Episode 4: One In A Million Wine and Dine

Anthony Sedlak is a character. He honestly introduced himself in the manner you saw on the show, except more so. We were all gathered under the shelter at the Co-Op in the POURING RAIN, Bruce and Joti introduced the week's challenge to us, and Anthony ran in, ducking and weaving through the crowds, jumping over several tall grocery carts in a single bound, and... falling on his but. He came in full of energy, and stayed that way through the challenge.

Of course, he wasn't really challenged.

The participants in the Million Dollar Neighbourhood were more or less challenged by this week's challenge. Cooking at home and not buying alcohol was not a challenge for us, but for others it was huge. I mean, Mark and Kyle spending over a thousand dollars a month on wine? Wow! Other families have at least one meal out a day! Sure, we eat out probably more than we should, but this week's challenge, as far as that goes, wasn't a huge challenge for us. Still, we were chomping at the bit to get more groceries by the end of the week! What really shocked us was that 16/52 (4/13) of our food throughout the year goes to waste! We really want to cut that down.

The location for the Once In A Million Wine & Dine was gorgeous. Once again, I helped with Entertainment. This is where I got to know Jonathan and Teresa Penner (and their family) better. They had great contacts for this type of event, and the production company provided the sound equipment this week. The band that the Penners found happened to be one I'd worked with before as well. Ron Koyanagi, the pianist, was on Taralyn's worship team at a previous church, and I knew Peter Davyduck, the bassist, from another former church. The trio's smooth jazz music was fantastic, and provided an amazing sonic background to add to the amazing visual background.

The food was also amazing. I didn't interact with Anthony too much. He did a few things in town over the week, the most prominent being a singles dinner for the town's singles. They were thrilled. After that, he went to TJ and Phaedra's, which you see on the show. The MDNers got the leftovers. Not entirely equally. OK, not all the MDNers got the leftovers. But I'm sure those who got them were blessed. The alcohol was good - we had Dead Frog Brewery on site offering generous samples of their nut brown, pepper lime, and mandarin orange beers. They were very good. So was the wine. I'll try to remember what we served for those who want to know. Bob Long, one of the guests at the dinner is a township councilor and also the owner of Bob's Bar and Grill where I worked as a server when we first moved to Aldergrove, and one of my thrills was serving him wine all afternoon. He had let me go as a server a year and a half earlier.

So, the price was $250. Honestly, I didn't ever have a problem with that. I knew that the caliber of event we were looking to pull off (and we DID pull off) is not for your average middle income family. This is for people who enjoy fancy luncheons and gala dinners. The issue wasn't the ticket price. I even talked to a few couples who would have been there - in fact for some the ticket price was a compelling reason that they wanted to attend. They don't want to go to just another $20 dinner; instead, they want something more high class, bigger, more fancy. A $250 ticket already communicates those things. The issue was the short notice. Honestly, 6 days to sell all these tickets. Didn't really work out.

The emergency meeting at the barn was a gong show. Joti was set up by the production company to come down hard on the group, and emotions ran high - exactly the thing that makes good TV. I wonder if they told her to say the word "Lazy", but it made a great emotional television effect. The reason I don't appear on TV is probably that I was kind of chuckling through the meeting. Others really got their feathers ruffled. They HAD worked hard on this, and they reacted to Joti in no uncertain terms. What you see on the episode doesn't even show how emotional people got, which was a surprise to me. But Joti particularly was upset afterwards, afraid she looked like the bad guy. Many of the participants felt that way. She was just doing her job.

At the end, it was a beautiful event. Unfortunately, Taralyn couldn't make it because she had a children's ministry meeting at the church. But I was so blessed to be a part of it. I spent the first hour or so helping to set up the stage and sound, then brushed up on the art of the pour and served wine for the rest of the event. I just couldn't keep myself from looking over the view - it was gorgeous. Nickelback's Chad Kroeger's recording studio is literally a block away. The guests were all VERY happy with the event. It was incredible.

So what was the Gospel impact at this point? Again, I was just getting to know people. I'd connected with the Penners, who are also Christians. I'd shared my dream of starting a new church in town with a number of people, who I knew were checking to see if I was genuine. For people in Aldergrove, being 'genuine' doesn't mean that a Christian doesn't drink or dance or swear. It means that they care, they work hard, they laugh, they live. Aldergrove residents don't respond well to Christians who look down their noses at the way everybody else lives. They respond much better to those whose lives they can relate to, who they know care about the things they care about, and who have a different perspective to share.  Because of my witness in this commnunity, I have had opportunity to share the Gospel with some of these people who have rejected Christians all their lives.

I'm looking forward to seeing what else we did last fall in the upcoming episodes!

MDN Episode 3: Million Dollar Employment

Oh My Goodness! Here we are less than 2 hours away from Week 4's premier, and I haven't written about Week 3 yet! So here's the scoop...

This week was about finding employment and sharing skills. I remember that school bus. Actually, I think there were 3 school buses. They picked us all up at Aldergrove Senior Secondary School and bussed us all around town, and to the top-secret location - ACSS! We were herded into the gymnasium where we were presented with rows upon rows of desks, each with an apple placed on it. I sat with my whole family, but Carter (my three-year-old) decided that he wanted to run all around the gym and Caleb (4) wanted to eat the apple!

After our introduction to what the week was about, we were given the instruction to write our special skills on panes of glass, leaving room for people to sign up to receive that skill. THEN we were told to go around looking at each person's skill and sign up for what we wanted or needed. It was pretty incredible how some people's skills lined up perfectly with other people's needs. Some in our community needed automotive work done, and people offered those services. Others needed home repairs and those services were offered for free as well.

Taralyn offered to bake cupcakes, which a lot of people took her up on. Unfortunately, many of her younger keeners didn't realize that they would have to provide the ingredients, and what Taralyn was offering was the service and time to make them. Still, she did make a few batches for birthday parties and social gatherings for our neighbours. I offered two things; one was signed up for and the other got no interest at all. The thing that did get interest was hanging pictures. By doing this I got to know Thelma, who is an awesome member of our community. She and her husband have teenagers and have lived in Aldergrove for years but haven't really connected in the community beyond their kids' friends. They're a great family!

The other service I offered was a Bible Study - you pick the topic! I thought it might be interesting to see if anybody would take me up on it. Nobody did. In case anybody's reading this who wants to take me up on that, I'm still game!

After this, we were brought into the school courtyard, where we were presented with 12 (I think?) candidates who wanted to gain or upgrade their employment. By this point in the day, the boys had pretty much had it so Taralyn had taken them home. We were all broken into 12 different teams, each team assigned to one of the twelve. I was placed on Team Brenda. But there was another candidate who I thought I could help in a greater way so I asked if I could join his team instead. His name is Dalton, and he was a 15-year-old looking for his first job. Since I've worked with lots of youth gaining employment I thought I could be an asset to him. I decided to be his team leader, and I was intent on getting him employed that week. Other members of Team Dalton were Walter, Tara, and Steve and Janie Rae, all of whom really stepped up to help Dalton. Steve, who is a roofer, even offered Dalton a job on the spot, but it was difficult for him to commit since the job was on Saturdays, which is the day that most of our MDN events took place.

Through the MDN network, we were able to secure him an interview at Subway on Wednesday. I think it was Gary and Erin who have a friend who manages the restaurant. Or maybe it was Leah and Brent. Regardless, I got this email saying that his interview was at such a time and place. I spent some time with Dalton going over his resume (which Erin also did) and helping him pick out a wardrobe. I also got to meet Dalton's dad Scott, a successful salesman. He's a great guy. I found it funny, though, as we were talking Scott told me about some religious people and said he doesn't get along with religious people at all. I told him later that I'm a committed Christian, and I hope it doesn't affect our friendship. He said not at all!

I encouraged Dalton to spend all afternoon on Tuesday handing out his resume up and down Fraser Highway. Walter offered to drive him. But I found out later that Dalton figured, since he had an interview set up on Wednesday anyway, he wouldn't bother with handing out his resume. Luckily, it worked out. Dalton got the job! I think he found out on Saturday during the filming that he got it, but I wasn't there because I was driving the bus for Christian Life Assembly's Kid's Klub that morning.

I was disappointed that Dalton wasn't filmed at all, but it was great to see the others. Charlissa was great. So was Brenda, really. And I have to say this about Matt - he's a really great guy. I don't know him really well, but he was portrayed in a very negative light. I like Matt, and I fully support him and Crissy and their family as he seeks to improve his employment situation. I told him he should apply with Canada Post!

I'm looking forward to this week's MDN. It'll be great to see such an awesome event take place. Again.

MDN Episode 2: Million Dollar Garage Sale

Ah yes, the Million Dollar Garage Sale. What a great event! This was the first initiative that the community came together to achieve ourselves. With many strong personalities, and people with great skills and successful experiences of pulling events like this off in the past, we were bound to have some conflicts on the road to the event itself.
Yes, we only had a week to pull it off. No, we didn't know where it would be held until Thursday, I believe, and the garage sale happened on Saturday. Yes, there was conflict between the PR team, the Logistics team, and Force Four (the production company). We were still getting to know one another, and not always liking one another. Most of these people have become strong friends through these events.

I was on the Entertainment sub-committee. You hear on the episode Bruce Sellery saying, "Let's put entertainment with food and beverage". I still don't really understand the rationale behind that, but the Entertainment group rocked! I co-led this sub with Liane, who has coordinated entertainment for many events and had a number of contacts and leads. We discussed entertainment options like clowns and roving entertainers, but we settled on focusing on bands. I had leads on equipment, Liane had leads on bands, and other committee members (the Smart family) had other leads.
We had some great entertainers at the event, including Jared Fowler and The Joel Brown Band, and MDN's own Jacey Gillis. The entertainers had plenty of footage shot of them. Unfortunately, none of it, not one mention, showed up in the show. I was particularly upset about this, not because I was involved in the committee, but because if you were there you would know that the music and the stage was a MAJOR part of the garage sale. Everybody was talking about it - both the families involved and the guests/shoppers. They were awesome. I don't know why the whole thing was ignored. I heard people's interviews on the show with all mention of the bands and entertainment cut out.
Because I was so involved in the entertainment - setting up the stage and sound, and running the sound - and because my family had done our own garage sale a month earlier, we didn't have a lot to sell and we didn't sell a lot. We got rid of a stroller, and some clothes. I think we made about $50.

Jeanette was painted in a negative light in this episode. Many people who watched the episode wondered why on earth she won the money. More attention was placed on the Sperger family, and rightly so. But the reality at the time was that we didn't know much about the Sperger family at all. Many people, even this week as we watched the episode, were surprised to learn about their loss. The real story that week was bringing about a consensus on location and time between the various groups (and when a consensus was not possible, people taking leadership and making decisions) and getting the job done. Jeanette did an awesome job of both of those. The time constraints were put on us by the production company, not Jeanette, maybe to give us more drama. But Jeanette did an awesome job all week. She attended meetings every night, and worked all day Friday setting up, spent all night on security watching the stuff, and spent all day Saturday working. She was a warrior.

This was an amazing event that we put together in 4 days. It showed me that it can be done. It inspired me how everybody came together to get it done. I haven't seen that before, even in the church. I don't think I'll see much of that again. It was a great event, a great week, and a great community. It's a real blessing to live in Aldergrove with each one of these people!

Million Dollar Neighbourhood on OWN

So, tonight the world (or at least the nation) will be introduced to my town, Aldergrove BC through Oprah Winfrey Network Canada's "Million Dollar Neighbourhood". My family is a part of this town and this program, and I'm just as excited as anybody (and more excited than most) about tonight's premiere.

I grew up in Aldergrove. Until I was 10 years old, these were the streets I walked, the grocery stores I frequented, the barber shops I visited, and the schools and churches at which I studied and learned about relationships. My family moved not too far, to Langley and then to Brookswood, but Aldergrove always stayed with me. After living in Surrey, Abbotsford, Winnipeg, North Delta, and again in Langley, I moved my own family to Aldergrove almost three years ago.

We moved here to start a church. It didn't work out. For many reasons.

One of the biggest reasons our church didn't get started is because we found it incredibly difficult to get to know people in Aldergrove. We aren't alone in that evaluation. As I've talked with people I've finally met through the show, the biggest complaint about the town is that people are living such insular lives. They don't seem to WANT to get to know their neighbours.

Now, obviously that's not an entirely fair assessment. If people didn't WANT to, they wouldn't. And yet here we have a show featuring 100 families who DO want to get to know their neighbours. Quite deeply, actually. But I need to be careful about how much of the show I reveal before each episode.

But here we were in Aldergrove, with our dream of 'planting a church' on hold. We had to decide whether we were going to stick it out in town, or find a ministry job elsewhere. We were compelled to stay in Aldergrove. We felt that God had called us here, not just to plant a church but to BE an expression of His Church here. So I began the process of finding employment that would allow our family to remain here.

A couple of weeks after that, we heard that Force Four Entertainment, the same company that produced Village on a Diet were interested in possibly doing a show based in Aldergrove. A few other communities were being scouted, but Aldergrove ended being selected to film a test episode.

Soon after that, I got a job with Canada Post and we were also contacted by Force Four to see if we were still interested in being one of the 100 families that would make up the show. The rest will have to wait.

I can say now that the show, MDN has brought our town together in community like never before. We're talking to people at the grocery store, waving as we see each other on the streets, getting together for events, and it's great to know others no matter what their backgrounds or lifestyles. We're not presently pursuing a church plant here, but we're more determined than ever to be Good News to our new friends in our old town, and we're excited to see what God has in store for Aldergrove!

Keep following this blog, and I'll post sometime in the week following each show to offer my reflections and responses on the show that already aired (but no spoilers... so don't ask!).