The unexpected joys
I originally meant to write a post where I counted the costs of this year, and to be fair there’s been a lot:
– My heart has been significantly broken by students choosing fear instead of faith; anger instead of love; apathy instead of care; earthly comfort instead of heavenly riches
– I’ve taken a lot of risks that haven’t yielded good rewards
– I’ve seen ministry visions begin to be fulfilled last year and then come crashing down this year
But, as I sat huddled in RA’s dorm room with my other student leaders : Patchy, Pink, Swift, AP (obviously not their real names), I was filled with love as they sat in some hard scripture teaching, and called out sinful patterns in their own lives and in our community. I had hope as the Spirit led and convicted them, and I’m really hopeful for how we’ll pursue community and ministry going forward.
I’m grateful that we have an office on campus. And we are recommitting to using it. I’m grateful that we have an “in” at residence and we can reach an unreached group of people. I’m grateful that grad students like AP are making sacrificial time commitments that lead them to witness and bring glory to God to other grad students and faculty.
I’m grateful for this ministry, and yet I long for more: more students reached, more lives transformed and more new commitments to Christ.
But things are growing, and I have hope.
In the Works
As the semester winds to a close, and I spend time with my team debriefing and reflecting on ministry this fall, my mind begins to dream and vision for 2014: the ministry on campus, the invitations to be part of some conversations that will shape some aspects of the larger organization, and the continued visioning and planning for the 2014 Bangladesh GUP. Here are some things that are “in the works”:
Kingdom Calling
Before the year closes, I have been invited to be staff at InterVarsity’s annual winter conference, called Kingdom Calling from December 27-31. It’s a conference designed for third and fourth year students who are asking and discerning what’s next as they pursue what God may be inviting them to do after they finish university. As a student, this conference and its predecessor are a huge reason why I decided to intern and then later come on staff with InterVarsity. It’s one of my favorite conferences run by InterVarsity, and even in the years when I haven’t been staff for this conference, I’ve been excited to volunteer my time and host people in Toronto. This year, I’m excited to journey alongside some of my students (many of whom I’ve been in relationship with for years) as they encounter what God will say to them during this conference as a small group leader. Please be praying for them as they prepare themselves for this conference, and as they are present. Also, please pray that they would be open and willing to trust the community that gathers at this conference (some of my best friends in the organization are people I’ve met through this conference, and I’ve found there to be something providential in gathering with peers asking the same questions as they often become to community that go with you when you say yes). In addition to being a small group leader, I am also serving as the Hospitality Coordinator, which basically means I’m responsible for helping welcome and orient people to Toronto, as well as, come up with some fun mid-week city exploration activities.
2014 Bangladesh GUP
I am excited to be directing this year’s GUP. I, in no way feel 100% ready to take on this task, but as my “mental tape” (the loving term a former housemate gave for my memory) rewinds, I remember that those who went before me also were not 100% ready to take on this task. But, as God has been leading and guiding me in the process, I am grateful as things fall smoothly into place, and I manage to meet most deadlines in time. I am excited for the fellowships partnering this year, and I am really excited about my staff team. And as more pieces come together I am eager to see those who follow the promptings of the Spirit to go. Please keep me in prayer as I take some time this month to vision and plan for the upcoming months, and pray for the invitations that will go out to students and for them as they process with Jesus and loved ones if this is the right invitation to accept.
Summertime reflections
The next couple posts will detail some of the exciting stories from the fall, but before I get there, here are a few of my Summertime reflections:
After a semester full of new vision and ministry; and a rapidly growing community; I spent the summer resting, planning for the upcoming year and embarking on adventures!
I started the summer a little hectically, as I quickly bid farewell to the interns, and packed up my room to make space for the Toronto Urban Partnership to inhabit our house during the month of May. While my house was occupied in May, I was in Bangladesh with 3 Ryerson students and 11 other students from Queens, McMaster, Western, Waterloo and Ottawa University. I had a blast with this fun group of students and an amazing staff team, and though Bangladesh wasn’t quite what I thought it would be, it definitely left an impression on me, and I came back changed!
After Bangladesh, I hit the road on the Greyhound and spent 6 days in rural Pennsylvania setting up and standing in my best friend’s wedding! It was a hoot, and I learned a whole new set of life skills, as I encountered “roughing it” in ways that were vastly different than my “roughing it” experiences in Bangladesh! After the wedding, I hopped on the bus and went down to Florida to visit with Sasha before she headed out to Kolkata on a Global Urban Trek. I remained in Orlando for a few days and rested and met up with friends; then headed to North Carolina for the Wild Goose Festival! An experience like no other, I enjoyed the time there and found rest in God despite the lack of many of my usual comforts. After the Wild Goose festival, I headed to Washington for a few days, and caught up with my good friend Crystel and was cared for well by her and her family. After being on the road for 3 weeks, it was nice to have South Asian parents take care of me. After Washington, I slowly made my way back to Toronto, to embark on the next new thing.
The next new thing being my household being filled with new housemates, we welcome Dan and Joy in at the end of July (Sara moved in while I was in Bangladesh). The rest of July was spent sorting out new household rhythms and planning for the new year of ministry with my new staff team and my new exec leaders. The new exec consisted of 4 women that I had invested in over the past year, Lauren, Bethany, Amber and Sandra; I was excited to see how they would work together and the vision they brought to ministry on campus! We met as an exec team a number of times over the months of July and August; first at Dan’s parent’s cottage and later at our house. There were a lot of great ideas and new vision for the ministries we would pursue this year.
All of the GTA campuses made a commitment to have the Gospel of Luke be the main teaching text for the year, so there would be an excitement building as students prepared for Urbana (where Luke would be taught) as well as so there would be consistency as we did GTA wide ministry and conferences. The exec students were excited about this possibility, and coming out of bible study of Luke, we wanted to model how we engaged people and relationships after Jesus’ interactions as well as pursue issues of justice as an expression of our faith and from these desires we shaped ministry for the upcoming year.
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!
Vision for the Year: Join the Party
“…we have put on events that are fun and accessible to people wherever they are in their faith journey”
Our vision for the year was inspired by a talk given at #conferencewin. My students were struck by the words and imagery that our campuses are filled with people that are alive but spiritually dead. As they thought of their friends and classmates, they felt compelled to be more missional.
During our time visioning in June, we took account of the people who were not in the room, and accounted for ways we have not welcomed people well and brainstormed ways to be more invitational to these groups of people. As we reflected on this brainstorming at #conferencewin, we realized we wanted to be known as a fellowship that has joy and is invitational. One that is bold in their faith, and spends time studying and applying God’s Word, but also gathers people together and has great fellowship. We don’t aim to downplay the costliness of following Jesus, and put forth a misaligned understanding of the gospel; but we noticed our previous trend was to over-emphasize the costliness and suffering for the gospel and downplay the joy of life as God’s people in His Kingdom.
As part of this vision, we have put on events that are fun and accessible to people wherever they are in their faith journey. Our aim is that these events will help people gradually gain awareness of our fellowship and eventually help bridge them to some of our other weekly ministries.
We advertise for these events by making buttons with a logo we created at #conferencewin. We have used this logo on all our posters and flyers for events. We are now seeing people recognize our logo and that our fellowship has more campus-wide recognition than in previous years!
#conferencewin
The anticipation was heavy in the air. The wait seemed endless. As they watched the countdown before the light turned green, they readied themselves for the big moment. Finally, the light turned green…
Imagine this: A group of 140 people consisting of staff and students from across Ontario, assembled in chevron formations at opposite corners of the Spadina and Bloor intersection on a Friday evening in late August, who once signalled, burst into a hokey-pokey flash mob and stop and disperse when the streetlight turns red.
This is how we kicked off #conferencewin. What is #conferencewin? It is a conference that serves to teach and practice innovation and creativity in our New Student Outreach to staff and students of Inter-Varsity fellowships across Ontario.
In addition to the hokey-pokey flash mob, students participated in a poetry slam and received teaching on innovation and outreach and had time to brainstorm new ideas for an outreach event to kick off the year. They also had the opportunity to present their ideas to the group gathered and a select few were able to then present their ideas and ask for funding from a special grouping of guests in our version of “Dragon’s Den”.
All of my student leaders were able to attend, and from their time at #conferencewin they came up with their vision of the year: Join the [King’s] Party; and also planned our first outreach event “Prom Gone Wrong”.
As we finish up this semester, we are still able to see the fruits from some of these events and their impact on our movement across Ontario.
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 Visioning with students
“What followed was an explosion of creative ministry ideas…”
Following City/Script, my student leaders were excited to be begin visioning for the upcoming school year and explore creative ministries ideas.
During the last weekend of June, we debriefed the year and began to prayerfully make plans for the upcoming year. We studied the building of the tabernacle passage of Exodus 35, and asked God to show us how and where to use the gifts He had given us.
What followed was an explosion of creative ministry ideas, as we discovered using our passions as a way to engage in ministry.
- Jenna: running ministry, to offer a place to worship God while honouring and taking care of the bodies He has blessed us with!
- Elizabeth: movie ministry, to offer a place to use popular culture as a way to engage non-Christian friends in spiritual discussions!
- Bethany: Worship, to lead and serve the community in a ministry that has needed new vision and life for the past years!
- Lauren: Cooking Classes, to serve as places where her friends from her program could meet her friends from her faith community and discuss spiritual things while cooking!
God convicted us of the places where He wanted us to be more invitational to the people He was calling on campus. So we set forth to study a gospel to get people in Scripture and interacting and discovering the fullness of Jesus; and what His life and ministry mean and model for us. We chose to spend time this fall studying the Gospel of John in a manuscript study on Thursday evenings.
We also realized that as we engage in a lot of new forms of ministry, that we really needed to set aside time to pray with God, and see what He is inviting us into on campus.
As we took account for the ways our fellowship had not pursued students in the past, we began to brainstorm ways to reach new students. One of the ideas we had for orientation week and the first week of school was to provide a map for students of the campus and the surrounding areas, noting the places to eat, make copies and buy supplies and find entertainment. We would also point out on the map where our fellowship gathers and offer the map to students free of charge.
Kingdom Calling
“The FUTURE of our movement is in this room…”
December 27-31, 2010 was the first ever Kingdom Calling Conference in Toronto. Formerly, the National Student Leadership Conference, Kingdom Calling focused on students in their third and fourth year of University, who are asking questions of how to live their lives for the Kingdom once they graduate. The conference featured key speakers from Servant Partners, Inter-Varsity, China Partners, Ratanak and a few other mission organizations. Throughout the week speakers would give talks, lead studies and share their testimonies about how they received and responded to God’s call on their life.
The conference had a minimal number of staff in attendance, as there was a desire to allow space for students to connect with one another and to hold each other accountable and minister to one another as they were in similar positions and facing similar decisions. In the past, this has been strategic, as these students will often stay in touch with one another and spur each other on to say yes to the various invitations they have received. I can assuredly say that one of the reasons that I am and remain on staff with Inter-Varsity is because of the friendships I’ve made and the conversations I’ve had with people I’ve met at this conference.
Since, the conference was taking place in Toronto; the Greater Toronto Area staff team was invited to host the students and staff in attendance of the conference by offering activities and tours of the city on one day of the conference. I lead a group of students on a tour of Kensington Market. The students were excited to visit and experience the market, and had a great time in the cafes and boutiques. I was really excited about leading this tour, as I love showing people my favourite parts of Toronto, and Kensington Market is in my top ten! I also had a delightful time with the students who signed up for my tour. I only knew one personally, as we’d met a few years ago at a city/script. But I knew a few others by association as they were students of staff with whom I was good friends. As I engaged the students in my group in conversation, I was excited about the various invitations they were considering; some were considering doing an internship with Inter-Varsity, while others were considering taking part in a global or urban partnership this summer. As they wrestled with their invitations they were excited to ask me questions as I’d taken part in both the internship and a global partnership in the past. It was also such a blessing to watch as they ministered and debriefed with each other about what they were thinking. I almost didn’t come to lead a tour, as I was exhausted after the holidays and needed to complete some assignments for a course I was enrolled in at Regent College. But, I willingly chose to sacrifice the time to invest in these students; as it was exciting for me to have conversations and debrief with students who weren’t my own but were students of my friends who were staff; I considered it an honour to have them share with me what they were thinking and to be able to offer follow up advice to my staff friends. I also saw this as an opportunity to invest in the future staff interns, as they could very well become partners in ministry in the near future.
Ironically, during my time and conversations with students, each one asked me the question that was actually the topic of one of the papers I had to write, “Why did you say yes to coming on staff?” So by spending time away from my paper, I was actually able to return to it with a much better sense of how I wanted to answer that question. I love when God surprises me and meets my needs in places I don’t consider!
As a thank you for hosting students, I was invited to attend one day of the conference. I chose to go the following day, and what a day it was! It was the last full day of the conference, and it was packed with testimonies, bible studies and lots of exciting conversations. I continued conversations started with students I met the previous day, and had some other conversations with students that were attending campuses in the GTA. During an early morning break, I stood on the perimeter of the room and observed the students, staff interns and staff interacting. I observed to my friend Jenn, who is staff at Laurier, and actually one of my many “conference friends”, that we were standing in the presence of the future of Inter-Varsity’s movement on campuses, camps and around the world! It was such an honour and a blessing to be in the room and have conversations with these students at such a crucial juncture in their lives!
Another highlight from my visit at the Conference was spending time with Ashley (who I’ve mentioned in a earlier post). It was encouraging and exciting to catch up and hear about the things she’s been reading and engaging around her ethnic identity since our last conversation. I was able to bring along a book that had spoken deeply to me to show her, and offer her hope through sharing stories of my journey. I also had the opportunity to join her table group for the bible studies that afternoon, and it was such a blessing to watch her lead. I am excited for what the future holds for Ashley as she continues with Inter-Varsity!
By the end of the day, I was so excited by the things I had been able to witness and experience, I was surprised to discover I’d been there for over 12 hours, and spent most of that actively speaking or listening! In the days and weeks that followed, I heard many great stories of how the students who attended the Conference were responding to the invitations they’d received and continue to be excited for what the future holds for them!
The Arch 