By Jorel Gatuz
My very first exposure to missions was running a Bible day camp for children in Serpent River First Nation, which is a small community of Indigenous people in northern Ontario. As excited as we all were to execute everything that we have been planning months before, we knew that, after just a couple of days into our camp, we needed to make some major changes to it.
Certain songs and activities that we had prepared were heavily focused on topics that only children who grew up in the church would be familiar with. Unsurprisingly, bringing that over to those who may have never heard of God or Jesus would not resonate with them in a way that we had hoped. Given that we were the foreigners and visitors of their community, God had really used that to humble us and adjust the way we continued on with the camp. Instead of coming in with a mindset wherein we were the ones teaching and they were the ones to listen, He reminded us that, as much as there is to learn about us, we had just as much to learn about who they are, their culture and beliefs.
Storytelling is a major part of the Native culture, so God gave our team many opportunities to be able to speak with and learn from the elders of the community and have them share their stories with us. We also got to spend time with some of the youth after camp, which had allowed us to know them more personally. Overall, I would say that the first year of experience in Serpent River First Nation was more of a learning experience for all of us in the team. We quickly realized that if we wanted to share the gospel with others, a genuine and trusting friendship has to be built up first as the foundation. Without this, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ becomes more of an agenda than of something relational. This is not to say that we came to Serpent River with an agenda in mind but, considering the dark history of colonialism and the Indigenous peoples of Canada, we were required to reevaluate how we had planned to share the story of Jesus to the children in the reserve.
It was only through God's grace that 2019 was marked the 10th year anniversary of willing volunteers who spend two weeks of their summer in Serpent River. That is 10 years of building relationships with those who were oppressed by "Christians" during the colonization of Europeans. Everyone (including myself) who has volunteered from 2009 up until this year has only ever been His hands and feet. I have looked forward to going to Serpent River every single summer since then as I hold the place and the people especially close to my heart. I pray that God continues His great work in Serpent River as more volunteers return and new ones come. All glory, praise and adoration go to Him and Him alone.