M o n t r e a l 2 0 0 6

Recap of the week!

The last week has been a blur of events….

Firstly, I found a place to volunteer my time!! Big giant praise for God for the opportunity! It’s been a long stretch of patience and perseverance, but trusting that God is faithful. I’m volunteering at a place called the Social Justice Committee of Montreal, and it’s a mostly a human rights advocacy organization. It’s pretty small but I like the environment a lot. Except for two staff, everyone working there are volunteers like me, so they are really there because they want to be! And they’re mostly students or at recently graduated… anyways around my age, so it’s a fun place to be. I’ll be working there Tuesdays to Fridays. Mondays I’m volunteering at a drop-in refugee/homeless centre near where I live. I went for the first time this week to the centre... it wasn’t really what I had originally had in mind, but it was good... just chatted with/listened to the people who came in for soup. It also turns out to be an open, “easy” opportunity to talk about God and share the gospel.

Backtracking to Saturday, we went to the campuses in the area again. I went to McGill, and Steph and I had a chance to talk with a couple girls. In particular we had a really awesome conversation with a girl named Christina. After talking about a couple “spiritual interest” questions like, “If you could ask God any question, what would it be?” I asked her what she thought Jesus’ message was during his time on earth, she said “I really don’t know… would you like to enlighten me?” It was so clear that God had been working in Christina’s heart for a long time. She even said “It’s funny you guys are talking to me about this today, because its something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last 6 years or so!”

She really understood how our sins and our falling short of God’s perfectness separates us from God and that’s why we can’t know Him personally or have relationship with Him. But she also had a lot of doubts, like whether Jesus existed, or if someone just made up the stories later, especially about Jesus coming back to life. But when we shared with her in the Bible how the Old Testament foretold the events that would happen, and they actually did when Jesus came, and that books in the Bible were written by Jesus’ disciples themselves or at least at the time when witnesses could testify to its accuracy, and read verses from the Bible like “Christ died for our sins…. He was buried… He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures… He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred…” 1 Corinthians 15:3-6… A few times, Christina would just say “Huh...I didn’t know that… that’s… pretty… convincing.” We talked for a long time with her too, and she had lots of questions about our life as a Christian so we had a chance to share with her the ways that God has changed and continues to change and give meaning to our own life as we live out what we were created for, to know God.

I think the coolest thing was that as Christina thought about Jesus, she said “It’s kinda like the whole world was going bad… and then Jesus was like the reset button to start over!” I thought that was so cool how she just thought of that! And that’s exactly it!! We left off bringing the point home that although Jesus was like a reset button, it’s only true for our own lives as we choose it. She really thought about the things we talked about, and said she’d really be continuing to think about them. Praise God for that!! And do pray with us for Christina that God would really give her a full understanding of these truths, and that they would sink deep into her heart, and also for the courage to accept Jesus when her heart becomes willing. She’s also dating a Jewish guy who she really loves, and said that the religion issue has already come up as a bit of a conflict zone with the potential in-laws. Pray that this would be a time where both her and her boyfriend will seek and find God in their spiritual journey. And pray also that we’ll have the chance to get together again, have coffee or dinner or something so that we can continue to encourage Christina, to talk about questions that she might have, or just to be a support to her.

Sunday… I went to a church and it was their annual “Parade of the Nation” where they had one person from the church from each different country carry a flag for their “parade” down the centre aisle of the church as they announced the country. There were over SEVENTY different nations from ALL OVER the world represented in the congregation, it was awesome! The apostle John, foreseeing the end times, wrote "After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne in front of the Lamb (Jesus)." Revelation 7:9 So church on Sunday was definitely a little bit of “heaven on earth!” Anyways, Montreal in general has been really awesome for that, super multicultural. Right now, I’ve made friends at work or in my residence from Antigua, Maurishis Islands, Germany, Jordan, Ukraine, Pakistan, Venezuela, Haiti, Lebanon, Spain and Italy… wow, really, if we (by God) can have an impact on the city of Montreal, we can really have a huge impact on the rest of the world!

Please pray for me!
Now with a volunteer job as well as project stuff, my day pretty much goes nonstop from 6:30am to 10:00pm… and often til 11 or 12 when our team hangs out together after the evening’s events. Its been really great, but also completely exhausting. In Tanzania I would spring out of bed every morning because I was so excited for the day ahead, but now I’m so tired, today my alarm went off and I really just didn’t want to get up because I knew that once I did, the day would never end! Pray for me to be able to have quality rest both physically and spiritually too, and to be able to choose wisely how to spend my time so I don’t get burned out!

Pray also for me as I'm working at the Social Justice Committee that I will be a good witness for Christ, for boldness and courage, for the opportunities to share the love and truth of Jesus with a group of young people with a heart for global social justice, and for Holy Spirit to guide me in knowing how to effectively, sincerely and with love, to reach them.

posted by Rainbow Choi =) @ 8:26 PM