Election Day!

Today is election day. Now it is up to the people of Alliance University College to choose who they want to be next year's student body president. Now we play the waiting game.

Final Push!

Elections are tomorrow!! Here are a few last minute picture submissions from my supporters:

This is a picture of Matt Yeomans, submitted by his girlfriend Anh Nguyen - Calgary, Canada.

This appears to be some boy scout or something. I gather that his name is Erick Parsons. I'm not sure where he's from, but my mom submitted the picture and she's from Priddis, Canada.

Here we have a picture of the girls from room '404'. I've never actually met any of them, but they seem pretty cool. I think this picture may have been taken in Banff, maybe? But they're currently living in Calgary, Canada.

I think this picture speaks for itself.

Thank you, and good night!

Elections Near!

The elections for AUC Student Council are in less than a week now! Hurry up with those picture submissions!!

Today I have a picture from Megan Reimer (Calgary, Canada) to share with you.

News with Ryan

Since I don't have any campaign pictures for you today, I would like to share an interesting bit of news I came across on the internet today. Click here to read the news story entitled Police arrest oiled man armed with nunchucks.

In other news, the multi-vitamin challenge comes to an end tonight. For those of you just joining us, I began taking multi-vitamins and vitamin C tablets thirty days ago in an effort to improve my health. If it didn't work, Cam Stutters, the parasite man, was going to pay for all my expenses. Well, I am pleased to inform you that my health is improving and I haven't had a cold for about a week now. Now we'll just wait and see if this lasts.

Now for our weather update: the weather is warming up again. We've been in the 30's all week (high 80's to 90's in Fahrenheit). The forcast was saying that Friday would be "Hot with a great deal of sunshine." Now it's just saying "Mostly sunny and not as warm." I really do enjoy these Egyptian weather forcasts!

Four cases of bird flu in humans have been confirmed. Everyone still eats chicken though. We're not chicken. I rear ended a taxi with my bike today because my brakes died. The cab driver looked back at me and I gave him a thumbs up. I think he was pretty amused. I think I should've saved all this information for my newsletter that has to go out in a week. Oh well, I'll just make up some more news for then. This is Ryan Monson, signing off.

The Monson Campaign Continues

Today I present to you the men of Penthouse 2, of whom I have

had the pleasure of being either floormates or roommates with.
(Check out those sweet velcro shoes)

Campaign Update

Today I was sent a picture of an anonymous white man who is decked out in some Middle Eastern wear. I'm not sure who he is, or where he's from, but he supports my campaign, and thus, he must be a good man.

(Picture submitted by Shirley Bierkos - Calgary, Canada)

If you haven't submitted your picture to me yet, hurry up!! Remember, the elections are on March 31st!

Campaign Update

Recently my dad and my sister went on a trip to El Salvador to build houses or something like that. The following pictures were taken during this trip:

A presidential campaign isn't complete without support from a biker.

I'm not sure who this dude is, but I guess he's a rockstar of some sort. Fair enough. Thank you for your support, rockstar. Rock on.

This is my dad, Blaine, and my oldest sister, Felicia. My dad rarely looks at the camera when someone takes his picture.

Apparently I have a corporate sponsor backing my campaign now. Sweet!
I wonder if they'll give me a free iPod if I plug their company.
BUY YOUR ELECTRONICS FROM VISION ELECTRONICS!
Now we play the waiting game...

The Campaign Continues...

Today's pictures are of Lieneke (and some other kid), who live in Holland

Pictures submitted by Ineke van Leeuwen

Vote for Monson!

Today's picture submission comes from Cindy Harrington who is in Conakry, Guinea

The Monson Campaign

Today's picture submission comes from Erin Tucker in Cairo, Egypt

IMPACT 2006

Imagine with me for a moment. You are walking through a forest that is nice and peaceful. The wind is blowing through the pine trees creating a deep whistling sound that fills the whole valley. You hear the odd bird chirping in the trees, but aside from that, there is complete and utter silence. But as you walk along, the forest suddenly turns into a jungle and a pack of forty monkeys comes bursting into view, screaming, jumping around, and wrestling with each other. This, my friend, is Impact 2006. Forty hyper-active, screaming monkeys bouncing off the walls and giving each other wedgies. It’s weekends like these that cause me to question my calling as a youth pastor. But then again, one can’t change their choice of career just because of a nightmarish two days out of each year. I’m sure every job has its fair share of those.

Impact wasn’t without its nuggets of gold, though. I would like to tell you about the service project we did during our Impact weekend. Remember those forty screaming monkeys? Imagine giving each one a bucket of paint and a paintbrush. This is in essence what we did for our service project. On Friday afternoon we separated the students into three groups and set off to paint three different Sudanese schools. There is a large population of Sudanese refugees living in Cairo because of the current situation in Sudan. Many of these Sudanese refugees have children who cannot attend Egyptian schools because they are illegal immigrants. Through a partnership with our church the Sudanese are starting up some schools around Cairo in an effort to educate their children. We set out to paint three of these schools that are preparing to open.

After driving for about forty-five minutes, our bus arrived at a slightly unappealing building that had a few rooms set aside to be a Sudanese school. I had a team of ten students, along with a high school student leader. Together we were going to make our own EXTREME MAKEOVER: SCHOOL EDITION. But I forgot my camera. Oh well, the students played along anyways. I played the part of Ty Pennington. You know, the guy who goes around shouting at everyone, telling them to get to work and such. It was just like watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, only I had a pack of monkeys instead of a group of effeminate men and plasticized women… and, I didn’t think to bring along a megaphone.

When we first arrived the walls were just bare cement. We set off by priming the walls and then slathering them with a creamy yellowish color of paint. I can show you my sweater if you want a better look at the color of paint we used (darn monkeys). At lunchtime we were invited upstairs to a Sudanese man’s apartment. He is the director of the school we were painting. Also painting alongside us were two of the Sudanese teachers from that school. They were so grateful for us being there. By the end of the day we had painted nearly all of the rooms in the developed half of the school. It was neat walking from room to room seeing everything transform from a dull cement to a brightly lit up room. My team of monkeys pressed on for the better part of the afternoon to finish painting that school. Before we left, the teachers thanked us for taking the time to come and paint their school. They told us that the colors we put on their walls not only brightened up their school, but also gave them a sense of protection. I guess in the Sudanese culture a painted wall provides more security than a cement wall. Something like that, anyways. As our bus rolled away from the school a few of the Sudanese children made their way into the school and excitedly looked around with big smiles. They ran to the window and waved goodbye to us. It pretty much made all the hard work of that day worthwhile. I was proud of my monkeys. They did an excellent job! (This is the part of the show where you cry.)

The Monson Campaign - Picture Submissions

Here are the first pictures submitted for The Monson Campaign:

Submitted by Ryan Monson - Cairo, Egypt

Submitted by Holly the Cat - Cairo, Egypt

Here's a picture of Holly getting bored of campaigning.

The Monson Campaign

Ladies and Gentlemen, the time has come for me to begin my 2006 Presidency Campaign! President of what, you ask? President of the AUC (my school) Student Council. In an effort to show the students of AUC why they should elect me, I have taken a few random pictures around Egypt to show a few of the people who are backing up my decision to run for president. Now I will take a few moments to address some questions you may have about this campaign.

What does this have to do with why students should vote for me? Nothing. Is this just a publicity stunt? Pretty much. Are you still single? Yes!

Now, before I show you the pictures, I would like to invite YOU to grab your camera and show your support for me. Have someone take a picture of you holding a "Vote for Monson" sign and then email it to me, along with the location of the picture. I will post every picture I recieve on my blog (as long as it is appropriate) until the end of my presidency campaign. If you take the time to send me a picture of yourself, I will take the time to send you a postcard! One more thing. It would be nice if your pictures displayed a bit of the culture that are living among (see below pictures if you don't understand what I mean by this). Alright! Now without further ado, here is the first set of pictures:

Time for the Junior High Retreat!

Today we begin IMPACT 2006, our middle school retreat. This means that the next couple of days are going to be even more hectic than the past few days. Please pray for us as we spend the weekend impacting the 43 students that signed up for this weekend. Thanks! If I live through this, I'll talk to you next week!

Egyptian Dating

Each week I spend two grueling hours getting the Arabic language pounded into my head. It’s usually somewhat painful for me because I get so busy doing my all my youth ministry stuff during the week that I rarely find time to practice my Arabic skills. So, about an hour before my Arabic lesson I do all the homework that was assigned to me and relearn the things that were stuffed into my head the previous week. It’s certainly not the prime conditions for learning Arabic. Anyways, during my last Arabic class we somehow got on the topic of dating. Apparently there is no such thing in the Egyptian culture. You are either engaged, or you are acquaintances. After drilling our Arabic teacher with questions about this topic, we came to the conclusion that Egyptian engagements are the closest thing to the Western concept of dating.

When an Egyptian gets engaged, the man gives the woman a ring, and their family has a big engagement party where all their friends are invited. I suppose this is not unlike a Western engagement in this regard. The big difference is that Egyptian engagements are the time where the man and woman decide if they really like each other and want to follow through with marriage. If they decide that they don’t really like each other that much, the woman gives her ring back, and the two part ways. So, I guess Egyptians pretty much just combine the custom of dating and engagement together. Interesting, I know. Unfortunately we didn’t get onto the subject of paying the bride’s father with camels and sheep. Perhaps next week we’ll talk about that. I sort of doubt they do that anymore. Anyways, there’s your Egyptian culture lesson for today.

The Testimony of Religions

Have you ever noticed that the world has gone crazy with religion? If you look at the history of our world, not just in the past 2000 years, but all the way back to the earliest written records of history thousands of years ago, you will see one thing in common. People always long to worship something. If you follow history throughout the years you will also notice that the people of this world can never agree on one single entity to worship. Different people groups in different eras all want to worship different gods. This is what history suggests, at least. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and all the major religions of our day have separate gods, each beckoning us to worship them. All of these aforementioned religions have prospered (and continue to prosper) quite prominently in different regions of the world. Certain countries are known for being associated with certain religions. Cities, tribes, and people groups within these countries often have their own flavors of these religions, or perhaps a new religion altogether. As time changes, many of these religions change as well. Only one thing seems to remain constant among world religions. They always seem to clash with each other in some form or fashion. Each religion seems to have its own crusades throughout the world. Sure, I’m probably over-generalizing every one of these statements I’m making, but the point of this blog is not to give you a historical overview of the trends of world religions. Instead, I want to put the craziness of religion aside for a moment. If a simple little cartoon can get religious people all over the world angry and violent towards each other, then clearly religion is just a little skewed.

So forget religion for a few minutes. I would like to talk about what is beneath all of it. Life and death. Take a look at the world around you. This planet is teeming with life! This life had to begin somewhere, by some force of nature. For me, I find it impossible to think that all the intricacies and intense design in this world just happened by chance. When I look at any living organism I see such complexities in them that I cannot, in good conscience, credit to mere chance or accident. All the different colors, shapes, sizes, and behaviors of living things support my confidence that there must be something or someone that created this world we live in. As I have lived in Egypt for the past seven months, I have seen such beauty in the world around me that I am even more convinced that there is some supreme being behind everything that exists in our universe.

I have hiked up a number of mountains throughout my life. Whenever I reach the summits of the mountains I climb, I take a look out at the valleys below, and I see a panoramic canvas of the most magnificent artwork ever. A few months ago I tried snorkeling in the Red Sea. Although I failed miserably in my attempt to swim, I was still able to take in a small portion of life below the waters. I saw fish of spectacular colors that sparkled and shimmered in the water. I saw coral reef that was packed with miniscule complexities. Even just seeing the bright colors of the water and watching the waves dance among the rocks was enough to fill me with awe and wonder for whoever created all of this. This past year I also went on a camping trip in the Sahara Desert. As I was lying near a flickering fire, shortly following a breathtaking sunset, I looked up and saw yet another sign of divine creation. The evening sky was blazing with light from galaxies of stars above me. I followed the Milky Way as it flowed through the boundless sky above me. It glowed softly and silently. To me, it was the signature at the bottom right-hand corner of this awesome painting of the universe.

Yes, surely there is a creator who has made all of this beauty around us. Surely there is a being who created you and me. There must be someone to whom we are a prized collection; a valued creation; a brilliant masterpiece. This supreme being who inexplicably created everything that is and gave us life, also gave us the ability to accept or deny the existence of an ultimate creator. This creator gave us the freedom of choice and of reason, and everything we need to make an intelligent decision. We don’t need books to tell us what to believe. We don’t need fancy rhetoric. We don’t even need scholars or religious leaders to help us with our decision. All we need to do is to take a look at the universe that has been revealed to each of us, and decide whether or not to accept if there is one who created all of this. You can call this being whatever you please. I call him Elohim. God our creator. From Him I find meaning and life.