31 December 1999

Well, I suppose you could call this a landmark in history, both my own personal history and the history of mankind.  This is the last day of the year, the decade, the 20th century, and the second millennium.  It's a cool time to be alive.  An event like this doesn't happen very often.  There are a lot of people in the world freaking out.  Some think society is going to collapse, some think Christ is going to return.  Then there's this Y2K thing.  I don't think it'll be as big a problem as some people are predicting.  President Dela Vega told us to expect at least a week-long brown-out.  That wouldn't surprise me in this country, especially in Eastern Samar.  Things have been relatively calm here in Guiuan.  They don't seem to be too worried.  I'm not.  I'm just no looking forward to sleeping with no electric fans.  Just to be on the safe side, President Dela Vega has ordered us to come in at 4:00 this afternoon (it's 4:20 now), and not to go out at all tomorrow.  Should prove to be boring.

And now it's reflecting time.  I'm going to take this opportunity to look back at the major events in my life in the '90s.  The decade started off with my family living in Raymond.  I was 11 years old, three months short of 12.  I started junior high school that year.  After the seventh grade, my family moved to Lethbridge.  A couple of weeks before I started the eight grade, Jake got beat up at Whoop Up Days.  I hated the school that I went to, and was overjoyed to move to Edmonton halfway through the school year.  In the summer of 1993, we moved back to Prince George.  I had a good time there.  In the summer of 1994, we moved to St. Albert.  I did a year of high school there.  I had a few good friends at church, but none in school, so I returned to Raymond in the fall of 1995 and lived with Aunt Joyce for my last year of high school.  I had a great time.  I joined the school show choir.  Then, with Jake, Kevin, Cam, Ted, Regan, Jay Dee, Travis, Jared, Landon, Scott, and Todd, I joined the MT Vibes, our own singing group.  That was a lot of fun.  Good self-esteem booster, too.  In the summer of 1996, I graduated high school and moved home.  The next two years were really depressing, so I won't talk about them.  Things got better, and I entered the Missionary Training Center on October 21, 1998.  And now I'm finishing the year/decade/century/millennium in Guiuan, Eastern Samar, Philippines.