STATE COLLEGE, Pa., (BRN) – From March 8-16, New Life Campus Ministry at Penn State University took a group of seven students and two leaders to Toronto, Canada, to serve with a ministry there called Urban Promise.
This group consisted of students from New Life Penn State, the New Life Campus Ministry at PennWest California, BASIC Campus Ministry at PennWest Clarion and Baptist Campus Ministries at Virginia Tech.
Urban Promise Toronto is an after school camp that works with under privileged inner-city kids from ages 5-18. The group runs three after school programs across the city. The camps provide a safe place for kindergarten to middle school students to go, where they can receive the gospel and be mentored by supervisors and other students.
Urban Promise is openly Christian, each day they host a Bible time that they call, “Word Up.” Even so, the vast majority of the young people involved are not believers or from Christian families.
Upon reaching high school, students become “street leaders” and work in the camp, becoming mentors themselves. Urban Promise Toronto sees discipleship as a lifelong journey working in the lives of students and parents throughout their school journey.
As a mission team, we were able to alleviate some of the stress of the supervisors, get a glimpse of working in inner-city ministry and be short-term mentors to the high schoolers.
We were also able to meet the International Mission Board’s (IMB) head of collegiate ministry for all of Canada, who illustrated the power of the Gospel in Toronto.
The mission team also worked with a large food bank, Our Daily Bread, in which students were the hands and feet of Christ by packing thousands of packs of oatmeal.
Overall, this trip was fruitful in seeing how God is working in the diverse city of Toronto through short term teams, like ours, and the long term discipleship of Urban Promise.
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