By Joshua Gatuz
Good morning church! As you all know, over the summer I went on a short term mission trip to Serpent River First Nation. To give you more info on where it is exactly, here’s a map showing the route from Toronto to Serpent River
It’s about a 6 hour drive north west of Toronto and about a 1 hour drive from Sudbury. It has a population of about 250-300 people.
For the past 10 years, Doxa has partnered with a ministry called Daystar: it’s a non-profit Christian organization that seeks to show the love of Christ to Native communities located in mid-north Canada and beyond. They carry the message of salvation in personal and practical ways with the goal of people accepting Christ as their Savior and Lord. For the past 10 years, Daystar has been running a kid’s day camp every summer for two weeks at Serpent River First Nation. Similar to VBS, the kids ages range from 5 years old to 13 and we have scheduled activities where we teach them Bible lessons, arts and crafts, and most importantly, build relationships with the children and their families.
Before I left for my trip, I knew that God had opened up an opportunity for me to serve there once more. I was really excited to go back. I did have some worries about serving at Serpent River again. It can be quite challenging to work with Native children. Their grandparents and great grandparents’, and ancestors’ histories of being forced into residential schools have caused generations of suffering and brokenness in these communities. They experienced the loss of culture and identity. At times these children in residential schools were even physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. The ramifications of these sins committed by the Canadian government and by the Church are still present today and can sometimes be easily seen in the kids at these Native reserves. Not to mention the socio-economic issues in Native reserves that play a negative role in their upbringing as well. One of our biggest challenges last year (my first year) were certain kids that were violent towards others and at times we would have to break up fights between 6 year olds with the risk of being bitten or kicked or slapped. Not all the kids were like that. It was usually the kids that come from broken homes that would have behavioural issues that would come out during day camp.
These were just a handful of worries though. Mostly I was excited to be back to spend time with the kids and the community. The whole team would agree with me in saying that the best part about the trip is building relationships with the children there. These are the most rowdy kids you’ll ever work with but they’re so lovable. There’s a million moments and interactions that we have with the kids that God uses to sow love and joy into their lives but also within the lives of the leaders. A moment that was special to me was one time after our Bible discussion. I was given the role of leading the 10-11 year old kids. This was my first time working with this age group which was initially difficult for me because I find this age group is when they start to have a little more attitude (haha). Often times during the discussions it’s hard to keep their attention and some even after telling them not to, keep talking. God graced me with patience for the week so thankfully I never lost mine with them. Anyway, for Bible discussions we have everything in a binder that we use when we’re sitting in a circle. Before I went to lead the discussion on the third day of camp, I quickly prayed to God that at least one kid might hear some of what I was teaching them. Not just to pay attention, but for the Holy Spirit to work supernaturally in someone’s heart to draw them to God. Just for one kid. I brought my bible with me this time as I went into the circle and started the discussion. That week we were teaching them about Genesis and the creation story. I had my Bible in my hands as I taught though it wasn’t open.
A couple of the kids beside me noticed and asked if they could look at it. I handed the Bible to one of my kids named X*. As I continued my lesson, I could see from the corner of my eye X flipping through the pages of my Bible very intently. I saw that he was reading the preface so I quickly explained to him the table of contents and pointed him to Genesis since that’s what they were learning the past week. Occasionally during the rest of the lesson he would exclaim “Oh, we learned about this!” as he read. When I finished my lesson, I saw that he was still reading. For the next 10 minutes or so, X sat there contently reading my Bible and using his hands to follow along. I saw this moment as an answer to prayer. We know from Hebrews 4:12 that God’s word is living and active, and from Isaiah 55:11 we read that God’s word always fulfills the purpose for which he sends it. These verses are profound yet comforting because though we might not see immediate effects of X reading the Bible who knows how God might use this moment in the future to draw him to Himself. Some of these kids might have never read the Bible let alone held one in their hands, so any degree of exposure to God’s word can be life changing.
So now that I’m back, what now? What I’ve come to realize is that even though the trip itself is only two weeks at a time every summer, I believe it’s better to be viewed as a long term mission as opposed to short term. It has taken years for this Serpent River team to build a relationship with the community. The team has been able to reap the fruits of all the seeds that have been sown over the years in terms of investing time with the kids and getting to know their families. This year especially a lot of the parents have opened up to some of the leaders on our team about their family issues and the difficult things they were going through. I know that life gets busy and getting 1 or 2 weeks off for the trip might be challenging but Lord willing I’d like to continue returning back each year to be with the community and be able to continue building relationships and pointing them to Christ.
*name has been changed for confidentiality purposes.