I could go on for a long time trying to describe in detail what has gone on in our Missions trips, but I feel like that might be too long of a read for one post. I've gotten two students to write something so we will hopefully have individual posts from each team by the end of this week!
Colin has been good enough to write this brief description story from the Mexico team:
"In a mid-February Vancouver Island winter, 14 of us Qwanoes students travelled all the way down to El Papalote Mexico for a missions trip. We were so blessed as a group down by the people of El Papalote. God provided the opportunity for us to to do many tasks through out the community. This included: emptying loads and loads of sand to raise the elevation of parking lot in a church to prevent it being flooded, doing road repairs to create a slightly less bumpy ride coming off the highway, along with pouring a foundation and inserting plumbing systems for apartments for future missions teams to accommodate.
But as we had the opportunity to bless the community, they sure did not hesitate at a chance to bless us. When we first arrived, the pastor called us all up and had the entire church pray for us. The women of the church had also volunteered their evenings to prepare wonderful and authentic Mexican dinners for us all. But the biggest blessing of all was how the church gave us a fantastic example of what it means to live in a church community. The members were never hesitant to help one another out and truly cared dearly for one another, and even us."
- Colin Mol
Thanks Colin!
I was lucky enough to lead the Vancouver team to both New Beginnings Baptist Church and Potter's Place Mission. We were lucky enough to get to serve in both of these amazing places. New Beginnings Baptist Church allowed us the opportunity to serve an inner city church that catered to a number of families. We were able to take a number of work projects on around the church, help out in a number of kids and youth programs, and participate in helping some very hurting people in some very practical ways.
At Potter's Place Mission we were challenged in different ways. While New Beginnings allowed us to minister in a church setting to low income families, Potter's Place allowed us to spend some time on East Hastings, widely known as one of the most dangerous areas in Canada. Here we were able to a number of people on the street and it was amazing that after a week they started to feel like our friends and we looked forward to seeing them day after day. A number of us led worship, preached or gave our testimony here, which was amazingly challenging but also really rewarding.
One of my biggest highlights from the trip came from one day when we were handing out sandwiches in "Pigeon Park", once known as the most dangerous corner in Vancouver. We were chatting with a number of the "regulars' there and offering them a sandwich when we started to realize that people recognized us from Potter's Place and actually were approaching us to tell us how their days were going! I think one of the most powerful things was that we realized that the people we were ministering to actually became our friends. It was amazing to make friends with some that we might see as down and out. The drugs were prevalent in the area but it was amazing to see God's redeeming nature bringing them to Himself. It was also quite affecting to see a group of people who needed God and when we asked how we could pray for them, they simply said "Pray that I live through the week"
Once again thank you all for your support! God did some really amazing things on the trips and we look forward to being able to share everything (more stories) in a longer post! For those of you who supported us either prayerfully or financially, we are so extremely grateful because this ministry opportunity has had some resounding effects in our lives!
Thanks again everyone!
Derek
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