Jan/Feb tour is finished! What's next for the 3 C's??

Another tour come and gone! I think I say this every time I write on the blog, but man does time ever go fast! Yesterday was our final day of tour and we arrived to a nice crisp, cold, and frosty Calgary. But before I let you all in on what's happening next for Encore I will just do a quick re cap on our lives for the past 2 weeks!
We started off heading to Providence for the Missio Dei Conference. This was really eventful. Once we arrived we found out we forgot our promotional banner in the back in Calgary, AND the heat in our building was not working and it was minus 30ish! What a crazy start to Manitoba! Yet through everything we had quick solutions to our mad arrival to Winterpeg area. Cara quickly put together a Chalk Art showcasing VTI and we used this for the rest of our time in the area as our promotional banner, as for the cold night, blankets, blankets and more blankets! :) Here we were able to present and do some henna for the students too!

Following Providence was Steinbach. Then came Manitoba Missions Fest, here we met so many great people and met some new friends along the way too, and so many fellow VTIer's; even our booth buddies, Curt and Chryselle!


The next week that followed we went to so many great places, SBC for a chapel, LBE, West Park School, City Church, and Cara's home church ACC. And during this time Miss Cayla Schlamp turned the BIG 21(Feb 9th)!

We had the privilege of celebrating her birthday on three separate occasions, first with GILLIAN at Montana's! If you remember back in October Gillian is our former team mate who got into a big accident, well God is so good and she is WALKING! Praise the Lord!! It was so great to see her and celebrate Cayla's 21st year. Secondly a wonderful singing of Happy Birthday at SBC and thirdly wearing a crazy hat at LBE. We wish her a wonderful year ahead, God has great things for her to glorify HIS son and I can't wait to see how God will use my fellow team mate and sister in Christ for HIS glory. Exciting :) So with that being said Winnipeg flew by and we will miss seeing Cara's parents, Brian and Anne along Cayla and I's hosts the Guille's and their daugther Cheryl!

Our forth "C" for the past two weeks! And finally we concluded tour with a wonderful program at Millar College of the Bible.

Overall God has been so great over this whole tour. We met some amazing people, built great relationships, learnt a ton, and were challenged in many different areas! We really learnt that no matter what happens, HE is faithful and provides what we need to accomplish the work He has lain out for our team, and despite constant personality differences, technology failing, bad driving conditions, forgetting lines and objects and personal struggles we know that the Lord is hold us each up with His righteous right hand and ultimately He loves us! And along with that we know that all things work together for those who love God. We love God and He surely loves us! After all He is the definition of true love right? :)

Thanks again for sticking with us!! My hope for you is that you will constantly be reminded of the fact the God loves you with a crazy love that blows my mind every time I think about it! Nothing you do or say or think can ever make him not love you. He sent His son to die for us.. that's how much He loves us..Unconditionally! In return all He desires is for us to follow Him with all of our hearts and be set apart for Him. That people would see His love through our actions. And I myself and challenged with this everyday I get up, how can people see Christ in me today? What can I do to for others to see Christ in me? God sent His son for me! How crazy is that? Wow..

So as promised, tomorrow we have two programs, one early at Prairie Bible Institute and following at 7pm in the evening, Highland MB Church in Calgary. We then have a 5 day break followed by a week long tour to Edmonton from Feb 25th to March 6th. Then, touring, touring and more touring. Encore will be heading to Montana, all over Alberta and eventually out to Ontario in May.. so stay tuned, we will update you before we head out again. You can also find our tour schedule at www.vti.ca.
Before I close there is just three things I can think of that our team would ask prayer for;
1) For contacts for our upcoming tours
2) Unity as a team
3) Guidance for each of us in the future after Encore
Well, I think I covered most everything, hopefully looking at the length of the e-mail! Wowwy!!
Take Care and God Bless! :)
Until the Next Time!
Carmen Pahl

Manitoba Schedule!

Just to update you on our whereabouts...After our weekend at Break Forth (Edmonton), we spent a quick night in Calgary before hitting the road once again, this time for my home town of Winnipeg, MB. We had good roads most of the way, and arrived in Winnipeg this afternoon (Feb 1^st). For those of you in the Winnipeg area, we would love to see you at one of our programs.

February 2-3 Providence College and Seminary Mission Conference, Otterburne, MB (Look back drama on the 3^rd)

February 4 Steinbach Bible College morning missions chapel (no drama)

February 4-6  Mission Fest Manitoba(Winnipeg)

February 9 (11:30-12 noon) Steinbach Bible College morning chapel (Look back drama)

February 9 (7-8:30pm) Living Bible Explorers youth program (Winnipeg)(What is love drama and music)

February 10 (10-11am) West Park School (Portage la Prairie, MB) morning missions chapel (Look back drama and music)

February 11 (7-9:30 pm) City Church youth program (Winnipeg)(What is love drama and music)

February 13 (10:45-12 noon) Assiniboia-Charleswood Community Church (ACC) morning service (Winnipeg) (Look back drama) and (7:30-9:30pm) L.I.G.H.T. Worship night at ACC (What is love drama)

If you have any questions about locations, times or anything, just drop us an email at: encore@vti.ca

Blessings!
Cara R

Life on the road...

Hello dear friends!

Well we've only been on the road about a week and a half, but it's been a full tour so far!

The C's with Michael Ross Watson

We started off January 20^th for Millar college of the Bible, where we took part in their Missions Conference. The trip there did send us on a bit of an adventure. We ended up getting stuck in some pretty deep snow after being misguided by our GPS and hitting some bad drifts, but with the help of “Pops” (our wonderful driver) and an “angel” in a blue 4x4 truck we managed to arrive safely. Amazingly only about 15 minutes late!

The conference was great! We had a wonderful time getting to know the students and were truly blessed by the speaker, a missionary by the name of Michael Ross Watson. What an amazing testimony! We were also privileged to share one of our dramas (Encore: A creative look back on a year with VTI), and I must admit that it was probably one of my favourite programs so far this year.

From Millar we headed up to Osler, SK (just north of Saskatoon), where we were blessed to stayed with Carmen's family. On the 24^th we presented at Bethany Bible School. It was quite a rough performance, dues to mic issues and odd other glitches, but we were reminded once again that God is fully capable to use us, even when we mess up! And are we sure thankful for that! If it wasn't for God's saving grace, none of us would be where we are today, that's for sure!

From Bethany we drove to Briercrest, where we were privileged to share with some of the students in the huge Hildebrand chapel and for once were were actually trying to spread out our staging instead of minimizing it! It was quite remarkable especially since some bright person decided to do some jack hammering just outside the building. It was a new experience at least, and gave for a good laugh afterward! Jack hammering aside though, we were able to talk with a number of the students as well as even spend some time with Ryan and Jake, two of our former team mates, and Carmen's brother and friend. It's always nice to see some familiar faces in our travels!

Friday made for an early and stressful drive up to Edmonton for Break Forth, because of a “wonderful” thing called freezing rain! Yuck! The Lord was with us all the way though, and we arrived safe and sound, though slightly rushed. The weekend was spent chatting with conference goers, explaining what VTI is about, and enjoying the company of some ol' friends. Unfortunately we weren't able to get in on the sessions, but Carmen and I were able to attend a worship concert featuring Paul Baloche, Brian Doerkson and a few others, which was pretty sweet, and Cayla was able to spend some time with her sister!

Over the last week, we saw quite a bit of interest in VTI, which is super exciting, but also means a lot of follow up, so we'll most likely will be holing up in an internet cafe' sometime over the next couple weeks! :)

Well that's about it for now! Sorry to have kept you all waiting for a while, but spare time is sometimes hard to find on tour.

Blessings,

Cara R