Kal-el

To Whome it May concern



I'm really sorry for not updating this in the past week or so, the internet has been down here at the base and seeing as i'm completly relying on when other people arn't using their laptops to be able to update this, i was not too frequent in the "records of my misadventures" of sorts.


So...what have we missed.... well in the past week we've had people dress like pirates, I've held hands with a homeless guy who had a #2 accident in his pants, I've watched....2 episodes of scrubs? (I've always been wrong place wrong time, Will watches them on his laptop alwyas when I'm in town or don't have the time to watch the full thing). I've been listening to Cry of the afflicted mostly, suprisingly some AFI, which i don't know why i seem to be enjoying.... I've never really liked them before... what is happening to me...

ANYWAYS, again, thank you to everyone who has sent me e-mails, now that I have computer access I will do everything I can to get back to you.
Hmmm.... seeing as this is the first time I've updated in a while, I feel like I'm forgetting all the 'big events' that MUST have happened to me in my "absence from this blog".... here are some point form things...


- This Country Sucks up my money.... I had to get immunisation shots today for my travels that will occur in Late december- March, and WOW were those painful...to my wallet.

- One of the guys I'm friends with here looks like superman we think, his name is kyle so my nickname for times is Kal-el or Kyle-el, whichever one comes out first. For Danny and Mike, i'm sure you understand, danny for sure
"Wait wait....who's this Kal-el everyone keeps talking about.......... do you know anything about spiders?"

- Mike, you will be happy to know I'm using and have been using a Mac. I love it more than anything, and I admit defeat and say that you were right. There was something else i thought about the other day that i wanted to write on the blog for you...but I honestly can't remember anymore...so i'll leave it at "I love you" and move on

What is this... a castle for ANTS?

- The other night I went into Perth with some friends, FIRST, the history of the situation... Here in Perth, my allergys have been killing me (Hayfever whatever) anyways, that mixed with a cold that's been going around my nose is completly blocked up and I can't smell a THING. Anyways, the other day I was in Perth, and i struck up conversation with this 71 year old Homeless man siting on a bench in the main square. After some talking, (he was very...incoherant and confused) he asked if i (we by this time, My other friend Jon (fro) had shown up) so he asked if WE could help him walk to where he could get a bus. So we help him stand up and he grips both out hands very very tightly and puts all his weight it seemed on us as we helped him walk VERY slowly towards the street. I told some other friends to take a picture, because it's not too often that you have two 18 year olds holding hands with a 71 year old homeless man walking him down the street. They didn't take any pictures for reasons I will later reveal. Anyways we walk this guy to the trainstation and none of the transit guards are ANY help at all, they were really rude actually so we left hte station and asked the police if they could help us. When the homeless guy couldn't remember where he was from i looked in his bag and pulled out a piece of paper that was actually a Bail Hearing record of something, and it turns out this guy (max was his name) was actually prohibited frmo being in that area. Anyways the cops didn't want to have anything to do with him, as they put it "we have better things to do than to deal with you max, so get out of here" so Jon and i did everything we could to see if we could get ahold of any family that he could phone, unfortunatly he coudn't remember any numbers. Eventually the police told us we can leave so we did and we walked back across the sqquare (30-45 min later?) to our friends. As we come back one of them goes "WOAH you guys STINK" and i was completly taken aback. "What?? why??" "you smell like that guy!" now i'm thinking what a horrible thing to say! until they then explain that it turns out our poor max had had an accident of sorts in his pants that was staining all the way down one of his pant legs at the back, but i never saw him from any direction that the front when i was talkign with him/ helping him walk, and i couldn't smell it becuase of my nose (haha jon said the smell was so repulsive that he diddn't want to walk over and help me in the first place) so then everything fell into place such as why the Transit Guards didn't want him going anywhere near the trains or buses, and why my friends didn't take a picture as we walked him down the square. AND THAT was that evening.

(I also bought a sweet T-shirt for 3 dollars, it has a kangaroo on it i was pumped)

OH! AMANDA i've been listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers too, so yea. I like Under the Bridge, My friend Will can perform it SOO well.

So thats all I can think of for now. Internet is back so i'll be able to update as soon as exciting things happen, I'm using a different computer than the ones i was using before, so i havn't put pictures onto this one, but I might update this one/ Make a new post so that all you wonderful readers have pictures. Becuase everyone knows things are so much more fun to read when they have pictures.

(I just went through some opf the pictures that he had on his computer and was reminded that last week we had the coolest speaker who was from New Zealand blah blah, anyways on thursday he invited us to where he was staying, his really nie "YWAM suite" heh.... anyways it's nicer than where we stay, but we had our whole school packed into his little room watching a projection of "Whale Rider" which didn't work so all the hype was for nothing

This is 1/4 of my DTS.. mabye less, everyone usually looks alot better but i just like what Jon is doing in it, so i thought i'd use it.
















haha i saw this too.... Just to quelle any possibly curiositys...

I do wear a touque even in Australian Summer





















(Not all the time, actually Jukka gave me his qhite hat that you can see him wearing in previous pictures, and now i wear that most of the time) ANYWAYS enough about me


Now it's all about you!!
COMMENT!!!!!!

Every Loves Raymond... Except Chuck Norris

Welll, the last few days have been relativly uneventful, but here are some pictures










James (19) and Jon (18), Two of the people I hang out with the most. James is from New Zealand and Jon (fro) is from Vancouver (Abbotsford)














Jukka (22?) and Simon (23) Jukka is from Finland as well as his wife Evelina. I don't think i have a picture of her yet, mabye I do... you hopeful readers will have to wait I guess.








Actually this was some exciting news, on Saturday we went to the beach. The Surf was very big and really...irractic? Just waves everywhere with a very strong riptide that you could actually see. Anyways, turns out some boat tipped over with 5 people in it and they were lost at sea for a bit, and then some other people apparently were pulled with the current. 'Everyone was found' said some news guy, but they "closed off" the water and had 3 helicopters circling around the whole place and boats ripping around, cops on the beach, it was pretty cool.


Actually, becuase of my friday night I was really really tired (3 hours of sleep) so I went to these parliment houses...or something...in perth, where they have these really nice gardens and while i was just enjoying myself i actually fell asleep. Only for a few min though, i didn't even realise i had... but i was woken up by some homeless guy named peter. Gave me a bit of a start i'm not going to lie, haha having this homeless guy standing almost on top of me looking down going "Why are you asleep here?" anyways, it all worked out (I gave him a Dollar).
,

Oh, i didn't go to the Unearth show.... ummm i'm listening to misery signals... and I have listened to as much of the Cry of the Afflicted: Consume this Wasteland CD as I can each day, I try to finish it every day.

hmm thus far pictures stopped loading.... so I'm afraid I'll have to keep rabbling on.

Today I really did do nothing....wait no, i watched a movie on a friends laptop. "Willow" It's like Lord of the Rings... done by George Lucas.... with Val Kilmer. hmm... And right now people are watching Narnia not far from me. You see this City SHUTS DOWN after like...3 pm....it's so bizzare.

Pictures STILL not working, very very irritating. So Irritating in fact that i'm going to give up on the blog for now. And goign to give short and sweet points of things i was going to write about

-Havn't been able to Buy the New It Dies Today yet... and yes it is tearing me apart as much
as you might think

- Shout out to Amanda and Nicole and a thank you for Commenting on my blog
FOR THOSE OF YOU AFRAID TO COMMENT, ANYONE CAN, YOU DON"T NEED TO REGISTER ANYTHING OR GIVE E-MAILS, IT'S COOL, YOU CAN CHOOSE TO HAVE YOUR OWN LITTLE 'COMMENT NAME' FOR YOURSELF

- Havn't seen any more green eyed crows (Thankfully, they make a horrible sound)

- MAIL! if anyone wants heh to send me a little letter or anything mail related that isn't
anE-mail and such, then here is my reachable address. I didn't give it out before because
I didn't know it, but now quite a few people have been getting mail and i thought, woah,
I didn't know we could get mail... anyways this is the info.



PO Box 8501, Perth Buisness Centre, Western Australia 6849

Mail must be adressed to Jon(athan) Arkle NOT "YWAM" otherwise they will open my stuff. Nosy buggers.


OH! On my birthday YWAM people chipped in and bought me a present, it was a boomerang, and today Jon and I went to throw our boomerangs around (he got on on his birthday which was a few days after mine) anyways, This German friend of mine Adrian threw it, it came back, but he ducked and it slid under the door to this City Storage shed thing... So we spent the next little while trying to get it out haha that was fun

I'd put up pictures of our attempts, but this website is annoying.

Another day

- Jonathan

Friday Night

Friday Night


Background: All week in classes we’ve been learning about intercession and worship (in a sense, “hearing Gods voice”. The Speaker was this guy named (name removed), really awesome guy who is a missionary in Chiinnahh. Really cool week, strengthening people’s belief in being able to hear God speak to them.

1) I’m running to the auditorium to have supper when I’m caught by this base leader “Ari” who asks me if I could help out the guy who he is with. He was with this homeless man who was quite out of it, shaking a little. I asked him if there was anything I could get for him, food, drink, and he asked for both coffee and tea. So I went and got this stuff for him and then he introduced himself as Peter. Now when he said his name, possibly because of the past week, something in me was like “Bam” Peter, there was SOMETHING about the name, and I began to think that because Ari had chosen me to help, maybe it was something significant.
I changed my mind after a while just accepted it as a good deed that I could do I guess nothing significant, and did my best to accommodate this guy, and then when Friday night meeting was over, I left to go to Kaio with my friends.

2) After being at Kaio for a while, some friends and I started getting tired and decided to head home. I walked downstairs ahead of the rest (Kaio is 2 floors) and when I got the ground floor, I saw this guy talking to one of the workers (Ashley). The guy looked like he was really intense into his conversation, so naturally I was intrigued. I went to sit down with them at the table and listen to what he had to say and it turns out he was a marine, he had been in Afghanistan for 16 months and that night had had a ‘bit’ to drink. He then introduced himself as Pete and I decided right there… woah, I should stay and talk with his guy. Kaio closes at 11-12, but Ashley, Kim (another worker there) and myself stayed talking with Pete until 2 am. As the evening moved on he began to sober up but also get a lot more emotional and spiritual about how much he wants God to be in charge of his life etc and how he doesn’t think that God could use him for his deeds because of all the “evil things” he’s done. He opened up to us that night about some of the stuff he’d done overseas and the pain that this guy felt… I can’t write well enough to have you understand. I was so thankful I could have been a part of that that night, apparently he’d started turning towards God a few months ago, but would keep slipping away, but last night I’m sure was something he won’t forget. It was powerful.


Side note: Ashley and Kim both did their DTS school with Justin! For those reading who know the significance of that. I’m going to get some contact info through them (they still keep in touch with him, so that will hopefully be cool).

3) Anyways, the trains stop going to my stop after 12, so I walked the two women home and then continued on to where I live (Called 228). Once I got back to 228 I went to brush my teeth and get ready for bed, and as I’m brushing my teeth, I can hear voices coming from the alleyway behind 228. I ignore it at first (with the odd though of “who could be up and talking with others at 3 am?”) But then I felt this immense feeling of “Go and find those voices and talk to them”
Now, this I completely brushed off thinking, “nah, I’m tired and that’s just my 3 am mind telling me to do that because of a) curiosity, and b) I had already had such a spiritual night I was ready to have any other kind of encounter” But as I walked towards my bed down the hallway of 228 again this urge filled me, like I was talking to myself, but different
“go find the voices and talk to them” so again I ignored and continued (I did put my ear up to the girls and guys dorms rooms just to see if it was people laughing at joking who were still awake, but nothing, it was outside). “Go and Find the Voices and talk to them”
Then FINALLY I decided, whatever it’s not going to do my any harm to walk around the block and find out where those voices are coming from so I went outside and began to walk around to the back of the building. Now along the road there are a few apartments and I could see light, hear music and hear laughter coming out of one of them, obviously a party, so I figured, “there we go, found the voices, bedtime” then again “Go and talk to them” now I’m thinking “nah…nuh uh… I’m not going to walk into someone’s apartment and go ‘hi, I’m Jon…I felt like I should talk to you’” but this feeling… this... ”voice” in my head was persistent, so I kept walking and then as I round the block, there are two people, and now the only two people I can hear, sitting on the grass across the street from the alleyway behind 228, (Two women, one on the ground, the other crouching, talking). I walk towards them and the one crouching quite abruptly tells me
“No, no, get away, this is an emotional conversation, not the time go away” so I awkwardly apologize for approaching and begin to walk away, and then the feeling “No, you go back now and talk to them”. So not knowing what to say, I walk down the street a bit more towards the base and then turn around and begin to come back. I’m out of their view, and as I approach, the one who had shooed me away stands up and leaves to go back to the party, leaving the one who was crying on the ground alone. So I think. Wow, perfect opportunity to “Talk to the voices I heard” and I start up conversation. I tell her I’m a Christian and that I didn’t want to weird her out but I felt God wanted me to speak with her. She scoffed me a bit but was still willing to talk and actually said she appreciated having someone she didn’t know to talk to. The Reason she was upset was because her boyfriend of many years and her had broken up…. his name was Peter.
We talked outside for a while and then went inside to her apartment because she was cold and continued to talk about everything from God to “which batman movie is best”. She wasn’t completely open to Christianity and defiantly had her opinions on it, but she did listen, and we ended up talking until 5 am. She has an incredible history… but I won’t get into that now, but one amazing thing is she’s had the queen of England stay over at her childhood house, and has had Nelson Mandela walk her to school holding her hand on 2 occasions. Wow.
Anyways, at 5 we both realized we should head off, she had her best friend’s birthday party she should go back and join them at that (a few apartments down these are ground level outside door apartments, not a complex) and I remembered that I hadn’t turned off my alarm clock for weekdays so it would be going off in 15 min…..much to the distaste of my roommates on an early Saturday morning. So I went home, slept for 3 hours, woke up and told some people my adventures of sorts haha. Watched some episodes of “Scrubs” on my friend Will’s laptop with some friends, then decided to type this up on a friends laptop while it was fresh on my mind so I could put it here on a blog.



I think I’ll go to the beach today.


Sorry for no photos I’ll take some at the beach and update by tomorrow, so today’s post is a ‘quick’ fun read. But there is no doubt in my mind that there was something significant about my encounters yesterday with Peters and those situations, and I choose to call it God.

Oy tuggah!

Ouch...serious lack of comments people...

Nothing big and new to talk about....
I'm going to go to a coffee shop

KAIO

Th'day I had my B'day was a G'day

Well, it's been a while since I updated this, I apologise


However here it is, the exciting update full with Videos and pictures (ALL BY JON, TO AVOID CONFUSION)

So, since I last updated I had my Birthday. On Oct 12 I had my first (mabye not last) Australian birthday and that was pretty cool. The Base has made a pool to buy people gifts on their birthdays (there is one almost every day, it's an odd occurance for there NOT to be at least 2 birthdays, mine was a double), and I got a Boomerang. I can't throw it very well, it does turn in the air, but doesn't really come back the full way.... it's still really fun to throw though.

My original plan was to update last wed after going to the beach to watch the sunset in the west (over the indian ocean wow!) BUT those plans fell through....until today we went to the beach again (we go quite often) but it was really really windy and we wimped out before staying for the sunset....ate fish and chips though, that was good enough. (We figured we have enough time to see the sunset, might as well go on a better day)

Now I don't think I've mentioned this before, but right across from where I am living is Perth's Soccer stadium, and every sunday is a soccer game. When we got back from the beach another friend and I went to the Game and got in free becuase it was only 15 min left. Perth Vs. Queensland








So thats a view of the game. The Photo doesn't do the sky justice, it was pretty cool. We only saw the last 15 min of the game, but as a result got in free, so that was pretty sweet.










Woahh Cool.....





So there is some eye candy for you readers, I'll try to think of some other things to take pictures of etc.... and i can't really think of what else to write about...

OH!

Okay, so as some of you may know I'm not here in Australia for the ENTIRE 6 months, but for the last 2.5 of this time I have an "outreach" and here is the tentative list of places I may be sent...

Nepal
Indea
Indo-China

Sudan
Afghanistan.

There we go! Thats everything i can think of.... I've been longboarding alot around here, skateboardingish is fun.... skimboarding too, thats pretty cool... I don't know what else... BUT I really want to get off this computer now so here is a last little goodbye pictures....to tide you over until next time.

Jukka (Finland) being tough Stuck at random train station after being caught with no tickets






Perth

- Jon

"Kangapoo"

On saturday we all went on a field trip of sorts, we went to a national park where we saw "wild" koalas in a little habitat.... lame, they were all asleep and really high up, stupid animal. Then we went on a walk, through wilderness ish (nto as a big group, haha no single file retardedness, we were just free time cruising about) and we saw sooo many crazy birds.
The Birds in Australia are like....lets say if every bird was a parrot....well, I can honestly say that every bird is like a wierd parrot, even the crows have bright green eyes, pretty cool. Then we saw/heard one of my new favorite birds, the kookabura SO loud, and SUCH an awsome sound. It's like a piercing loud laugh..ish. Really cool.

Then when we got back, we hear some other people going "hey we saw kangaroos" Whatt? awsome, so some friends and i went into the brush to try to find them, we didn't go far until we saw one kind of throught eh tall grass and plants...very jurrasic parkish. The thing got spooked though and it bolted, so all we saw was a shadow...aw, dissapointing...and most people turned back to lunch. However, a friend (Big German guy, Tobias [Tobeeus]) went farther, and farther and farther, but we still didn't find any BUT then on our way back, the Kangaroo from earlier came out....and another...which had a joey in it's pouch! so we saw a male, female and joey, then we went through the bush (even though we had been told not to due to tiger snakes) and we got some cool pictures and video. THen later on, i was with some other friends, and thoguht i saw something hopping off in the distance...so i went to check it out, and it was some MORE kangaroos! really cool. (DID YOU KNOW? WITHOUT THEIR TAILS KANGAROOS COULD NOT BALANCE?)




We had a boat war out on the lake that was at this park, got in trouble with hte warden, good times, ground was covered in brown chunks about the size of wheaties (Kangapoo as a my friend Simon from Sidney put it) and that was that day. (SATURDAY)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJkE3ElpRFs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgc41LxHz8E





The Next day (Sunday for those lacking the mental capacity for logic) Some of us went to the beach. The water was cold, but it was worth it, i have been swimming in the indian ocean, woah. The beach was...the beach, nothing "SPECIAL" (like animals that hop around) BUT apparntly it has the most beautiful sunsets in WA (West Australia) so on wednesday when we have the most free time (other than weekends) we might go down to the beach at sunset, get some pictures. Sunday night i went out for coffee with some friends to this coffee place that YWAM kind of set up KAIO www.kaio.com.au (i think) and we just hung out there until we came home and slept, then i'm here today.

Last Friday Was a friday night meeting (of church sorts) that was kind of cool... and this week in 'classes' we're talking about repentance and forgiveness...which is seeming quite vindictive... but thats kind of how things are here. Otherwise things are going great. I met this Wierd metal band on sunday night they play in a garage near the base, really dark characters, but i met them all, learned their names, now i have some people to pray about when we're supposed to pray. heh.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING CANADA


And, it's my Birthday in a few days now....thursday (LIKE THE SHIRT I"M WEARING! WOAH) . Yep. Thats all the news, I'll update again soon.



To my loyal readers I love you Mike. hahah

EDIT All Pictures and Video are taken by me...not just found on the internet... If it's on the blog, it's captured by Jon.

Two goals accomplished

I Ate Kangaroo jerky! It's good, it's jerky, nothing too special, except for the fact that it's Kangaroo


Also I'lm going to try to go to Killswitch Engage and Unearth, they play on the 20th and the 21rst, so a friend and i are going to try to see them. Mike jealous much? Pwned.


SEND ME E-mails!!! I can print them off and i guarantee i will be reading them! Thank you SO MUCH casey for your e-mail we'll talk soon and i can tell you how much i loved it hahah, also to brenda thank you so much also! Really nice e-mail, i loved it.


Guaaaarrds (If you know who you are, haha I didn't expect you to read this)

Time to buy some food for breakfasts and figure out where the venue is. TO PERTH

"shenanigans"

Ladies and Gentelmen.....Here i am



Well..... i'm here, but I'm going to have to say that i have some crazy mixed feelings about all of this... on the positive side,

I'm in Australia
... and anyone who knows me well enough can probably think about my excitment about being here...."Jon" + a country with kangaroo's and such... yea it's pretty sweet. I've only been into Perth a few times, but the YWAM base is just down the block from the train station, and it's a 2 min train ride, so it's RIGHT there which is pretty sweet. I have yet to eat kangaroo, HOWEVERR i did find some kangaroo steak, which wasn't QUITE what i was looking for, but it may have to do. Aussies are pretty nice, I talked to some emo looking Aussie's in perth to ask them about any local shows and next week is taste of chaos, however i doubt i will be able go becuase of...

downside, YWAM has a lackage of free time, weekends are pretty much free except for some work duties, and the days are taken up by classes.... now remember people I am at a christain organisation so this next part try not to find it wierd... but everyone here...lets say that they are much more "holy" than me. The way Ywam seems to work is that popularity is based off of how many book sof hte bible you have memorized.... kind of. So here i am, being a bit of a character who does not put "EVERY" problem i have to "prayer" or "having a undying bleh bleh bleh for God" i tend to have this "First with the head, then with the heart" mindset, and don't find it easy to understand those who just say "i'll pray about it alot" "I'll see what god wants me to do" (but not in a casual way, it's quite militant. I don't have nearly the wide repetoir of gospel songs memorized that other people do, and i can't play hymns on guitar.....


And it's only been 3 days.

And with that I leave for now, when i get more settled thats when e-miasl and such will start to pop up but for now i figure it's better to adapt than to report.

Seeyalata as the aussies say... yikes

Later

-Jonarkle