When you feel like you don't measure up

On Sunday morning I went to church online at Elevation Church. You can find the online campus here: http://live.elevationchurch.online/
I love that with today's technology I can go to church no matter where I'm at, even when I'm having a sick day at home in my pyjamas. A few years ago I was living in a city that didn't have a church that I could join, during that time I was still able to attend church thanks to church online.

Ten years ago online churches only had podcasts and videos of their sermons. Today many churches Live broadcast their services with the message, the music, the pre show and after show. Elevation church's online church also offers the opportunity to volunteer online and to sign up to an online Life Group called "e groups". Not everyone lives at a driving distance from a church but with church online it becomes easy to attend church anywhere in the world.

Pastor Dustin Stradley preached a very encouraging message on Sunday about the struggle to feel good enough in a world that often makes it hard for us to measure up. Dustin gets really personal and vulnerable in the message as he shares about his own struggles and insecurities. He challenges us to learn a new and better way to develop confidence so that we can stop the comparison game for good.

Our garden

It wasn't more than a few weeks ago that we planted our garden and yesterday I was able to make my first smoothie of the summer with spinach from our garden. I love the joy and excitement that comes from growing your own little garden and experimenting with growing different things. The plan is to make the garden a little bit bigger each year, so that in the future we will be able to feed our kids lots of healthy organic vegetables. I'm hoping that the strawberries will be ripe for our Scandinavian Midsummer's Eve celebration in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of gardening and the homeless, I found this amazing non-profit in Austin, Texas called the Karpophoreo Project. It's a non-profit organization that will come and plant a garden for you in your backyard and then care for that garden on a weekly basis. All you need to do yourself is water the plants, the organization does the rest of the work. 50 % of the harvest from your garden stays with you and the other half will be sold on the farmer's market by the organization. 70% of the profit from the sales will be paid to the formerly homeless people who work as gardeners for the organization.

The workers are a mix of regular people who volunteer at the organization and formerly homeless people who work for a profit. I would love it if there was a non-profit similar to the Karpophoreo Project in Toronto where I could volunteer. If anyone has heard of something similar to this project being done in T.O., please let me know by commenting below.