Monday, April 14, 2008

Cornered

Greetings to you. So, I spent the day yesterday at John and Annette's place with my family. We shared a lunch together and talked about different things, and, oh, yeah, we finalized the plans for our April 22nd reflection evening. I showed a funny little slide presentation that will be shown to those who attend the evening. It was VERY well received, so I hope you will enjoy it as well if you show up. Remember, humour is in the eye of the beholder. : ) We also saw John's more serious slide show, and it was VERY well done too. So, we are good to go. Speaking of Peru and Mission Trips, etc, I was cornered yesterday after church by a guest who is related to someone in our church. He wanted to know if any of the mission trip participants from our last time to Peru had gotten involved in anything mission wise in our city of Ottawa. He challenged me on this fact and also wanted to know what I was going to be doing with the group that just went to Peru. You know, he had a point, in some ways. I'm a firm believer, as you well know, that mission trips should be "learning opportunities" and not just one time events. They should be building blocks to our faith and cause us pause in our lives in order to see how we can grow further in our every day goings on. This is the ideal. I confess that this is also not always the reality. Especially if you take young people on a mission trip experience. I firmly believe these events are investments in people's lives, because you don't see immediate pay off all the time. With Young People that is often times the case, but not always. I know of a young person who ended up volunteering with CRWRC for 6 months after he did a mission trip last year. More often than not, young people are very busy, and their lives are taken up with school, work, preparing for college, etc. and the stuff of missions gets pushed to the back of their lives. That is not to say that missions is NOT on their minds. The challenge, I find, is to make missions come to their minds and become part of their every day life NOW. If it happens early, it will stick better later. The problem is that often times we don't' make the conscious effort to make some changes in our lives. It's not easy to do, but it is possible. For the record, our youth group does much more service related activities during the year. Little things that they wouldn't have been willing to do before. However, I must confess that there wasn't as much "traction" for the group the last time. This time, I'm hoping things may be a bit different. Partly because about 1/2 of the group was adult age, and several of the YP were with their parents. I think the adults in the group are ready to see what changes could occur in their lives now that they are back. I've certainly put a process in place to allow for that to happen. I'm reminded again of the saying that, "You can lead someone to water, but you can't make him/her drink from it." I hope to lead the members to some water, and I hope they will begin to drink from it. We'll have to see. I'm glad that person held me and the group accountable though. I'd rather have that, than no interest at all. At least this person was serious about moving himself and others forward in matters of faith and life. Finally, speaking of faith and life, I saw the movie "Kite Runner" the other night with my youth group. A VERY good movie. Lots to think about as a Christian. Lots to be thankful for as I reflect on Canadian culture and on other cultures where different ethnic groups co-exist. As I pondered things, I was reminded of a news interview a bit ago where the person mentioned that Canada is a model for other countries of a place that makes ethnic diversity work. It's not perfect, but it's not causing civil war, ethnic cleansing, or degrading racism that destroys a culture. We live in relative harmony. That is something to celebrate, even as we often lament the issues of our own culture, and we do have issues if we are honest with ourselves. Further to that, as a Christian, I know we often find ourselves wondering about how "tolerant" we can be as a country, and in that tolerance is alot of intolerance, but as I watched that movie, I was also acutely aware that our religious freedom is still a gift from God and something to be continually prayed for and cherished. It may not always be this way in Canada. Simply writing a blog entry like this may not be possible some day in the future. These thoughts may not be something new under the sun, but something to think about for sure as I (you) go about my (our) daily tasks and working on improving our relationship with our Lord. Have a GREAT day all.

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