About two weeks ago InVision left of a plane for Canada and now we are about to head back to the states. We have spent the majority of the last two weeks in a town called Milton. Milton is located in the providence of Ontario about 45 minutes outside of the city of Toronto. It has a population of about 70,000 people and is growing rapidly with about 8 families moving in daily. It is is a very diverse and ever-changing mission-field. We helped out a church called the Sanctuary Church. They met in a sports center...awesome! We have had a lot of pretty cool experiences here.
Upon arriving in Canada it took us a while to actually meet a Canadian. First, we met the pastor of the Sanctuary Church who was from North Carolina. Then we met a IMB missionary...also from North Carolina. Next, we met a church group who was also doing mission work in Milton...still from North Carolina. So for the fist two hours we were in Canada we met only people from North Carolina. Ironic...definitely. Finally we met the daughter of the host family Mike and I stayed with who was in fact actually from Canada.
Each time we go somewhere different we have a completely different experience. Canada was no exception. During our two weeks in Canada we have done a variety of things and have done things in different ways. Canada, on the surface, seems very similar to the States...if you only glance at it. However, once you look beneath the surface, even just barely, you see the Canada so very different. There are so many different cultures, so many different types of people, so many situations jammed into one place. As is was put at one point by the Associate Pastor of the church, The world is coming to Milton. and this statement is very true. I have never seen a place that has so many people being constantly injected into the population. The neighborhoods here are just house upon houses, upon town-houses crammed in the the smallest amount of space possible. This makes Milton a very unique mission field and these are the people the Sanctuary Church is trying to reach.
During the past two weeks the team spent a lot of time doing park ministry. Milton is dotted with small parks. in these parks we would spend our time doing free face-painting, sidewalk chalk, and music. It is amazing how many connections you can make through as simple an act as face painting. Kids absolutely love it and when the kids or their parents ask who we are and why we are doing this we get to share that we are a creative ministries team from North Carolina that is helping out a local church called the Sanctuary. Sometimes this lead to more conversation and sometimes it did not. Even though I know we were no longer in the Bible Belt any longer I was amazed sometimes at the complete lack of faith. During one of our park ministries Amanda was talking to a young boy and when she was telling him why we were here she said that we loved Jesus. At this the boy said, " Aw, come on...people up here say that Jesus does not exist." Amanda replied, "well I believe he exists." To this the boy said, "Well, I don't...well maybe just a little...but not much." This simple exchanged is not something you hear every day from a kid mouth in the states. We were encouraged to share with people out own personal experiences in our faith. The people in Canada are pretty open minded, they do not argue with personal experiences. There is a large and growing Muslim population in Milton that the IMB missionary is targeting in their ministry. Park ministry was a lot of fun and lead to a lot of cool experiences with kid and adults alike.
Another big part of what we did with park ministry is block parties. We had two bock parties, one on each Thursday that we were there. the first one we did in conjunction with the church group from North Carolina. There was about 30 or 40 of them so needless to say it was a big affair. We had face painting, crafts, games, drama, music, and puppets. There were a lot of people from a variety of cultures. There was a lot of good conversation going on and it was a pretty cool experience. The second block party was on a much smaller scale since it was put on by just the five of us and some people from the church. It was also really cool. during the first half how we were afraid that no one was going to come but eventually people showed up and it go busy. At this block party we had free food, games, face-painting, and music. This block party was neat experience because we got the see the Church come together and do something with us and there were some pretty awesome conversations here too.
Another cool thing we did was the farmers market. Basically the entire downtown main street was turned in to a big market with people sell anything form fresh produce to handmade crafts. The church had a booth and here we did free face-painting yet again and also gave out balloons. In addition to these things the team did dome live music and interpretive movement. T was awesome to do these things in the middle of a crowd of people. We had a lot of fun. One of the coolest things was that we had three families that we met at the farmers market come to the church the next Sunday.
While here we also visited Niagara Falls and Toronto. Both of which were awesome experiences. It is hard to explain the wonder of being in a boat at the base of the falls. God is awesome!
We have seen God work in awesome ways these past to weeks. We had an awesome worship service Sunday morning. He has cleared up the weather for every event we had even when it was supposed to poor. He has brought people to us. He gave us some amazing people to work with and he has just blessed us with an awesome two weeks. In the week leading up the the second block party we prayer walked the area everyday. It was awesome to see the results of our prayers.
The people we worked with in Milton were amazing. Our two host families were fantastic and we are going to miss them. We have had such a great experience here. Every morning we jammed out with them and had devotions. Awesome! I have had such a great experience and leaving is definitely bittersweet.
As our summer is coming to a close we ask you to continue to pray for us as a team and for our worship ministry. We have one more week which is at camp Caswell. I also ask you to pray for the Sanctuary church and their ministry in Milton and the relationships they are trying to build. Pray for the children and their families here. Pray for the young boy I mentioned earlier. Pray for two guys that we met while here that need God. I just want to thank you for all your prayers a support this summer. Canada was great and I am glad to have had this experience.
-Andrew
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