Toronto Videos

Here are a couple of videos from the Toronto trip:

Rachel and Kylie enjoying 'Beat It' just a bit too much. Don't miss Sydney in the back.

The servers at Johnny Rockets dancing to 'RESPECT' by Aretha Franklin.

The glass elevator at the CN Tower. Don't watch if heights make you queasy.

Toronto Mission Trip: Final Post

I’m typing this last update from the airport in Buffalo, but I probably won’t be posting it until we are safely back at home. I wonder if anyone will read it now that we’re home. Hmmm…

Our trip ended well. Thursday evening was our free night. Everyone was ready for some good, American cooking so we ventured out to Johnny Rocket’s, a 50’s style diner – in the Times Square-esque area of Toronto. We brought our host Robin with us. The food wasn’t as good as I remember it being, but it was good to have a burger and fries after all the ethnic food we had been eating. And when ‘RESPECT’ buy Aretha Franklin played on the jukebox, all the waitresses – and Myles! – danced. Very fun!

After some Marble Slab ice cream, we dropped Robin off at the CTC station and we headed to the CN Tower, formerly the world’s tallest tower and the current holder of the highest observation deck in the world. It makes the Arch look puny. One part of the tower had a glass floor that we stood on that looked straight down over 1,100 feet in the air. I just looked up that the glass floor is only 2 ½" thick…and people were jumping on it!! Insane! When I pointed out that on one part of the observation deck there were windows that would be unlocked and pulled in to be cleaned, Sydney said that thinking about that “made her butt feel squinchy.” There was much laughing at that comment, as you can imagine. It was a very fun night that we had to blow off some steam.

Friday was our last day at ministry sites. In the morning we served at Booth Industries, a ministry of the Salvation Army. At this ministry, people with mental and developmental disabilities or illnesses are given employment to subsidize the government funds they receive. We served alongside these individuals doing such things as unpackaging and repackaging school paper, marking out bar codes on boxes of crackers, and making pallet dividers. Basically the work was really easy but it was a very inspiring thing to watch the employees find satisfaction and dignity from holding down an actual job. And we got to talk to and interact with many of them which was fun.

After lunch we had our last afternoon of tutoring. It was a bittersweet day. It was rewarding to be with our kids again, but it was sad when we were all done. I did like that we had this as an anchor site for the week because we really got to build relationships with the kids, but it just made Friday that much more difficult to say good-bye. My hope and prayer is not only that we were able to help our kids take one step forward in their education, but also that we moved them closer to meeting Jesus and following Him. I hope to run into Himanshu and Tej – David’s and my kids – again someday.

After a yummy Vietnamese dinner we had our final debrief. I think this week really made an impact in the lives of our students, as many of them expressed areas in their lives that they want to move closer to Jesus. I won’t go into details but know that they were all impacted in their own ways. My prayer for them is that this trip will be a significant mile marker in their lives of following hard after Jesus and that their lives will not be the same.

I am glad that our plans to go to Tijuana fell through because this Toronto trip was one of my top two favorite youth trips I have been on (the other being Chicago). Part of the positive feeling we all had about the trip was our host, Robin. She was outstanding and fit in well with our group. She was a lot of fun, seemed to enjoy our group, had a passion for her city and for helping the hurting, and knew what she was doing as far as her job was concerned. A host can make or break a trip, and she certainly helped make ours great!

On our way home, we had plenty of time to kill so we took in the Niagara Falls. WOW! What a site! It's amazing to see that kind of power. As we walked over a small bridge very close to the edge of the falls, I noticed how calm the river seemed. But then, just around the corner things changed as the water roared over the edge. God really knew what He was doing when He created that one!

In case you missed any pictures, you can see them on our Flickr site.

Thanks for praying for us last week! We certainly felt your prayers. Continue to pray for our students as they live out their commitments when they return home. Thanks for reading about our trip…

Toronto Mission Trip: Part 3

Today's blog entry is by guest blogger Hillary:

Quiet, lost, scared, and broke. We spent Tuesday night as homeless thirteen year olds on the streets of Toronto.  We were told a scenario plunge us into the mindset of an abused runaway. Our group was divided up amongst the CSM hosts. Each person in our group was given a toonie (Canadian two dollar coin) and a transit token to buy dinner and travel because in the story all of our money was stolen. We each had to answer five questions about eating for two dollars, sleeping arrangements, employment, entertainment, etc. This activity was similar to other mission trips. Believe me it is hard to eat for only two dollars. There are no dollar menus in Canada. I ended up eating at Mc Donald’s along with Kylie. That was probably the best cheeseburger of my life. By the end of the experience, many of us were coming to terms with the harsh options on the streets. Many in the group decided that they would turn themselves in and return to a group home. I decided that if the situation was bad enough I would give the streets a while longer. I came to the conclusion that I would probably steal a bike for transportation and entertainment. I would sleep in a park during the day and work for a drug dealer at night. It was an eye opening experience for all of us because we had to drop our morals for the night.

As we moved to Wednesday morning, things moved to a happier note. The group traveled to the St. Lawerence Market where we participated in a program called LIFE Skills. The program involved observing surroundings, praying, and finally living out our faith.  We divided into three groups and set off for our adventure. I was with Cori, Kim, and Kylie. We decided to stop in a local park. While we were there a VBS program was there playing in the fountain. The little kids were splish splashing around in the water and chasing the pigeons nonstop. By the way, pigeons in Canada are enormous. After seeing all the despair, the kids were very refreshing. We were able to pray for them and their families. We, then, moved back to the market. At the market, we held open doors for people as well as one of the other groups. Fitz’s group purchased poster board and markers. They made signs that said things like “Have a nice day” or “Jesus love you”. We got quite a few stares and some thank yous. I’d say we got people wondering.

In the afternoon, we all went to Somali Homework Club. By today, the kids were really starting to open up. At the home Sydney, Kara, and I went to, we got Disney Princess stickers. Can you say awesome? All of the kids have a deep passion for learning. They have even been able to teach us about certain things especially Canadian money.

For dinner, we went to a Somali restaurant. I believe that it is by far one of the best restaurants. Mom, my new favorite food is goat. At the restaurant, we tried watermelon juice and could only eat with our right hand. During dinner, Cori made the mistake of pouring salt in Fitz’s LeBron wound. That led to an NBA-style trade of the people in Fitz’s van. Barry wanted to trade David for me, but made the mistake of not waiting for Fitz to release me from my contract. After lots of banter, David and I switched vans and so did Myles. My reward for moving to Barry’s van was picking the radio station. We listened to hair bands all the way back to the church. Yay for Bon Jovi!

Cori says, “Hi, Mom and Dad.” 

I have a few minutes of down time before our evening activity, so I thought I would give y’all a quick update on Day Two.

We picked up David at the airport without any issues. One of our city directors, Josh, took me out there, and then dropped David and me off to join up with our group. They had done the sandwich run, handing out sack lunches to homeless people. When we got there, they were debriefing and a lady from Project 417 – a ministry to the homeless – was speaking with our group and two others. I didn't hear most of the talk because we got there late. However, she dropped a statistic that floored me: Teenagers often run away to Toronto because it’s the one big city in Canada, and within three weeks, 80% of those teen runaways are involved in prostitution. This is a huge problem in this city, obviously.

This morning we had a late start again. Thank goodness because we are wiped! This morning, we participated in Operation Hydration, where we went to a park with a high homeless concentration and handed out water bottles and struck up conversations with the homeless folk they encountered. I am so impressed by our group! When I was a teenager, if someone had asked me to do some of the things they are being asked to do, I would have said, “No thanks,” but our group does it without thinking twice about it. They have a much bigger heart for the world than I ever had at their age, and that will serve them well.

Lunch was fantastic! We ate at a Greek restaurant which was amazing! It turns out that the travel agent scenes from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ were filed right across the street. Our big meal was at lunch today because tonight we are doing our Street Walk, which puts us in the shoes of a homeless person or runaway teen, and we will be eating with only $2.00. After lunch, we did our tutoring again. I’m so glad that we have these anchor sites because it is allowing us to really build relationships with the kids we are tutoring. One of our frustrations with the Houston trip was that we did so much bouncing around that we couldn’t build any relationships with anyone. Not so here. It's refreshing!

I need to wrap up to get ready tonight. I uploaded some pics last night, but have not had the chance to do so today. Actually, there won't be many pictures from today at all since we couldn't really take pictures at either our morning or evening activities. But check out what is there already by clicking here. Have a great night!

Toronto Mission Trip: Part 1

Sorry for the delay in getting an update posted. We had a pretty hectic day one, and the Wifi at the housing site is sporadic at best, so this is the first time I’ve been able to post. There may be fewer posts than you are used to reading during our youth mission trips, and for that I apologize, but I will do my best.

Our travel to Toronto went fine. We had to leave one youth behind due to some passport troubles, but I will be heading to the airport here in a little while to pick him up. Everyone got to the church plenty early so we could be on the road by 4:30am. Once at the airport, getting through check-in and security was a breeze. After a short hour and a half wait, we were in the air headed for Buffalo, after a brief stop in Chicago. We got our vans picked up at the airport, then off we headed for the border. This section of the trip lasted longer than expected due to traffic and a back-up at the border, but still no troubles…and we did get to see Niagara Falls as we crossed the Rainbow Bridge, so that was cool.

Once we arrived, we were ushered to our sleeping quarters. We are all sleeping on mattresses on the floors, and the poor ladies are bumper-to-bumper in their room (check out the pics). They will be close friends with people they never knew before coming to Toronto, whether they want to be or not. After our orientation with our other groups (from Canada, New Jersey, and Indiana), we headed out to dinner and our prayer tour. Dinner was an Indian buffet, which was absolutely delicious! And the Church could learn a lot from how Mr. Singh – the owner – showed hospitality. He was out on the floor filling our water glasses before they got too low, and with a huge smile on his face. Then some of our group experienced paan, which is a mix of herbs and spices, wrapped in a leaf, and placed between your cheek and gums to cleanse the palate. We got some good facial expressions out of this! (Again, see the pics)

Our prayer tour was so enlightening! We would drive for a short while through various neighborhoods, then pull into a parking lot where our host, Robin, would give us some details about the area we were in and the need for prayer in that particular area, and then have three or so people pray. It’s a different world than Cape Girardeau! We drove through Regent Park, which is a low-income neighborhood which had been known for its crime and drugs, but is now being renovated. This sounds good, but it is displacing lots of families, and because of its lack of a high school, and its reputation, there is no school busing, which means many of the kids are simply not going to school. We drove through areas known for its prostitution. We drove through the gay neighborhood. We drove through neighborhoods where some people are so desperate for a high they will chew on duct tape to get it. We heard stories that were not fun to hear, including one about a homeless man who died while sleeping on a grate next to Parliament, but no one realized for three days that he was dead – they simply walked on by. These are things we simply don’t see at home, and it really broke the hearts of many of our group to know that these problems exist.

But, there is good stuff going on. We stopped to pray in the driveway of a church called Sanctuary. It is a church, right around the corner from the gay community, that accepts any and all people. As a result, many homeless make that their church home. We heard a story about the huge condo building that was built next door that offered them a huge sum of money for their property. After much consideration and prayer, they rejected the offer knowing that they didn’t want the homeless to be displaced yet again. What a gutsy, God-focused move!

We also heard about and saw a bridge that was known for its suicides. Someone committed suicide every 22 days by jumping off that bridge. This was not OK for the city of Toronto, so they built a huge barrier on the sides of the bridge which makes it virtually impossible to jump off of it. So, like I said, it’s not all about despair. There is hope!

We got to have a late start today, but that didn’t mean we were any less wiped out. Being up for 21 hours yesterday I guess will do that to you. This morning we did our ethnic plunge. We basically walked through one of Toronto’s Chinatowns – they have five of them – with a list of questions and tasks. It was an experience in learning and observation. We had a lot of fun with it! One of the things we had to do was to try something that we’d never tried before. Kylie suggested that we try the sesame cookies, which I rejected because it was wimpy. So then she, Rachel and Hillary found a bag of various crackers, that also included dried anchovies, complete with tails and eyes. We tried it. Let’s just say it’s a taste experience that I hope to never repeat. I guess the taste wasn’t all that bad, but the mental part was gag-worthy!

After lunch we got to experience the Somali tutoring program. We were broken up into groups of 2 or 3 to go into homes to help tutor children. We will be doing this all week. As it turns out, it’s not just Somali children that we are working with. In fact, none of our group was with a Somali family. We worked with families from China, the Czech Republic, Mauritius, and one other country. It was so much fun! Sydney and I were with two children from Mauritius, ages 8 and 5, who needed help with reading, so we read with them and asked them questions. As it turns out, the 5-year-old is better at reading than the 8-year-old. We are looking forward to returning. And what’s really cool is that we are able and encouraged to share our faith with them, so Himanshu and I were able to have a few short discussions about God and the Bible. It was exciting! I’m looking forward to more of the same this week!

Tonight we ate dinner at Real Jerk – yes, that’s the name of it – a Jamaican restaurant. So yummy! And while I wait for my ride to the airport, the rest of the crew is out on a sandwich run. Another group made over 120 sacks lunches today, and we will be delivering them to homeless folk and building relationships tonight. It’s going to be a cool opportunity that I am sad to miss. But I am glad that they are having it!

As I have been typing this, I have been uploading pictures. Due to our slow connection speed, I’m not sure that I will get them uploaded tonight or any time this week. If not, I will do it as soon as we get back. Sorry if you were looking forward to seeing them.

Keep praying for us. We appreciate this more than you know!

A couple of funny comments:

• ·         While eating at the Indian restaurant, discussing the various foods we were experiencing, Blake said, “Change is bad.” If that’s how he really feels, this is going to be a bad trip for him.
• ·         Last night after dinner, Myles dropped something. Barry said disapprovingly, “Myles!” He replied, “I dropped it. It’s not my fault.” Then whose is it?

OK, they’re not hilarious in print, but they were funny at the time. I hope to have another update soon…