today was very interesting

today, i studied in this very cool non-profit coffee shop in Toronto for several hours.

and then, i had a couple hours left while Jarod's tattoo session was finished, and my brain was completely toast, so I visited my old church.

and i'm very glad i did.

of all the churches i've been to, Freedomize worship is my favorite. There's nowhere else I've found a combination that resonates quite so much with my spirit (and my tastes, let's be honest). The setting is uncrowded, friendly, deep, warm, rich. I felt close in worship today, both at Crossfire this morning, and at Freedomize tonight, and that's a rarity for me.

i'm most excited to hear some news though: among news of many people having babies and exciting new developments in their lives, I also found out, though I'm not clear on all the details yet:

- the church just signed all the papers and are moving to a new location downtown which they (at least partially?) own - on College near Bathurst. (sounds a bit familiar, eh?)

- they're renovating it with quality materials: it needs a lot of upgrading (still sounds pretty familiar to me...)

- they're having some work days next month to help get it ready (the familiarity continues...)

- the church that owned it before still meets there, apparently

- the artists in the congregation are doing a bunch of artistic-type stuff for the new building.

- one of their two new pastoral interns lives in downtown Hamilton. I met him and his wife tonight and we're going to connect this week sometime

- another couple from the church (that Jarod knows better than me) like Hamilton a LOT

- Since I'm in Toronto weekdays, I'm going to connect with Cyril (their current lead pastor) for coffee sometime this week and find out more.

it's amazing how much can change when you're away from somewhere for a while, and it's always great to go back and see what God is doing somewhere else.

I wasn't at all expecting/thinking of going there tonight, but I was really glad I got the chance to.

I'm hoping Jarod and I can put something towards their new building when we get the chance and maybe make it down next month to help. I'm pretty excited about it and I hope to have more details after this week about what's happening there.

God is great.

I've been playing a lot of Dustin Kensrue lately. I think I need to write a blog post later about just one of his songs, maybe more of them.