The beginning of July marked the half way point of our CREATE mission trip here in Guelph. Some of the highlights from the first half of the trip have been:
Starting each day together with morning prayer.
Going camping together (pictured beside).
Doing a one day spiritual retreat together.
Watching the students grow in their skills as they work with our creative communications teams.
The evangelism component of our mission trip has been testing different ad campaigns on facebook and instagram using articles that speak to the felt needs of students (This is a campaign we did on anxiety). At the end of each article students are given the opportunity to connect with an online mentor. I've been chatting with a girl, Vikie, who responded to an article we advertised on loneliness. I'm still trying to discern where she's at spiritually and how to help her in her journey to Jesus.
In August we plan to repeat some of our most successful strategies. We're praying that right before the beginning of a new school year would be a strategic time to connect with students online. Also, we hope that some of these students would eventually get connected face to face with our campus ministries.
During our "work time" on the mission trip I've continued to create small group workbooks with my team. Last week we got to do a tour at our printing company (Ampersand) in Guelph. We got to see our workbooks in production! Below are some pictures from our tour.
Transition Ahead:
I've always said that one of my favourite things about my job is getting to lead mission trips. Back in April I was asked if I would consider joining our Global Missions team as the new global missions manager. Mid May I accepted this position and I'll start on September 5th. In this new role I will be helping to lead the global missions team which overseas all of our summer mission trips and international partnerships.
This is a new role for the global missions team and it's a different focus from the small group resource development I'm doing now. I'm looking forward to this new leadership challenge but I'm also sad to leave my current team especially as we just hit the half way point of all the workbooks we set out to create. Pray for me as I wrap up one role and prepare for something new. There's lots to do!
