Speaking Tour
“You’re young, you’re still finding your voice,” were the words spoken to me by a stranger this summer at the Wild Goose Festival followed by an invitation to take risks to find and reveal my voice. At the time, I was mildly miffed at the condescension of this statement. But as I thought about my year, I saw the ways I was struggling to claim my voice. I thought the invitation was more of the exhortation I’d been hearing for a while to write, but now I see it was more of an all-encompassing invitation to use my voice.
The first time I did a talk this fall, I cried. In front of a room full of people. Which came as a surprise to me, as I’ve never lost my composure during a talk. The topic of my talk was about living out the beatitudes in a community, and why choosing to seek and dwell in a community is worth the costs it may pose. I chose to be bold and share some of my own story, and the depth of what I was sharing hit me in a deep way, while I was speaking, which led to the tears.
It’s often been hit or miss for me when I speak to a group of people. I have studied in theory, the best practices and procedures, but then I find an odd thing happens when I actually stand in front of a group of people, and all that I know to do goes right out of my head, and though very composed, I come across as robotic. In any case, I wasn’t eager to speak to a large group of people following this talk. But with the new title of director of the 2014 Bangladesh GUP, the invitations to speak came in.
I found myself on a bit of a speaking tour, which was both exhilarating and terrifying. My strengths as a campus minister lie heavily in the mentoring and discipling that happens in small groups, and I tend to do best when I spend time with those in my care so that I truly know their context and can discern the best next steps to lead and advise them toward. But, the anonymity of the those in attendance for these speaking invitations, was freeing and a new dynamic with which to work. My first invitation was to speak about redefining love, and how love calls us to love people on the margins and cross barriers and how it relates to crossing ethnic and cultural barriers at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus fellowship. I had the freedom to choose whichever text fit this theme and was encouraged to share stories of Bangladesh, so I spoke out of John 4 and invited the students to do the same prayer mapping activity that we did at Ryerson about loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us.
My next invitation was to speak at the University of Toronto St George Korean Christian Fellowship. I followed a number of stories shared by students in the community who had gone to Bangladesh this past spring. I shared a few reasons why GUPs are a good thing to do, the long term impacts and some loose details about this year’s upcoming trip. I also shared a few of my own stories. And I realized, as I tried to channel some of my good friends and mentors who I deeply respect as public speakers, how it becomes super easy to share more than you intend.
Afterward, as I was walking home, and realized my brief speaking tour was on hiatus until the new year, I reflected on the ways that God chooses to invite those in their weakness reveal His glory. Though, I’m still a little wary of these invitations, and often feel ineffectual, I know ultimately its not me or my words that matter, but what is revealed of Him. And like most things I encounter as a campus minister, I will never truly know how deeply things take root and grow until much later.
Scattering Seeds
He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29
Early in November, the Toronto regional Undergraduate Student Ministry, International Student Ministry, and High School Ministry Staff got together for a time of fellowship and training. We started this time studying the above passage of scripture and spent some time reflecting on where are the places we have faithfully scattered seeds in our ministries. We focused more on the places where we have been faithfully scattering as opposed to paying too much attention to whether or not things have grown. As my staff partner and I reflected on how we were scattering and wanted to celebrate the following:
Tube Duels
A google search of “obscure sports” brought up the discovery of cardboard tube duels, where people duel in homemade cardboard armour with cardboard paper tubes! My staff partner, leadership team and I thought that this was a ridiculous idea, but one that could be a lot of fun to attempt as a new student outreach event, so we did. It was a lot of fun, brought in a bunch of new and old faces, and we had reporters from one of the campus newspapers come and participate and do an article about it! We began the event by putting people into teams and asking them to create armour that represented their team (there were 4: ninjas, robots, pirates, and knights). Then the dueling began! After a number of individual and team wounds, we announced a winner who won a cardboard replica of Thor’s hammer. After a quick clean up, we invited everyone over for burgers at the McGill house, where we had a pinata strung up across our driveway. 80% of the people who came to the duel came back to the house, and a few signed up to come to our fall retreat!
Fall Retreat
For the first time in 4 years we had a fall retreat (which happened outside of the city)! We took the students to a retreat centre at Jackson’s Point, and had a great time studying Scripture, growing in friendship, worshipping by the campfire and enjoying the outdoors! We had a good mix of new and existing group members and felt very blessed and refreshed by our time together!
Teaching Workshops
Responding to a need for more teaching and training, Lauren, a student leader who is in her last year on campus, and I developed some workshops to equip students with tools to grow in their leadership and spiritual development. These workshops include scripture study, an interactive art piece, prayer and a time to learn and share from experiences. We led 3 this term on invitation, being a welcoming community and how to discern calling and listen to God’s voice. We’ve been amazed as we have seen students come from different clubs on campus and different campuses to receive and be blessed by these workshops!
A few more oldies but goodies
Didn’t you love the stories in that last post? Well here are some more awesome stories from campus from January 2012-April 2012.
New Vision for the New Year
Coming out of my winter travels and reflections about the fall term of ministry; I met with the student leaders to vision for the winter semester. Upon reflection of how the fall term landed, I saw that we were offering some really good things to the campus; but we needed to have our ministries more cohesive and try connecting some together; and rather than promoting events on an individual basis, making sure some ministries were promoting for others that were connected or reached people at the same stage or the next one. I also saw the need to build on some of our graphics and iconography and connect our ministries to our Join the Party theme. I also hoped we would try some more visibility experiments and try engaging the campus in service around stressful times for students; one idea was to do a cookie outreach, where we’d make and package cookies and then hand them out on campus to students studying for midterms.
Highlights from the ministries:
COOKING
We saw new vision and direction draw in new students to our Cooking Ministry, as we moved away from using Cooking with Bible; and instead drew our themes and recipes around cultural holidays and festivals and shared how they connected with our faith. We celebrated: Martin Luther King Day, Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, Holi, Hungarian Revolution Day and Passover. It was fun and exciting spending time exposing students to some of the lesser known holidays and engaging them in conversation as we discussed the meaning behind these days and what they meant to us. It was also great to have members from our community and from the larger GTA community offer insights and recipes.
COOKIE OUTREACH
Picture this scene: Every flat surface on the first floor covered with cookies, sprinkles, baggies and twist ties! The oven timer going off every ten minutes, and students taking a break from exams to roll, shape, bake and decorate 400 cookies! After baking and assembling the cookies in packages with a flyer about the Cooking Group and our upcoming movie night; we broke off into pairs and delivered the cookies on campus. One of the highlights of this experience was being paired up with Michelle*, who when I asked if she’s done anything like this before admitted she hadn’t, and when asked how she felt she was bursting at the seams with excitement! It was a lot of fun delivering cookies with her as she boldly approached people and was unflappable when people rejected the free cookies. We had a lot of fun as we received a wide range of responses; some of delight and surprise; some of wariness and suspicion. The parallels to evangelism were many and clear; the people we didn’t expect to receive the cookies did, and the ones we thought would did not.
MOVIE MINISTRY
We gathered 3 times to watch and discuss movies this semester. We kicked off the semester with X-Men First Class, which drew 3 times as many people as our last movie outreach! We followed the movie with a discussion about good and evil, and how each person has a measure of both within them and how we must strive to allow the good to flourish. For our next movie night, we decided to minister strategically to the single people on our campus by having a Valentine’s movie night, where we showed The Help. We chose that as it was a heartwarming and funny movie, but also strayed from the stereotypical notion that romantic love is the single most important love that exists and one’s life is drab and meaningless without it. We spent some time in lively discussion talking about how love, which is beyond the simple romantic love, is powerful and can cross cultural, ethnic, and societal barriers then and now and how we should strive to allow love to move us to action and overcome the oppressive powers of our fallen world. Men and women who attended the evening left inspired, and we welcomed some new faces into our community, including Dee* who is one of Lauren’s fellow nutrition classmates who doesn’t know the Lord, who first came out to help make and bake cookies for our outreach, and who enjoys spending time with our community as we are a group of people who don’t complain all the time! On our last movie night we watched Outsourced and had an engaging discussion about what it means to cross cultures and how we need to engage people of different cultures to receive the good things of other cultures and share the good things of our own.
PRAYER
We spent some time praying in different strategic places on our campus this semester. We spent January in the Ted Rogers School of Business; February in the new Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws; and March in the Student C ampus Centre. It was exciting as we focused on doing flash prayers for people, and watching as God answered these prayers in exciting ways! We also spent some time going through the book of Common Prayer, it was fun introducing students to liturgical prayer and seeing them grow to be fond of it!
JOHN MANUSCRIPT BIBLE STUDY
We continued in the book of John, as Jenna and I lead the students through the rest of the gospel. We had fun leading as we tried different approaches with some meditative studies and some dramatic performances of Scripture! One exercise that really hit home for students is when we gave students a piece of scripture and asked them to insert their names in place of the disciples or the Pharisees; and as the students saw how it changed how they understood the passage, they began to see the ways they truly were similar to the disciples or the Pharisees and how desperately they needed Jesus.
SUMMER LOVIN’ PARTY
We ended the semester with a bang! We had 3 students going to Bangladesh in May and 6 students attending MarkCentral (formerly known as City/Script) and we decided to throw a summer themed event with a silent auction and dance party! Most of the food was themed and prepared by the Cooking Group, we made sushi and ice cream cone cupcakes as well as a few snacky items. And we had students, friends and supporters of the ministry at Ryerson donate items and services for the auction. It was a lot of fun, especially as Amber one of new exec leaders served as auctioneer and had fun rallying the crowd to bid on items and facilitating a live auction for a couple items. At the end of the night we raised $800!!!
BANGLADESH
So you may have received my booklet of reflections or seen my other post about Bangladesh but here are a few other snippets that were not in the book.
I was asked in mid-October to be on the staff team for this GUP, a bit of background, I have wanted to go on this GUP since the partnership began, and have been tracking what’s happened/hounding my staff friends upon their return to hear about it each year, so the fact that I was asked was a huge answered prayer. Unfortunately, saying yes would possibly mean that I would say no to standing in my best friend’s wedding. It was a tough decision to make, as this wasn’t just any GUP invite, nor was this just any wedding. I wrestled with the decision, and invited members of my communities to listen and pray with me. In the end, I decided to say yes to Bangladesh, and hope that circumstances would work for me to be part of both good things. It looked like it wasn’t going to work, so I decided to devote as much time as I could helping Naomi with preparations, so that even though I wasn’t physically standing in her wedding, I was very much present. Through a number of what I believe to be God-ordained circumstances, it ended up that the wedding was moved to June, and it would be possible for me to stand in the wedding, and serve by baking the wedding cupcakes! This process and unveiling of circumstances was long and seemingly painfully slow; but in the meantime I recruited 3 of my student leaders to join me in Bangladesh. They jumped into preparations and fundraising and their excitement was contagious! We had the support from the Ryerson community as we went and were excited about what God would show us there. We spent the time before and during the trip reading Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, that analyzed the elements of story and through the course of the book Don collects stories and begins living a better story. This became the theme of the trip, as we engaged risk, life in community, conflict, and many other new experiences! For more stories, look at my reflections here.
TEAM RYERSON
Toward the end of the March, I learned that a few changes would be coming my way. First, Veronika who was one of the Toronto interns would be staying in Toronto post-internship and working as a staff volunteer at Ryerson. Then, I found out my supervisor for 3 years, Jamie, would no longer be my supervisor as I would have a new supervisor who would also be pioneering International Student Ministry at Ryerson! A little while later I found out that my friend Dan Clubine, who was staff at York University, would be changing campuses and would be my new full-time staff partner! Then, I found out Joy, Dan’s wife would be going back to school, and would appreciate living downtown. THEN, I found out that maybe the best thing with all of these pieces would be that all of these people would live at the McGill House, just minutes away from campus, with me….and after much deliberation and discernment…it came to be! As of July, this new configuration of people made up the inhabitants of the McGill House, as the intern house became another house in Bloor West Village! Once all the pieces were landed, but before everyone moved in, we announced to the Ryerson IV community, at an end of semester potluck at my house, the changes to the staff team at Ryerson and the McGill House; there was much excitement and rejoicing!
Some Oldies, but oh so goodies!
Hello faithful readers,
My sincere apologies for the long delay in posts. I have many stories to share and hope to have them up with photos soon. In the meantime, here are some stories and highlights from December 2011.
Winter Roadtrip
After a fall semester full of exciting new ministry, I spent some time traveling in the States. I went to visit 2 of my SALI mentees, Pavi in Philadelphia and Sasha in Tampa. And as someone who enjoys the down-time that comes with travel, I decided to embark on this journey with my friend (and sometimes foe) Greyhound.
The journey was long, but I enjoyed the trip down, and enjoyed the books I brought down with me. I was reading the Settlers Cookbook by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, which is a good read but very heavy. One of the things I really appreciated about it was Brown’s migration story, as its one that closely resembles mine, and that mixed with recipes she’s acquired along the way made this read very memorable. Her perspective helped shape and give name to things I inherently knew.
I enjoyed my time in Philly with Pavi. I only spent 24 hours there, but I got to see some of her favorite haunts, check out and hang out at her work, sit in on some meetings, and get a guided tour of Philly. I also had some AMAZING dosa from the Philadelphia Chutney Company.
In Florida, I met up with Sasha and fellow SALI alum Rekha for a quick bite after my very long bus ride. It was really exciting gathering together with my SA sisters and seeing how God had been present and blessing their ministries. Afterward, Sasha and I headed back to her family home. The following day Sasha and I went to Clearwater Beach and met up with some USF students for beach volleyball and a bible study! Afterward, Sasha and I met up with a different group of USF friends to see a street with a beautiful Christmas light display. It was really cool to see but very odd for me to be seeing all these Christmas icons in a place that was so warm that I didn’t need a coat! The next day Sasha and I headed to Orlando, where we fulfilled a dream of mine to visit Celebration USA. Celebration was just as picturesque as I imagined, but still was struck by how friendly the people were and the size and growing diversity. Also that there was a legit university there! To remember my time there, I got a Florida shaped cookie cutter. After Celebration we hung out with one of my SALI staff friends and got a tour of UCF, his campus, and got to hear stories of the some exciting ministries taking place. Following our time at UCF, Sasha and I fulfilled another dream of mine by visiting Sweet, a cupcake shop owned and operated by two-time Cupcake Wars winner, Hollis. The cupcakes were delicious and there were so many to choose from! We took our sweet treats and used enormous amounts of restraint and ate them back at Sasha’s house. The following day, we stayed pretty close to home, and Sasha took me to her favorite rest spot, and while there I finally felt refreshed, and was able to feel really awed at the splendour of God’s creation. I also caught my first fish, and I wanted to cry the whole time. The next day we celebrated Sasha’s mother’s birthday, and we made her a cake. We made a Cashew Carrot Cardamom Cake with almond butter cream cheese icing and topped with chopped cashews. It was so delicious! The following day, my last in Florida, Sasha took me on a tour of USF, her friend Juan who I met while looking at Christmas lights, joined us and offered some of his insightful comments and hilarious experiences during the tour. After our time on campus, Sasha and I made some Florida cookies, some of which, I enjoyed on my bus ride. Then that evening, Sasha drove me to the station, and sent me off.
I began the long, slow journey home. Long story short, the bus I needed to catch to make all my connections was full, and I got put on the next bus, which left 5 hours later; setting back my arrival time 7 hours! Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed with the Greyhound. But it only put a slight damper on my amazing experiences and the wonderful memories from this road trip.
Kingdom Calling
Kingdom Calling happened December 27-31 in Toronto. Kingdom Calling is a conference that replaces the National Student Leaders Conference, which happens to be my favorite Inter-Varsity Conference. Kingdom Calling is a 5-day conference where students in 3rd or 4th year come and receive teaching and vision about what their life could look like post-University and what some ministry options could be. I love this Conference because it was one that had a significant impact on my decision to pursue ministry options with Inter-Varsity, but there’s also this exciting energy as students meet their peers from other campuses and pray and discern for one another as they pursue the next thing God has in store for them. Some of my closest friends in ministry are some of my peers that I met at this conference, so I was eager to be present as staff for this Conference and see the next generation of Kingdom Leaders.
I also had Moses, one of my Ryerson students, attend the conference; and he had a great opportunity to be placed in a small group with fellow art students from OCAD, Emily Carr and Humber. Since the staff from most of those campuses were present, I volunteered to lead a small group of students from another campus that didn’t have staff present. I chose to be intentional and lead the group from Queen’s, as I would be working closely with their Campus Staff this May on a Global Urban Partnership to Bangladesh (more on that here). I had a great time with the Queen’s students as I lead a group with students from three fellowships on that campus; Queen’s Christian Fellowship, Korean Christian Fellowship and International Student Ministry at Queen’s.
Also, I got to spend a bit of time with other students I knew from regional events who either had just returned from Bangladesh or were considering applying for the 2012 team.
The Conference itself offered some great talks and insights. For me, I found it tricky to hear some of the stories and the bold statements of God’s provision, as I was still mourning the cost of saying yes to Bangladesh. Or rather, the talks were propelling me to find out for certain whether I would be celebrating or mourning the costs of saying yes. I found myself with some free time and set aside an hour to find out for certain. Just as I suspected, I found out that I would indeed need more time to mourn the costs. But despite hearing the bad news, it was good to feel supported by some of the staff there who had been journeying alongside me in my discernment. Some of the above mentioned close friends in ministry were there to mourn with me and offer words of encouragement and hope.
Reflections from the Bangladesh GUP
So, each time I’ve been on a GUP, I’ve wanted to make a book of reflections based on my journal entries; something modeled for me by one of my friends after she had gone on a GUP.
However, I’ve always managed the first half, which is writing in the journal daily (or a summary of the week); but I have fallen short of making the actual booklet. Not this time though!
Here is my book of reflections from the Bangladesh GUP; if you’d like to know more or get a paper copy, let me know!
GTA FallCon: Mark Our City
“We did an interactive flash mob…which included planking”
This year, we tried something new. Often, we have had out winter conference be something that was a GTA-wide event; but this year we decided to try having our fall conference be GTA-wide. It was September 23-24 and held in city at Stone Church.
We decided to do something simple, compelling and fun; that could help us launch ministries on our campuses. We invited students to see a play performance of the gospel of Mark. The play was divided into 2 acts. The first was performed on the Friday evening of the retreat and the second act was performed on the Saturday evening. During the day on Saturday, we received some teaching on parables, and then applied some of our teaching in the city. We started by re-enacting the parable of the sower in Queen’s park, by scattering grass seed. We then went and did an interactive flash mob inspired by the story of Jairus’ daughter which included planking; which the students loved and were very creative in their positioning (look for the student planking on a bench and garbage can). The planked students were then “woken up” and then would interact with the people who had assembled around them while they planked and offer them a package of water and granola bar, to represent bread and living water. After these live parables we debriefed the experience with the students, and then sent them out to lunch with their campus groups with a few questions to engage people they come across in the city on their way back to the church. These conversations proved very fruitful and life-giving for the students as we discovered during the debrief of the afternoon. Following the debrief, we went into our second act of the play; and ended the retreat shortly after the play’s end.
I had a vested interest in this conference, as I was on the planning committee. The committee consisted of me, my supervisor Jamie, and my friend Dan, staff at York University. We had been meeting and planning this conference since the spring. Dan and I took on roles of emcees of the conference, while Jamie did the teaching. Having already experienced co-emceeing at SALI, I was comfortable taking on this role, but still had some unresolved feelings from my last experience emceeing. I also lead the students in an interactive art piece that we did in response to the first act of the play on the Friday evening. It was exciting to see the themes that came up for the students, as they processed through the questions we asked them. Another role I had as part of this conference was that of “stager”, as I set up the space to create ambience for the play. I really enjoyed this role, and marvelled at how most of the items I was using were revamping pieces from various conferences: I set up a road in the gym out of fabric used at out National Staff Conference, emulating what I saw at Senior Girls’ camp this summer; I flooded the room with sounds before the performance that I’d used for our Kingdom People events; and I used incense to fill the room with smells that I originally purchased for this past Campus Gathering. It was fun re-using these elements and remembering how God moved in the midst of these other events.
We hope to perform the play again in the winter semester, to help us recruit for city/script.
Intern House
[Our house] “…at any given time can be filled with students, friends and ministry”
I found out Toronto would be having an internship in December, and almost immediately began dreaming of the possibilities of living in community with interns. Officially, I was invited to live with the interns in February. I, along with my good friend Dave Stone, staff at OCAD University chose to live with the interns and welcomed them to Toronto in late August.
We live together in what was known as the downtown staff house or “McGill House”. In addition to this amazing experience of living in community, the house is less than 2 minutes away from Ryerson.
Our house has become a hub for parties, meetings, and at any given time can be filled with students, friends and ministry.
The interns are supervised on campus by the campus staff who primarily cares for their campus (York and U of T St. George); and the overall internship is supervised by my supervisor Jamie. My role with the interns is one where I walk alongside them as they navigate life in community and in Toronto. At home: we meet, have meals together, work out conflict and pray and care for each other and host one another’s students when they are over. This is done in addition to my responsibilities on campus, and as much as I enjoy the immersion of ministry; I have had some struggles being able to find good rest this semester.
The Toronto Interns: Kyle, Vanessa, Veronika, and Tate
SALI
“I feel re-energized about the mission of InterVarsity to reach South Asian students in North America. God really humbled me as I interacted with students and hearing them process calling, identity, and leadership.” – SALI attendee
SALI, the South Asian Leadership Institute happens every 3 years. This is a fairly new gathering, and only the second time it has occurred, also the first time with Canadian staff and students in attendance. I attended as staff with Stacy (staff at UTSC) and staff-candidate at the time Ashley, and 2 students Andrea and Renil.
As someone who has in the past struggled to see herself as a minister to South Asians, I was struck by the ways God was showing me otherwise. As part of SALI, each staff was asked to mentor 2-3 of the attending students before, during and after the Institute (roughly a time period of 6 months). At first I wasn’t sure what to think of this, as I was not sure I would have many things to offer my mentees, and often wondered if I would connect with them in a meaningful way and if they would want to continue relationship with me after the Institute. To make matters difficult, I had my first Skype conversations with each of my mentees during my summer road trip, when I was in Vancouver (all my mentees are from the east coast), but despite challenges crossing timezones and technology failures; God uniquely paired me with mentees who I was able to connect with fairly seamlessly. They are extraordinary female leaders that have walked similar paths to me and have faced similar struggles. I soon found our relationships to be quite reciprocal, as I learned and received from both their unique experiences and through the teaching they received through IV USA. During SALI, my bonds with my mentees were strengthened, and each of them were eager to continue connecting with me post-Institute. The times I spend talking with these women are amongst the most life-giving conversations I have had this fall.
In addition to mentoring students, another role I had at SALI was co-emcee of the Institute. I shared this role with a staff from Florida, whom I had met at Asian American Staff Conference. Being in this role was enriching and challenging for me. I found that in some ways my travels and particularly my time at camp helped prepare me well for this role. In others, I found places where small incidents brought out places of brokenness in how I saw myself and how I understood both of my cultures. In the end, I am glad I did it, and glad to have the experience of co-emceeing as I found myself in that role early in the fall. In addition, many of my observation and interpreting skills were used and honed and have proved extremely helpful while navigating work and life in our intern community house.
One of the added blessings of being part of this Institute was the opportunity to serve alongside my South Asian brothers and sisters of the IV-USA movement. It was comforting to partner with others who understood the calling to IV staff and its costliness; but also the joy and kingdom life that we can offer those in our care.
SALI group photo
More photos from SALI can be viewed here
Senior Girls Camp
“I would rather go on 5 GPs in a row than ever go to camp.”
I’ll be honest, when I first joined staff with Inter-Varsity, I prayed that I would never be sent to work at one of IV’s Pioneer Camps. I remember once boldly saying, “I would rather go on 5 GPs in a row than ever go to camp.” That changed this summer. I not only went and volunteered my time with one of IV’s summer camps, but chose to do so at the Rocky Mountain House site in Alberta at their Senior Girls Camp in July.
In addition to being a significant site for LIT, and Senior Boys and Girls camps; this camp is where MarkWEST is often hosted (a week-long scripture conference that is the Western field’s equivalent of City/Script). Many of my friends have worked and spent significant portions of their year at this camp, and I was struck by how familiar the site was based on their photos. I distinctly remember having feelings of having memories of a place at which I hadn’t spent time.
As a campus minister to University students, I was more than a little concerned that I would have difficulties working with girls aged 13-17. But, what ended up being the case was far from true! I was amazed that even in my support staff role at camp just how much time I got to interact and spend time with the campers.
My days were very full! I would start the day at 7:15 with a leaders meeting, then begin my day helping prepare and serve breakfast and lunch for the campers, then in the afternoon I would spend leading program blocks and following dinner I would help with technology needed for our evening program. In the midst of very busy days I got to have great points to connect and bond with fellow camp staff and campers.
Some of the highlights of my time at camp included:
- Reuniting with many of my friends who participated in the Global Partnership to Zambia in 2008, especially in their “home-turf” and getting to grow deeper in relationship with this common experience
- Working in the kitchen with an eclectic kitchen crew that consisted of men and women ranging from aged 14 to 77!
- Spending time with a group of welcoming, empowering, and affirming women of many generations!
I was inspired to go to camp after a conversation with my good friend Jenna, who impressed upon me the importance of the camp and campus connection, and instilled in me vision and excitement to be at camp. As an immigrant child of Asian descent, I’ve never experienced a “Canadian” sleepover camp, and so parts of camp were a little culture shocking for me, but I was struck by how many people kept checking in on me and making sure I was settling in well.
I didn’t expect to love camp as much as I did. By the second day, I already began brainstorming how I could come back next summer. I loved the staff, the campers, and the vision of camp, and really was excited to pursue further partnership between camp and campus ministry!
Summer Road Trip
6 Provinces, 2 States and 6 weeks of travel…all via Greyhound
6 weeks of this summer, I hit the road via Greyhound and travelled from Toronto to Sault Ste Marie, Winnipeg, Davidson, Elbow, Saskatoon, Vancouver, Coquitlam, Burnaby, Rocky Mountain House, Lethbridge, New York, Boston, and Ottawa; with a stop for 4 days in Toronto to move at the end of July. To say that I have had my fill of Greyhound travel would be an understatement!
As I look back on the adventures I’ve had and all the people I’ve spent time with, I am full of gratitude. In many ways, God showed me His abundant grace and redeeming love as I was homeless for 6 weeks. In His perfect timing, I was able to meet with friends, supporters and colleagues and be showered in their love and hospitality. New friendships were formed and deeper relationships developed.
I hope to add more highlight stories in upcoming posts, as I continue to marvel at the ways God spoke to me during these weeks and its continued impact even to this day.
The Arch 