Miranda Pilcher at Act Five

Dear friends at St. John's,

Since moving into the Act Five House at the very beginning of September, I've learned how to cook carrot ginger soup, biked across the city, set up and helped prepare two meals for more than fifty people, played a ton of games, gone on a nine night canoe trip and stacked a lot of firewood. 

After four short days living on Blake street, the other six students and I set off on an adventure heading north. We spent time at Russet House farm with Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat, learning about stories of God using the wilderness and about the stories of "heroes" in the bible doing things they really ought not have done, such as when we spent a while discussing the story of Hagar (Gen 16). While there we also learnt about the cows Brian and Sylvia keep on their farm and we spent a while staring at and learning about different kinds of fungi and lichens. Sylvia even showed us a pretty long slide show of insects we see a lot in Ontario. 

After that we drove even further north past North Bay to a place called Camp Norland, the basecamp for Coldwater Canada, https://www.coldwatercanada.org, a Christian organization that does trips to help people connect to God in the wilderness. We spent two days at Camp Norland learning how to canoe and doing the silliest team building exercises I've ever done. Then we drove another hour north and were put into canoes to spend nine nights in the Temagami wilderness. It was easily one of my favourite experiences ever.  I learned how to portage a canoe and we did more than forty portages over our ten days in the wilderness. We climbed up really stupid hills and jumped off a twenty foot cliff. I carried a canoe on my shoulders over five km in one day and one day we paddled almost 30 km. In total over the 10 days we travelled about 138.5 km between portages and paddling. 

While in the wilderness I saw a lot of really cool creatures like a bunch of bats, bald eagles and a flying squirrel. My friends even gave me a new nickname, "Moose", because apparently I make moose sounds whenever I stand up. I got to spend one day completely on my own for 8.5 hours and during that time I reconnected with my sense of wonder. I spent hours just observing the world around me including red squirrels and a really cute loon. On our second last night we stayed on a lake called Obabaka which is a sacred lake and place of the Indigenous peoples from Temagami. We got to spend some time learning about their history and what made the lake sacred. 

I also was reminded of how God is always with me and how to use prayer as a first response instead of a last resort. There were a few times when I was exhausted, overwhelmed and running out of energy but then I would take a second to pray and would somehow find the energy to keep going. Many a time beside many a tree I thought to myself “I’m only capable of this because God is giving me strength”. I loved the canoe trip so much that I almost cried when I had to leave. I really hope I get to go back someday. 

Act Five also hosts something called Spaghetti Wednesdays where you can come over at 6:00 p.m. and just enjoy free spaghetti cooked by some of the students and residents of 75 Blake Street. You are beyond welcome to join us - the next dates are Oct. 9 and 23- and  I would be happy to sit with you and tell you about my adventures so far in the program. 

Thank you for supporting me at Act Five!

Miranda