Monday, February 3, 2020

20-21 CVYN and Mission's Fest

The past two weeks involved preparing and leading Cowichan Valley youth night (CVYN) and heading over to the mainland for Mission's fest. 

After finishing up their New Testament exam, the next few days were all about CVYN. This was a time where students were given full reigns to run an event. It was only a three hour night, but hours and hours of hard work and preparation went into it.


(These were our two MCs of the night, Jenna H and Seth, who were a fun pair to watch lead the night.)

There were many parts that went into a night like CVYN, so the week before, the students met up with staff all throughout the week and talked through what it looked like to run each of their parts. We had MCs, speakers, a worship team, kitchen team, Coco hut leaders, communication leaders, and many other leadership positions.


Our games coordinators were Abby and Jakob along with support. You can see how creative the night was from these pictures. They set the hype meter pretty high for all the youth.



 

After finishing the games, the students lead the youth in a time of worship.



Jenna D introduced the topic of the night; identity. She spoke about the lies we tend to embrace as our identity and how we can actually find our true and lasting identity in Christ. She later mentioned with the team that she realized her passion and gift in speaking. Riley then was able to explain what this looked like by sharing his own testimony of his journey in finding his identity through Christ.



It was a proud moment seeing all of this come together. We ended off the night debriefing how everything went. The students learned quite a lot about how to lead together but overall, it was easy to see the love of Jesus in this group as they served and interacted with the youth.  


After some homework and time off, we all headed over on the ferry to Vancouver. Our first day there we spent tandem biking around the Sea Wall. You probably would have laughed watching a bunch of college students try to figure out how to even start biking on a tandem bike. Eventually, we made it all the way around and everybody intact... except for one bike. We all went back to Mountainview Baptist fellowship church where we got to stay overnight. We played a few games (included the long-anticipated Mad Cow tournament) and had the famous homemade "Panookie" as our mug up snack.


The next day we spent some time at Grandville island before we headed off to mission's fest. The students had some free time to explore all around the markets.

When we arrived at missions fest, there were exhibition booths from all different mission organizations. Throughout the day the students could also attend seminars. In the evening we all attended the general session where Aaron White spoke about lament. For an opening session, this was pretty unheard of. Yet it turned out to be a night of opening up, real emotion, and prayer for each other. 


The next day the students attended seminars and exhibition booths again. In their spare time, many students toured around Vancouver. That evening was the youth rally. Along with our Kaleo program, thousands of youth from all over BC came to the event. The group 604 Network lead us all in worship and took away the big lights and sound to refocus our attention on what matters. It was incredible listening to all the voices singing together worshiping God. Kim Moran came up and spoke on the topic of surrender and what that means for the life of a Christ-follower.



The next morning we packed up and headed out to 49th Parallel Coffee before travelling to Village Church. It was actually Village Church's 10th year anniversary while we were there. We all got to experience Mark Clark speak at the service. After church finished, we hopped on the Tsawwassen Ferry and came back to camp.



Overall, the past couple of weeks were a stretching and unique experience for many of the students. The students are back to the grind and starting off their class week today. If you have any questions about what these past few weeks looked like for us, feel free to send us a message on our Instagram page: Kaleoprogram, or comment below.

Prayer requests:
- For the Kaleo program to continue to dive into the ways God had spoken to them during Mission's fest and over the past two weeks. 
- For mental, spiritual, and physical preparation this week as we prepare for our upcoming mission's trip.
- For financial support to finish off our mission's trip fundraising goal.

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