I wrote this a while ago... right after the 2010 Vancouver Olympics ended, but got busy with homework and forgot to finish editing it and posting it!
So, here is my experience, pretend you are getting it at the end of February:
Well, it has been about a week since I got back from Vancouver, so I thought I would update you who about my trip to Vancouver for the Athletes In Action Olympic Project. It was a really amazing experience to say the least. I had no idea what to expect going into it, and I definitely got a different experience than basically anyone else who went to Vancouver for the Olympics. So much I could say, but I will just give you an outline of what we did and a few highlights.
A highlight of the trip was traveling to Vancouver and back with the Athletes In Action (AIA) crew from Edmonton. It was awesome to get to know them through the car pool. We had some really awesome talks and it was amazing how quickly the trips flew by (especially on the way back). We had some really neat chats and it was awesome to hear the life stories of these really neat men and women!
Our project started off on Saturday, February 13 at Power To Change headquarters in Langley, for a weekend of training and the yearly AIA staff conference. It was a really neat weekend of mingling between AIA staff and students from across the country. We had some really cool training and encouraging from Doug Pollock. He wrote the book "God Space," and it was so neat to be reminded that evangelism does not need to be us running around handing out tracts to people and sharing the 4 spiritual laws with people! We were given a whole pile of materials to give to people, but we were told to just be natural and just love people in conversation and let Christ shine. There is so much freedom in this! He used some sports analogies; sometimes we need to use the driver (for people who are opposed to God or have never really thought about it before) or just try to get a first down, while other times we use the putter (leading someone to Christ) and get a touchdown. We need to be sensitive to the spirit and sense where people are at in their walks. Just live with people and love them and show them that Christians are not a bunch of crazies who just want to sell them the gospel, but that we love them and want to wonder with them and help them get closer to God. It is so easy to go to either extreme, always want to use the putter or just be friends and never share the gospel. We need to find the balance.
The only disappointments I had with the weekend was that there were so many people I wanted to sit down and visit with (people who I went to Thailand with, etc who I hadn't talked to in like 3 years), but we were so busy that I basically just got to say hi and then a quick update and then back to a session. But, was a sweet weekend anyway.
So, after the awesome weekend we went out into the Vancouver community! We broke into hubs of about 6-8 people and went into the Greater Vancouver area to serve in different capacities. My group was working alongside a church in Burnaby/Surrey. We did a couple of community outreaches in the church (with the Olympics on an overhead and playing games with kids, or serving food to the homeless), and then doing some mini-Olympics in two different schools. I had some really neat chats with a few people. In particular, it was neat one night sitting down and chatting about life with an older retired gentleman who was bringing his grandchildren to the church for activities. He is from a really rough past, but it was neat to just talk to him, and then on Friday I saw him when he dropped off his grandchildren at the school we were serving at! He asked when the next thing at the church was, so hopefully he can connect with someone there.
The school outreaches were really encouraging as well, we could not share about Jesus or anything but just tried to love the kids and share some good messages about teamwork, etc. We told them who we were and that we were working with the local church, so they should check out the street hockey tournament on Saturday. These kids were from really sad backgrounds, a lot of broken homes and teachers were telling us how they needed to make sure that some of them had lunch every day. I led a group around and it was so neat to see how much it meant to just look these kids in the eyes and smile at them and just love them! The kids always wanted to stand in the front of the line next to me! I felt really blessed at the end of the day as a kid who I had met earlier in the week (didn't think I had spent much time with him) ran across the gym yelling, "Jadon, are you coming back next year?!" Showed me how much of an impact we can make in lives in such small ways! I had not seen him all day and had barely talked to him earlier in the week, but he felt a connection with me!
We also spent a day and a half down town, just experiencing the Olympics and talking to people. It was neat how much it means to people for a stranger to smile and say hi and chat with them! Shocked a lot of people at first, but it was really neat to just hear people's stories, share what we were doing in Vancouver and just encourage people! Just letting Christ shine through in our actions and going where the conversation went, and where people felt comfortable going.
One last story, we wore jackets that had icravechange.com written on the back collar (Erwin McManus made a small version of his book "Soul Cravings" that we were supposed to base the "More Than Gold" Project on). Well, we were on Granville Island and I was just chatting with a family whose daughter was playing the fiddle (another cool story in itself, amazing 14 year old fiddle player!) and this guy ran up to me in a hurry. He said, "What is icravechange.com? I only have a minute because I need to go drive a delegate soon!" So, I quickly told him we were with AIA and what we were doing and brought out the "Soul Cravings" book and tried to explain the main concepts to him as he looked at it. He said he had to leave but seemed really interested, so I let him have the book. He was shocked that I would let him have it. It was a crazy conversation, like literally a minute long. I was left kind of dumbstruck! "Did that just happen!" I just kind of stumbled trying to explain everything as quickly as I could and not really sure what to say!
So, we didn't get to go to any events, but it was a really neat experience just to be in the environment and serve people! The atmosphere downtown was incredible, and the weather was amazing the whole week! How can anyone be disappointed in the quality of the event with such a gorgeous setting, an awesome transit system and such an amazing atmosphere everywhere! (I heard people talking about how much better the downtown atmosphere was than Turin, and look at the fans at curling!)
Peace my friends!
And thank you for your support!
PS. Enjoy the picture that I had taken in the Canadian Mint Pavilion! haha They had a booth set up there.
