Mission: Impossible Day 3

Our smallest group the "Little Superstars" sharing the encouragement pictures they drew for eachother. My favourite one was the encouraging picture of a duck and a pig.

Some of our older girls enjoying some fresh apples and oranges for snack!

Olympic Day put on by our great workgroup! The kids had to work together to blow a boat across a water path.

Working as a team to get from one side to the other

The weather got pretty hot. Chilling in the shade.

Each group represented a continent. Here is the fabulous "team Africa" with a very creatively drawn flag

Taking a break from the activities

Two boys with me in the office on time out after fighting. I've been working on the same book with the one on the left for the last couple months in Afterschool Program. Was excited to see him remember a lot of the book today. 

Mission Impossible Day 2

Day 2 is officially underwraps. Here are some highlights from the day:

-we have over 60 kids from the community in our camp. Over half of them are BRAND new to our camp and it is an awesome opportunity for us to continue to reach and serve the community at large

-thanks to many donations we have fruits for the kids everyday. Today we had bananas, apples, and crackers. Tomorrow we will be having apples, oranges, and homemade carrot cake

-today was Spy Tuesdays, where the kids learn how to be spies. That meant today, we had How to Move Like a Spy (ie: Dancing), Making Spy ID's (arts and crafts), Obstacle Course, and Moving through lasers (basically http://youtu.be/FtK2qyQJcOc, except with bells and strings)

-my team of streetleaders, interns, and volunteer group has been AMAZING. Truly an expert team that has been leading the kids and slowly developing strong and deep relationships with the kids

Here are just a couple pictures from our "Spy Tuesdays". Enjoy!

Mission: IMPOSSIBLE

Tomorrow in Rexdale, we start our 6-week intensive summer camp. This year we have over 60 kids, many of whom are new to our program . We are excited for the opportunity, but, honestly, a little nervous to venture into some new territories.

Our theme this year is "Mission: Impossible", which comes from the verse in Matthew, "With man, this is impossible. But with God all things are possible". We will be teaching the kids that God is not restricted by the limitations we have, but can do all things and help us to overcome and do much more than we can imagine. We also see this in our own camp, as things like money, resources, and time seem to never be in our favour. But God provides and he takes control of all the things that are just to impossible for us.

Pray for us, and the rest of UrbanPromise, as this summer I feel is a summer of big things and the devil is not liking it. We have already felt attacks and discouragements, but know God is good. 

Team Victory, lets go...

Camp Victory at Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church

On February 26, 2012, kids and leaders from Camp Victory attended Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church to fundraise for our "Sponsor a Child" project with Compassions Canada. In our attempts to teach our kids about helping others and loving and caring for the poor as God does, we have started a project where we are sponsoring a needy child in Ghana monthly. The money would be used to care for our 9-year-old Ghanian girl, providing things like new clothes and giving her opportunities to attend important things like school.



Our kids put a lot of time in baking cookies and making different crafts such as bracelets, keychains, paintings and flower pots in order to fundraise them off. On top of this, two of our kids went on stage and did an amazing job presenting and sharing to the congregation why we are doing this. As a result, and thanks to SCBC, we made over $900 to support our new friend in Ghana.

Thanks SCBC for the opportunity. Hopefully we will have more opportunities in the future.

If your church is interested in partnering with us in this initiative, please email chris@urbanpromise.com.

walking the line

the thing about waiting is unusual time
to wait from one point to another, is an unusual line
to hold your breath from one word to another, is a unusual rhyme
but the fact is that reality comes with illogical, inexplicable, unusual acts of signs
picture in a frame life in a second
the word from the great minds of the world as they reckon
and imagine the setting and the scene and the place
imagine the faces, the people, and the names
imagine the feelings, the emotions, and the pain
imagine where the same is different, and the same is the same
and you see the giant, massive whirlwind of complexity
that a body needs more to understand than purely intellectually
so remove yourself for a minute and wonder
the confusion of going under
12 months of a year from fall to summer
12 like the apostles, birth the church like a mother
and a mother like a sister, and a mother like a child
birthing understanding out of intellect,
domesticating concepts from the wild
knowing everything from all of history, but since
its been hard to tell the difference between innocence and ignorance
see, innocence is about not knowing you know
about knowing nothing until something unfolds
which is not a bad things, because innocence breeds growth
the potential to create wisdom of potential of old
but ignorance, see, its a much more dangerous weapon
the part of your brain where pride is sectioned
and hate and judgement, not too far off as a connection
academic foolishness and spiritual ignorance at the root of its essence
ignorance is about knowing what you don't know
its about understanding that which you choose not to unfold
see, its about choice, the choice to dismiss
the choice in itself, a conscious effort not to un-gift
so if one could wonder where the state of the world brings us still
why the very methods of alleviating sickness seems to just make us more ill
of philosophical wisdom as said by Socrates
the fact of me knowing is the main distraction in helping me see clearly
but these blockades keep coming up in front of me
thinking mentally like a backwards democracy
more like an aristocracy with foolish leaders
a library of books, but not enough readers
thats why i keep trying to search in hopes i find
lines between light and dark of the safe and cautious lines
cuz i can talk about the dangers of the world like drugs and crime
but i'd rather tackle much more dangerous topics in kind
the things of our interior grind
weapons of the mind
that last through decades at a time
looking on the inside and watching my steps cuz im searching for mines
Lord give me a sign...

hope

In approximately ten hours, the doors of a local church in Rexdale, Etobicoke will be opened to the community and just under 100 kids, youth, and highschool-ers will flood its building, parking lot, and identity. As of tomorrow morning, Camp Victory, along with the rest of UrbanPromise Toronto, will be starting our annual six week summer day camp for kids in our designated communities with the ultimate goal of sharing the love of Christ.

And with an eve of high anticipation and a wide awake supervisor who should have probably gone to bed about 2 hours ago, there is only one thing on my mind.

Hope. It's a beautiful thing.

As I reflect on the past couple months of work in the community, and envision what I, along with the rest of my team, will face both tomorrow morning and the next six weeks, I keep coming back to that one word: hope. Hope in what? Who knows? Hope that we will have a good day; hope that nothing will go wrong; hope that the kids will have a great time, or even hope that some of them will experience God in the program we lead and the relationships they gain. You can have hope in a lot of things; it can cause you to dream big, but can also act as a tracker to how fully realized these dreams become. Hope can give you strength to persevere and to power through anything that may discourage you. Hope, in its true sense, is quite a beautiful thing.

But, parallel to this, hope is quite a foolish thing; it is fairly illogical and highly inconvenient. By definition, hope generally refers to an attitude we take when dealing with something that is lacking; the magnitude of hope increases as situations draw closer to hopelessness. Hope is a state of desperation when reality does not seem to be cooperating: foolish at times because hope can cloud our vision and offer us encouragement and excitement when the tank is completely empty. Sure, hope makes us feel good, it offers us something pseudo-tangible to cling on to when we are not ready to let go. But, let's be honest with ourselves, hope is an incredibly risky, and often false, attitude to take, especially when the situations and scenarios we face which require the most need of some hope often claim victory over that which we "wish" were to come true.

And all that risk, all that chance of failure, all the doubt that obstructs the narrow path of opportunity and optimism: that, in all senses, is what makes hope such a beautiful thing. When the odds are against you, and nothing seems to be going right, when things are looking slim and all reason tells you to give up, that, I believe, is when magic happens. It is not when everything makes sense and when things go according to plan that people are motivated to do great things, be great people. No, rather, it is when the world gives up, doors are shut, backs are turned, and all reality starts to push itself away, and all that is left...is hope; this is the stuff that can inspire people to do more than they are capable of. Hope is a foolish and irrational attitude to take, realistically, a flimsy hub to stay grounded with. But no one makes a successful movie about the man with the 99% chance who prevails, but about the 1% that overcomes.

So when I think about all the kids that will be coming through those church doors tomorrow, playing the game we run, eating the snack we make, and singing the songs we lead, reality tells me its not worth it. Reality urges me to analyze the situation and cut my losses while there is still some benefits left to reap. I look at the community of Rexdale and it hurts to see how damaged it is, how cycles of poverty and violence ridden the streets and minds of its habitants and question what difference does a summer day camp have on the grand scheme of things. Reality tells me to not get too excited and to not invest or commit too much because the chance of failure and defeat is too great.

But there is hope like you wouldn't believe.

And when I say there is hope there is huge hope. I'm talking kids becoming social activists, joy filling the streets, the media rushing to the hood to discover what true peace is. Sure some of the hope myself and my other leaders have is supported by psychological and sociological evidence, some of it is even rooted in past experiences in which hope did prevail. But I would say that most of our hope is rooted in the plain, simple fact of hope itself. That we have hope because we can have hope; because 1% is still 1% and until it ceases to exist, that 1% holds the weight and potential of its 99% counterpart. Because even when the world has turned its back on our kids and our community, and it is hard to see victory from our shackles, there is a glimpse of daylight.

And that daylight, no matter how big or small that glimpse may be, to us, all we can see is the sun.


Our team of Camp Victory leaders for Summer Camp 2011

happy hour

Now if you ask any of my close friends, I don't waste my money on stupidness. What I mean by that is that when it comes to money and overspending, it's not that I am cheap, but when it comes to things I don't need, or things that I could find cheaper somewhere else, my wallet is shut tight. I think this is due to a mix of my upbringing, convictions in my faith, and just the fact that I don't think I need to drive a Lexus when most of the people I know struggle to have sufficient bus fare in their pockets.

So, Starbucks is the last place you will find me.

That is, except on Mondays. Monday is my day to get work done, rest, reflect, and just get some end and odd jobs done before the week really gets going. I have been searching for a nice coffeeshop of some sorts near my house for the last couple times but my efforts have been with little success. Of course there is Tim Hortons, but Tim Hortons has neither wi-fi nor electric outlets. Alas, until I find a nice place that is close to my house, has available resources for my laptop, and brews coffee, Starbucks seems to be my hangout for Monday afternoons.

This morning, being Monday morning, I woke up a bit more excited to go to Starbucks than usual. A few of my friends are avid and faithful followers of Starbucks and their random happy hour specials; lately that of 'Half Priced Frappacino Happy Hour'. Me being the stickler I am am usually pretty pessimistic about these things (I mean half price is still nearing on $3! Does anyone else find this only a bit of a deal?). Also to make me sound like even more of a grump, I've worked in coffee shops before and know exactly how much work and how much money goes into making something like a Frappacino, and I can tell you its not worth even close to the amount they cost, unless, of course, the polar glaciers completely melt, global warming wins, and, as a result, there is an ice shortage pandemic in the world. However, today I woke up thinking, "yeah, that's alright...a nice treat for myself in just about the perfect weather". So today, I decided, rather than getting the cheapest possible drink at Starbucks above water from the tap in my travel mug from home (my usual), I bought one of these fancy frappacinos (which I admit are good, but never, ever, necessary). Fairly happy with my purchase, and maybe a little apathetic, I sat down at a table and pulled out my laptop ready to get some stuff done. Amidst all the chaos of moving wires and fixing the ideal position for my laptop (which I'm secretly pretty picky about), I knocked over my drink having it all spill on the floor (literally all of it, I had not even put in the straw yet).

With my drink all over the floor, and just about everyone around me looking awkwardly and silently at me, I was slightly embarrassing. But then the money-saving-down-with-the-man side of me helped me come to the realization that I just completely wasted a $3 drink. Then a certain attitude towards it all came over me, one that I had never really felt before: it's cool. As I cleaned up the mess and sorta awkwardly smiled at people around me, I kept asking myself, why does this not bother me? I kept trying to prove to myself that it should and I need to be at least a little frustrated at my stupidity. But no matter how hard I tried to tell myself what an annoying and bothersome situation I was in, I just could not convince myself that it was that big of a deal. There was a peace over me, a peace over the situation, that it wasn't a big deal. In short, it is what it is and, what it is, is cool.

What does it mean to have peace over something; to have peace over a situation or to be at peace with the things at hand? I think to have peace over something is to be able to see the bigger picture, to remove yourself from the moment you are in, and see the wider scope and know that things are good. It is a completely natural, and rational, reaction for people to go through life living in the micro, analyzing every detail and nit picking at the immediate world that apparently defines their identity. We get something on sale, we are happy; we are sitting in traffic, we are sad; we buy something we really like, we are happy; we spill it all over the floor, we are sad. We live and devote our lives to how we feel in given situations; we become slaves to what's going on and lose who we are in the midst of it.

My questions is this: what does it mean to see the bigger picture in our lives? Further, what does it look like to the people around us when we start acting and living based on the mindset that we are NOT enslaved by the hi's and low's of our daily routine? Now, I am not being ignorant. I think in my line of work I see, more than most, people who do not have a reality beyond their current state; to see the big picture is not only a far off dream, but, even more so, a foolish ideal that blurs the truth. For many people, the current is everything. But, whether it's true or not, whether it's possible to live in this way, I have to believe that there is more than the current. The present, the current state we are, cannot be everything we are because life only works if there is a greater and more foundational truth to each of our lives. If there is no hope that we are bigger than "this" and that we are not slaves to the things that go on on a micro scale in our lives, then we are fighting a useless fight; we are running towards a destination to nowhere.

Our jobs, that status of our relationships, our interests and priorities, our emotions and feelings...these things define where we are at because these things change. Where we are at in our journey in life is something beautiful, don't get me wrong. But if where I am at defines who i am, I am the subject of a completely unstable and damaging reality. Now what we are, that's a different story. What we are does not change...the core of our identities and the fundamental truths, innate truths, of who a person is is something even more beautiful. These are the things that can never be changed; what we are is the defining immutable truth over each of our lives. If there is no hope that who I am is defined by what I am, and not where I am at, then I am not excited, and certainly not at peace, with who I am.

What does a revolution of people that see themselves at the core of who they are and not the labels or states that confine them look like? What does it mean to see a world transformed by each individual's realization that they are more than the things that define them; that their identities are rooted in the truth of what they are and not where they are at in their journey in life.

That would be scary as hell...and awesome.

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Song of the Week:



(Shad; A Story No One Told. Not only is Shad's flow amazing, but this song speaks poetry, truth, and life that is so refreshing to a barren and empty rap game)