Out on Missions trips!

Hey everyone! Both the Vancouver and Mexico team arrived safely at their destinations and are now diving right into service! So thankful to have internet for this quick update to you from Mexico, know that we are all safe and doing so well. Keep both teams in your prayers, and everything God is going to be doing in our lives and in the lives of those we love in his name!





The next blog post won't be up till we return after february 26, we will have many stories to share with you!

Until next time,

Levi

Exploring Missions - Gaining New Perspectives

Hello everyone!
As promised here is a post sharing about what our time was like at Missionsfest Vancouver and the students most recent course.

Every year we take our students to this amazing conference that has been running in Vancouver for over 30 years. It is a hotspot for discovering about every kind of mission organization from around the world, while also learning about missions from experts through in-depth sessions. We got up early thursday morning taking a ferry to the mainland and kicked off our weekend with an afternoon exploring the famous Stanley Park seawall on tandem bikes!

Ready to explore!

Who would have thought riding tandem bikes could be such a blast!

Can you believe the amazing weather! Many of the students from out east could not get over the fact we were on a beach in January on a sunny day, and we were still in Canada!

The next morning we also spent some time at Granville island before heading to the conference centre. It was great for the students to experience a little bit of the City of Vancouver as most have never been here before. Then after eating lunch we headed to the conference centre and enjoyed two full days of everything to do with Missions. For this post I asked Riley McRae to share with you all about what he thought of Missionsfest.

"Mission’s fest was full of God and full of fun.  Missionaries were everywhere giving talks about what God had taught them and about their experiences in the mission field.  There were seminars on just about everything, some were talking about their experience in the field, while others talked more about other reaching out to other religions. Many people here were very influential and they spoke to each and every one of us on personal levels. Some cut us to the core and others left us thinking about life and how we could serve God more. I personally learned and was challenged by so much, I came back with new perspectives and challenges of I my faith. I want to be able to back up my faith with facts that stand to the world and not just to me. What does this mean? This means by knowing the ‘why’ of what I believe and getting hard evidence that prove that Jesus is the Messiah, that prove that the Bible is real, that prove that God exists. It was also cool to see so many people ready to take their faith seriously and be ready to go on an adventure for God. No money? no problem, we have a God that has a plethora of money and gold ready to be disposed of for His glory. Overall missions fest was a great experience and definitely would go again."  - Riley McRae 2014 Student

Our students leading the sunday morning worship at Ruth Morton Baptist

 While in Vancouver, Ruth Morton Baptist Church graciously let us stay in their sleep in their building. It also provided an opportunity for some of our students to help in the leading worship in the sunday morning service and also the children service. 

Riley and Kelsey helping to lead worship for the youth service on sunday morning.

Sunday afternoon we headed back to camp getting ready for the weeks class called Perspectives in Missions. Steph Huisman pictured bellow in the top right is going to share with us what she thought about the course.

"Perspectives in Missions was an awesome course! Tim Stabell’s teaching style was laid-back and easy to listen to. All the information was really applicable since we’re leaving for our mission trips in a few days. After this course I feel better prepared to go to Mexico and enter another culture. On the last day, we talked about discerning God’s calling on your life which was very applicable for all the students as we’re trying to figure out what to do next year. We also talked about spiritual warfare which was really interesting. It’s not a topic that gets talked about a lot in church settings. I realized that I didn’t know much about spiritual warfare so being able to talk about it and ask questions in an open environment was a really cool opportunity." - Steph Huisman 2014 Student

So there we have it, learning about Missions has been an absolute blast! It was great experiencing Vancouver as a community and everyone left that weekend having learned something in one of the sessions. The following week of class with Tim Stabell was also greatly appreciated by everyone as our Missions trips are coming up in less than a week! As the students finish up final assignments for the Missions course we are putting together the final details of our trips. There won't be another full blog post till the end of the month as both Vancouver and Mexico teams will be engaged fully in missions. Please keep us in your prayers and we can't wait to share stories from our time serving. 

Until Next Time,

Levi VanderKwaak