URBAN PARTNERSHIP PLANS – my daughter Jenn’s blog entry and prayer
URBAN PARTNERSHIP PLANS – my daughter Jenn’s blog entry
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.“ – 1 John 3:16-18
EXCITING NEWS! Last week I found out that this May I will be taking part in Inter-Varsity Canada’s Montreal Urban Partnership! THEY LET ME IN!! I’ve been too excited to sit down and think about how I would write about it, but I think I’ll give it a try, finally, seeing as I am finally on spring break and it seems to be productive enough procrastination from all the schoolwork I still have to work on.
To give some background about the program, Inter-Varsity Canada is an organization that works to inspire, assist, and equip students and young Christians across Canadian campuses to serve God in his work where they are and around the world (I realize those are vague and idealistic verbs, but the organization does amazing work, I promise. Check out their website, link below). At McGill, we have two Inter-Varsity campus groups: McGill Christian Fellowship and International Student Ministries, and full-time staff members and interns for each. I’m so thankful for the work that these groups have been doing on my campus, and for the people I’ve gotten to know through both of them. This Urban Partnership is a month-long intensive missions program in which 13 of us students from Quebec province have a chance to live together for one month, learning about Christ’s servantship through daily bible study while serving around the city as volunteers full-time. The program starts immediately after exams and will run to the beginning of June. The first week, we will be heading to New Brunswick to take part in Inter-Varsity’s annual MarkEast conference with the larger Inter-Varsity community in order to study Mark’s gospel in-depth for one week, and then we will return to the city and start our work here.
This is my first experience being a part of a missions trip. For a pastor’s kid in her first year of university, this may surprise some of you, but I had many reasons for avoiding missions in the past, sincere and otherwise. Among many reasons I’ve been hesitant in the past to pursue opportunities like this, the main three were that I didn’t want to be doing it for the wrong reasons, I didn’t think I had the skill set, and I didn’t trust in God’s provision.
Questioning motives is generally good practice. I didn’t want a missions trip to become some church-sanctioned resume-boosting tourist expedition. And I wasn’t invested enough in my faith to be able to believe that it would be more than that. So, in that respect, I’m glad that I didn’t pursue anything. But my other reasons—that God couldn’t use me because I didn’t have the words or the energy or the abilities, or that God wouldn’t provide to pay my way, that wasn’t faith or purity of heart. That was mistrusting God.
So, here I am. God’s put it on my heart that I’m here in this city for a reason, that “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” and that he wants to both change my heart and use me to serve others. There is incredible need in this city–for all who have visited or lived in urban centers, it’s a different world from tiny, rural DeKalb. The need for practical servantship far outweighs any of my personal reservations about why I shouldn’t or can’t be part of what God wants to do. I still feel as ill-equipped, and I have no idea how God will pay my way (the program costs $2000 for food and living expenses for the month). But I won’t use those as excuses any more. I am so excited to start and to see what God does in and through this team.
If you want to donate to fund my expenses as I head into this crazy adventure, I will be more than thankful. You can send donations through PayPal to my email address at Jennifer.jesmer@yahoo.com (the wonders of the internet, eh? All you need is my email address and you can send me cash! Magic!). I’ll also be updating this blog when I can during the program itself, so check back in May if you’re interested in following along.
Happy trails and God bless.
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