Youth pastor Namrata Sun at Scarborough Chinese Bible Church helps engage the youth in local missional opportunities, but also faraway places like Honduras and Lima.
It’s easy for youth to live in small worlds and not to consider what life or faith looks like in another context.
So Namrata takes them to unfamiliar places to see God at work.
They went to a prison in Honduras to tell the prisoners their testimonies.
It broke down some stereotypes they had about prisoners and poverty.
It helped guide their reflections and discussions about what change is needed and sustainable.
It helped them to wonder at the grace of God and their responsibility as Jesus-followers.
They went to villages in Peru to visit the children they sponsored.
They learned enough Spanish to tell their own testimonies.
They also attended an evangelism event at a school.
They sang worship songs and read Scripture with 200 other high schoolers.
They offered prayer – and so many teenagers responded.
Although the Peruvian youth were often shy, they were eager to be prayed for and to accept Jesus.
It took courage for the Scarborough youth to initiate, but they were blessed and encouraged to be a part of something that God was doing.
Namrata wants to create opportunities for awareness for her youth – that they see people the way God sees them.
Just as God so loves this world, she wants her youth to see the people around them with eyes of compassion.
Compassion, not comparison.
To be curious without judgement.
To be honest about their own bias and prejudice.
She wants her youth to have Jesus’ heart for the lost and the hungry.
And then to have the courage and joy that the Spirit gives to share their own stories of God to the world around them.