still valid…

Who: Me. Obviously. Seriously though, I will be going alone (at least, that’s what it looks like for now). I’ll be under the care of an organisation called Mission Aviation Fellowship. MAF is an aviation organisation that uses technology, particularly aviation, to reach people around the world with the gospel.

What: As for exactly what I’ll be doing there, I’m not exactly sure. That’s one of the logistics that still needs to be sorted out. What I can say with relative certainty, is that I’ll mostly be helping out with more “hands on” tasks, as well as getting an idea of what life is like for a MAF missionary. That being said, I’m still very much hoping to spend time with the local people, and see their side of the world.

Where: Chad. An average sized country about the same size as British Columbia north of the Central African Republic and west of Sudan. I’ll probably be spending most of my time in N’Djamena, the capital. (If you want to know more about Chad, here’s a good website)

When: Christmas break. I’m not exactly sure of the dates (partly because my college only has a tentative schedule for next year at the moment), but this trip will take place during my Christmas break.

Why: Now that’s the million dollar question. There are a few reasons why I want to do this trip and they are mostly quite long. (except for one that is only two words: The warmth) But the main reason I decided to do this trip, stems from a friend of mine who went on a christmas trip a couple years ago. She was sharing about her experience, and I started thinking about how cool it would be to sacrifice my Christmas to try and help spread the Gospel. I haven’t been able to shake this thought, so I decided a couple weeks ago to see if it could work. They said they would love to have me. So here I am, trying to follow through with a crazy idea.

The second reason I want to go is that I have felt called into full-time service as a missionary with an organisation like MAF. This trip will give me an idea of what this will look like.

Back in my first paragraph, I mentioned that there are a lot of logistics to sort out. Some of these I don’t even know exist and/or need to be sorted out, but I’ll share what I’ve got: In my mind, the greatest challenge is the fact I’ve never done this before; I have no idea what I’m doing. What I mean is this: although I’ve been on missions trips (one) before, and I’ve travelled plenty (twelve different countries, some of them multiple times), I’ve never had to do it alone. I’ve never had to organise travel tickets, visas, money etc. This is where you come in, if you could pray for me, that would be appreciated.

This leads me to the second big challenge that I can see right now: I’m a college student. I have few things, and money isn’t one of them. Chad is an expensive country to travel to, and to be honest, I don’t have nearly enough money. Again, this is where you come in, if you have it in you to give, please, comment at the bottom of this post, send me an e-mail at: 

dominicvilleneuve1995@gmail.com 

send me a letter (snail mail!) at:

Box 4852
Three Hills, AB
T0M 2N0

 Heck, send me a message via homing pigeon (on second thought, please don’t. I don’t know how to clean bird poop off my carpet. Also, what do you want me to do with the pigeon?), and I’ll get back to you about how to send me financial help.

Thank you guys for supporting me, prayerfully and financially. I appreciate it tremendously. Also, I promise to keep you guys up to date with what is going on, so that you can pray more specifically for me.

GCC!

So these last couple days Praire hosted an event called Global Connections Conference (GCC).

I must admit that at first I wasn’t very interested in going. I was busy with flying, and I didn’t feel like I would get much from it (boy was I wrong!). As well, it bothered me (and still does) that they had made attendance mandatory for all students.

In the end, the conference was totally worth going to. We had two speakers: a couple from an organisation called Move In, and a man named Joseph D’Souza (I hope I spelled his name right) from The Dalit Freedom Network.

In brief, Move In is a movement where Christians move in to very poor neighbourhoods and share the gospel with their neighbours. (It can also be done in very rich neighbourhoods, but the missionaries have to be fairly wealthy since those neighbourhoods are usually also very expensive to live in)

The Dalit Freedom Network is a freedom movement for the Dalit people. In brief, the Hindu belief is that all people are made from different parts of their God. The body part you come from dictates your position in society. The Dalit do not come from any body part but rather are complete outcasts. THey have no rights, and live in a condition of complete slavery. In fact, anything they touch becomes “dirty” and must be destroyed. It’s a lot more complicated than my 63 word explanation, but you get the idea. The Dalit Freedom Network is working to overthrow this system and free the Dalit people.

Both these speakers had some amazing things to say (If you want to watch the sessions, click here), but for me the highlight was all the mission organisations that were also present. I can’t remember off-hand how many organisations there were, but there were a lot.

I talked with representatives of almost all of them. God really challenged me with what I was going to do with myself, and some new plans are coming to light (I’ll talk more about them as I know more).

All in all, GCC was totally worth it, and I recommend that you check it out.

A Solo And A Hike

So I did my solo on Friday… Yeah… That was awesome…

Basically, I went flying with our chief flight instructor, he decided that I was up to par, so he got out and let me do two circuits. Yeah, that was awesome. If you’ve never done your first solo before, I don’t know how to describe it in English. It was something completely different. If you want to know what it’s like, you’ll have to do it.

Word (or rather, picture) of warning…

Yes you get wet and, if you do it at the right time of year like me, cold as well.

Anyways. A few days later, I went for a hike with my Impact group in Banff along the Johnston Canyon. That was a lot of fun.

If you’ve never been there, I recommend it. The trail is mostly boardwalk that follows the bottom of a narrow canyon. It’s not a very difficult trail, though if you do it in winter, I recommend renting ice cleats (they’re cheap), as the trail is slippery with ice and packed snow.

We did rent cleats, so we had an easy time of the trail. We saw plenty of people who didn’t have anything, and we had a good laugh (with them) as they slipped and slid around.

The canyon is beautiful though, and it was great to get out for some time of fellowship with my friends as well as being out in creation, admiring God’s handiwork. 














Oh yeah, and we made a snow unicorn...

Multi Use Headsets

So I like listening to music. I know I’m not alone, many people like listening to music. And like me, most people are not happy when they want to listen but then suddenly realize that they forgot their headphones at home. Well that happened to me today.

So I got creative

I grabbed my 800$ aviation headset (which has an aux in port), grabbed an aux cable, and started listening… 

Not what it’s designed for, but it’ll have to do.

Spring?

So Friday I had a flight. I was the first one of the day, and the plane had been sitting outside for a few hours. Suffice to say that it was quite cold and was not happy about starting. At all.

Then Saturday came around. I stepped outside, and suddenly realised that I had over-dressed. I went back to my room, took off my jeans and hoodie, and put on shorts and a t-shirt, and went back outside. It was quite warm out. Relatively.

It’s funny how that works. Back in October when it was +6 like on saturday, I pulled out my parka and went into hibernation. Now in March, when the temperature comes up to +6, I throw on shorts and a t-shirt and go out for a walk.

The seasons remind me that God can do some amazing things. Especially when we have such sudden changes as we did this weekend.

Not Much To Say

Six weeks left. That can't be right... Well, I suppose that I still have to stick around for the entire summer, but it's still kinda strange. I'm past 3/4 of the way through my first year of college. Crazy

Flying is going quite well, I have to write my PSTAR exam tomorrow then once I've got that, I'm ready to solo! That really excites me. Hopefully I'll do my first solo next week. Look out below!

Private pilot ground school started this week, it's not too bad so far, though I imagine that it could get a lot worse very soon.

Other than that, everything is going well. I'm flying quite a bit, almost every day!

Deutschland

At this time 365 days ago, I was at the airport about to go on what turned out to be one of the greatest adventures of my life.

I was off to spend 6 weeks in Germany on a student exchange. I had no idea what was coming, and I certainly had no way of knowing what that trip would do to me.

I had been studying German since grade 9, I was now in grade 12. I thought the language part would be a piece of cake… It wasn’t. I could only maintain really simple conversations and even then it was often touch and go as to how well I was understood and how well I understood.

It was humbling to say the least. I had to either improvise or speak english, and english wasn’t always any easier than German. As well, I felt bad when I spoke english because I was there for the German culture.

But I persevered. I had an awesome host-family, and some amazing friends who at least pretended to tolerate my incompetence.

Food was fantastic, though it kinda ruined food for me back here in Canada… 

I discovered that the world is a very small place; it only seems big for us here in America because we made it massive.

I made friends with people I couldn’t even really converse with, and I discovered the value of sign-language.

To everyone I met in Germany: Danke! Ich vermisse euch!