Last summer thoughts...
Hello dear friend! I’m back in Vancouver and I have to admit that I’ve been delaying the writing of this letter since I’ve come back because it means I have to come to terms with the end of an amazing summer. I named this summer My Summer of a Million Experiences 2006… because in everyway, it really was! I saw so much, lived so much in such different contexts, experienced so much and learned so much. And for that, I thank you sincerely so much for supporting and sharing this summer with me. I hope as I share these ‘final’ thoughts, you’ll be able to have a small glimpse into what God has blessed me with this summer.MONTREAL PROJECT
Final stats…
262 Spiritual Conversations
347 Articles about Christ given out
55 Gospel presentations
3 New brothers in Christ
Stats are sometimes exciting, knowing that we did bring a little light of Christ into the city of Montreal this summer. But our Project was so much more than just numbers…our Project had two objectives – outreach and leadership training, and both definitely happened. We had Monday night training sessions on a whole range of topics to build the foundations of our faith, ministry and leadership. Tuesday nights we had Discipleship Groups small-group Bible studies where we dug into 1 Peter to learn life lessons of hope, holiness, submission and joyful suffering. Wednesday personal ministry nights when we had potlucks, fondue parties, French cafes and found other creative ways to know and communicate our faith with our friends at Solin Hall and our workplaces. Thursday nights we had coffee houses with music and speakers and the opportunity for each of us to share our testimony. Friday nights we had team socials and grew in true and fun fellowship. Saturdays, we had outreaches ranging from Da Vinci Code movie surveys, to giving out JESUS Films at subway stations, to cleaning apartments at our residence. And last but not least, we had Sunday Sabbath rests! All of this on top of the full-time jobs that we had! It was an intense schedule, and even more so after our staff left after the first 6 weeks, leaving us not only to fend for ourselves, but to step up to leadership, initiative and responsibility. Yet by God’s grace, all of us “Projectiles” (nickname for students on Project) walked away with a true sense of loving and serving God through the reality of the craziness of life.
TROIS-PISTOLES
I left our Project a little early in early July, to go north and study French in a tiny Francophone town on the St. Lawrence River, where God had yet more new and completely different experiences waiting for me.
The change-of-pace from the “spiritual greenhouse” of Project to the secular setting of French program was almost funny. But 8 weeks of Project prepared me well to be well-grounded enough to take the initiative to be a witness in really spiritually stretching situations without becoming drained. Living and really sharing life with new “family” and friends, I had the opportunity to really share my faith and my God… and weave my way through jokes, beer, sex, and other smokescreens and say through my life that “This… God… is love.”
It was also God’s grace that put me and five other Christian girls together in the same “atelier”, our afternoon cultural workshops. I met one of the girls, Vivien, the first day of our atelier and found that she was also a Jesus-loving, God-serving Christian. During that week, God laid it on my heart to pray, really pray for the town and the program… when I talked to Vivien about it, it turned out she’d also been thinking the same thing. So we began to meet and pray together everyday… soon to be joined by the other girls in our atelier and several other students. Our prayer group met together to serve together and be equipped, spiritually and mentally to branch out and serve together… on our own, in our own situations, but united in spirit and in prayer – it was awesome! Through leading that prayer group, God also unexpectedly taught me a lot more about discipleship - how to care genuinely about the other girls, how to walk alongside them through the struggles and challenges they were going through. I also finally understood the importance, effectiveness and joy of sharing in ministry together… I already see how these things are going to equip me to better serve God on my campus at UBC this year, and in whatever ministry – corporate or personal – for the rest of my life.
Almost as a bonus… I also picked up the skills to communicate in French… a huge joy for me … and potential for later where God might lead!
* * *
There were many, many, many lessons learned this summer, and God is still continuing to open my eyes to see more of what He has shown me. Here’s just a few of the bigger things….
Wherever I am, to be all there. Being always “on the run”, it’s hard for me not to be restless where I am, even if I am where I thought I was running to… and especially so when I don’t quite know what God is doing and what my role is. But if I always did know, there would be no need for faith. But with faith that God is trustworthy, I commit myself – body, heart and mind to being where I am and look with expectation for what God has for me and how I can serve Him fully there.
To be humbled… by my inadequacy to share Jesus with my own efforts and being asked to serve in less-than-glamorous and less-than-evident ways. I had more than a few spiritual conversations and outreach opportunities in French… where I could do little more than redirect to another Projectile’s more advanced French abilities or ask questions while I never did understand the other person’s end of the conversation – in times like these, I am forced to be reminded that sharing Christ has nothing to do with how good we are at it! God is everything… and asks only that we be available. Furthermore, I didn’t find a job with a big-name international development agency in Montreal like I was expecting… rather, I worked at a small grassroots organization called the Social Justice Committee with some wonderful girls my age. I also cleaned shelves, scrubbed floors, and met some honest, kind people more humble than me at a homeless drop-in shelter I originally had thought was a refugee centre. In everything I was stripped of any pursuit of my own glory, and was reminded of who my life is daily meant to glorify.
God is indeed working… when I can’t see the visible fruits of it. Sometimes He gives shows us what He’s doing quite evidently, so that we can praise and give Him the glory for it. Other times, we are stretched to have faith that He is all-good and all-powerful, and He continues to be glorified when we choose to live out living by faith and not by sight. It takes our own measures of success and purpose of our efforts, and attitudes of just “looking like serving God” or serving men as if God needed me to do that, and brings it back to just loving God, and faithfully serving Him as an outflow.
My home… is not in Montreal, in Norway, or in Africa, or even in my hometown in beautiful BC. My stay on earth is temporary, how much more where I live while I am here? As much as I hate to admit or try to hang on to them, I’ve found that the contexts of identity, experiences and friendships are really for a season, but wherever I am or wherever I go, my home is with God – He is forever constant and steadfast, He walks through ALL my life’s different phases and places, and my identity is all-in-all in God. I am me for a purpose and that purpose is God - a truth that first brought me into a personal relationship with God, but had a chance to re-explore and vividly experience this summer.
To be honest, there were a lot of times when I really didn’t know what I was doing in Montreal. Why had God asked me to be there? What was His purpose for me in Montreal that couldn’t be accomplished elsewhere?
But as I head back to another semester of school with a renewed sense of faith, purpose and zeal for ministry, I know. I again found joy in serving God with other brothers and sisters and the commitment to a lifestyle of sharing Christ. And alongside just being faithful and serving God humbly as He calls, it was to learn all these little lessons. This particular “normal and real-life” missions trip really helped me to realize that the mundane things of day-to-day life aren’t always so overly exciting and amazing! You don’t often have those huge epiphanies when your life is forever markedly changed from that point on… but God still has so much in store for us in the day-to-day, and so much for us to learn. It just takes effort to look for those things, pick them out and reflect on them and pray through them so that they become life lessons, even for little things that I might’ve even heard a million times, but suddenly becomes real. Otherwise the little things pass us by seemingly not “amazing” enough to thank God for, or for God to use them to change us.
To sum up, we serve an awesome God… and my summer was really a good and perfect gift from Him. I’ll end my thoughts here with one little prayer I prayed at the beginning of the summer – that God’s ministry in Montreal and in my life this summer would uplift your spirits and build us together in a greater passion to see the nations reached with the message of Jesus.
My apologies for such a long summary… but I’m not sure I could have condensed such a rich summer into anything shorter! There are still lots more stories that I’d love to share with you personally some day if you want to hear them! Thanks again for journeying with me through the summer and thank you so much for all your support!
Que Dieu vous benisse richement! May God bless you richly!
Yours together for His glory,
Rainbow Choi =)
He has shown thee, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
~ Micah 6:8
posted by Rainbow Choi =) @ 10:44 PM
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