Missions Projects
Ten years ago fifteen hundred teenagers and young adults crowded into the Glacier in Mount Pearl to sing, shout, praise and proclaim their love for God and His love for the world. Since that first countdown on Thanksgiving weekend 2000, the youth of Newfoundland and Labrador have responded to God’s love by sacrificially sharing it with anybody and everybody, whether they lived across the street or on the other side of the world. This has become the YC Mission.
The neighbour rarely knows the need next door. Children walk to school together, teenagers play hockey, and adults share conversation as they care for their yards… but the secrets behind those doorways remain hidden. In tough times these secrets include an empty pantry and hungry families. YC has responded year-after-year by collecting cans of soup, boxes of macaroni and funds to purchase the necessities of life. YC has determined that it is not enough to fill a community’s stadium with youth and music. The YC Mission responds to God’s love with a goal of filling those empty pantries with food.
Africa is an ocean, a hemisphere and a cultural universe away for almost every youth and young adult that has entered a YC arena… yet somehow the tiny sub-Saharan nation of Malawi has settled deep in the hearts of thousands of Newfoundland and Labradorians. From the first challenge to construct a home in The Village of Hope, to viewing photos of children safe inside the house that YC built, generous giving has hallmarked every gathering. Almost unbelievably YC young people have given $250,000.00. They themselves have defined by their actions the YC Mission-that sacrificial giving is an appropriate response to the sacrificial love of God.
And now they think nothing is impossible. A year ago over one hundred of them journeyed across that ocean, hemisphere and cultural universe, to join hand-in-hand with the African Church ministering in fields, markets and villages, and co-hosting YC Malawi. Memories of that mission will only inspire an even greater YC Mission for the future. Today that commitment continues both at the orphanage and through wells being dug in Malawi and other thirsty nations from the $10,000 donated to the LIFE tour just one year ago.
And so on this our tenth anniversary we celebrate both in the love that has been shown and the love that will be offered in the future. We remind ourselves that the YC Mission looks both across the street and around the world.
With this is mind we have a vision to minister to the hundreds of youth in our own province so desperately addicted to drugs and alcohol.
They too can experience God’s life-changing love. And as we love our own, our eyes are being drawn yet again across the ocean. I wonder what mouths will be fed, what hearts will be lifted and what souls will sing in the future when yet another arena of dreaming youth and young adults this year respond to the YC Mission.
