Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you so much for your prayers and support during our recent mission trip to Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. While there we stayed and worked at the Word of Life Institute. It offers a one-year intensive Bible school program for students who are usually right out of high school. Besides being immersed in learning the Bible, these students also get a lot of hands-on ministry training by leading camps throughout the school year and summer for children and youth from the surrounding communities. Our CCS students joined with the Word of Life students for meals, Bible studies and games. As one of our students said, the Word of Life Institute “is a great place with wonderful staff and students who love God and who are willing to share Him with others.”
Our mission team was blessed to be a small part of their ministry this year by helping their maintenance staff to make improvements on their campus. Their site is an old horse farm, and our team spent a couple of days cleaning out and organizing storage areas in their barn and riding arena. One of our major projects was to carry about a thousand Styrofoam concrete formers from the barn to a corner of the riding arena. Several of our guys put up door frames and doors onto what had been granaries in the barn to make closed storage areas. They also put a new floor in the loft of the barn and reinforced some of the support beams. In addition, part of our team took flyers to advertise the Word of Life camps in nearby towns.
We spent the third day of our trip at Timothy Christian School in Owen Sound. While there we presented a chapel program for their students and then painted several walls, stairways and the stage area in their gym. A few of our students also ran the wiring for internet connections throughout the school. At the end of the day, our students enjoyed joining with theirs for dodge ball games in phys. ed. classes.
Our team spent two evenings assisting with the ministry at a church not far from the Bible Institute. The first evening our team got to participate in the Awana program with the elementary-aged children. As one of our students wrote, “Our main role in being there was to be encouragers. We split into groups so that we could get to know and encourage the kids while they played games and recited their memory verses for the week.” Our team ended the evening with a song and the Prodigal Son sketch from our school’s spring musical production.
We spent our second evening at the church with the youth group. We opened the service with a different presentation of the Prodigal Son. Several of our students read the story from Scriptures while Jaclyn, one of our Korean students, drew her impression of the story on a whiteboard. She drew a beautiful rendition of the father when he forgave the son and put a new robe on him. Her drawing helped many of us to understand the love of God in a new way. Afterward, we got to join the youth group with their regular program of games and Bible learning.
While most of our team was sharing with the youth group, a few of our students and a parent went to a local teen drop-in center where Word of Life students and staff are part of the ministry. After the Bible study time, our students had the opportunity to get to know and share their faith with several of the teens there. One of our students wrote, “We had an amazing chance to engage in a conversation with a girl who didn’t really believe in anything. We were able to plant a seed in her life, and I pray that seed grows.” Another teen there prayed to accept Christ. Please pray with us for the teens that our team got to share with, both from the drop-in center and the church.
Besides the various work experiences that we had, we also enjoyed seeing some of the sights. We viewed Niagara Falls on both the American and Canadian sides and visited Inglis Falls, the site of an old mill that was near Owen Sound. In addition, we walked along a shore of the Georgian Bay, which is a part of Lake Huron. We were amazed to find it still partially covered in large chunks of ice. We also got to do a little shopping at the Blue Mountain Resort, which is located in mountains right along the Georgian Bay.
Overall this trip was a great experience for everyone on our team. Many of our students said that they can’t wait to go on their next mission trip. Several expressed things that they learned from the trip saying, “I didn’t feel that I was helping because I was having fun as well the whole time. That’s one of the things that I learned from this mission trip. Another thing I learned is that we shouldn’t forget to be humble. Even when we are helping others, it’s for us as well as the people whom we are helping.”
Thank you again for your investment into the lives of CCS students, parents and staff who were a part of this trip. Please pray with us for our Canadian brothers and sisters in Christ and for the children and teens with whom they minister. May God bless you!
Sincerely,
The CCHS Mission Team