Let The Summer Begin!

My sincerest apologies to all my loyal blog followers...

As you can tell, internet availability over the past couple of weeks has been very limited. This was because of Summer Training Institute, the 2 week training period for over 40 young people who will serve as summer missionaries this year all over the province of Ontario.

Summer Training this year was a battle with the weather. Our first week was extremely cold and even wearing two sweaters the one day I still felt cold. The next week brought a lot of heat and humidity! But the summer missionaries pushed through it all without complaint, studying their lessons and memorizing the many skits that are a part of this year’s 5 day club.

A first at Summer Training Institute this year was bringing the inner-city LiT girls to come and check out what training and summer ministry is all about. Some of them had already expressed an interest in coming out with CEF for the summer sometime soon, so we figured that more exposure to it could really make that dream a reality for them. The girls were overwhelmed at first by the amount of studying and work that the summer missionaries do, but by the end of the day all of them expressed an interest in coming themselves one day. Two of the girls will be old enough next year, so please pray for them as they are really interested in becoming summer missionaries next summer and are already planning on applying.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for our staff and students during Summer Training Institute. Despite our summer director being very ill and unable to do much at camp this year, things went very smoothly and we all appreciate your prayers and support so much.

Now the teams are out in the field!! So here I am back in the city of Toronto once again... and busier than ever! Currently I am supervising 3 teams of youth (7 summer missionaries in total) and we have been working at Calvary Church, as well as in Thorncliffe Park. Our youth are in charge of the Bible teaching in the morning at the church and then the entire program minus the games in the afternoon at Thorncliffe. The team includes my brother Joshua and his partner Ian, another guys team with Alex, Daniel & Sam, and a girls team made up of Stephanie and Andrea. Next week we will add one more guys team into the mix as well.

Thorncliffe Park is one of the largest Muslim communities in North America with about 95% of the population being Muslim. The school we teach at is the largest elementary school in North America with over 2000 students. So obviously there are MANY kids in the area!

Our first day at Thorncliffe hit a bit of a bump when we realized that the wrong date was on the flyers and only 3 kids stayed for the entire club. We already were aware from the experience there last year that many parents would pull their kids out during the Bible teaching portion of the program, but with the lack of kids it seemed to be a discouragement to the team. They held it together though, even when it seemed like they were only teaching the 15 youth volunteering from Georgia. Day 2 was much better once the club was promoted more in the community and well over 25 kids attended. Today, which was the third day of club, brought closer to 40 children to the club. Word of mouth is the way that the club grows each day so we are expecting closer to 80 kids by the end of the week.

Please pray for unity between our CEF team and our volunteers as they work with the kids this week, especially at the Thorncliffe location. Also pray for strength for the teams because they are still very tired from the heat and humidity as well as the stress of the first week in the field.

Hopefully it won’t be too long until the next update!

♥ Ash