And we're off!!!

Hey there! Tim here, Encounter One's blogger for the year!

Man, has it been a crazy week and a half. We've done nine retreats already all around Toronto. The week and a half may have been crazy but it was also amazing. Our youngest crowd was grade seven and our oldest crowd so far was grade tens. I know we've hardly even started the year, but just seeing how God's been working through the youth is amazing.

The retreats have been running really smoothly. The youth are having a great time and God's definitely been busy at work with them to say the least. Seeing so much change in such young people in only six hours is really inspiring. One thing we learned pretty fast is that while these youth may be learning a lot from us, we learn even more from them. Having done a lot of volunteer work in the past, we all know how great it feels to do good, but nothing compares to the feeling of directly experiencing God at work in the retreatants.

We got to stay in Peterborough for four nights last week, which was amazing. Peterborough really brought us closer together as brothers and sisters on our team as we had some funny mishaps, but we stayed united as a team throughout all of it. For example, one of our vehicles got lost in downtown Toronto on the 401 highway (named the busiest highway in North America) during rush hour traffic on a Friday. Or when we celebrated Rachel's birthday, we hid her cake in the oven...then our host dad went to cook supper and preheated the oven...resulting in a charred black cake...
But while we had some mishaps, we're completing our mission of contacting the youth of Canada and bringing them to Jesus as best as we can and that's what's important.

Encounter 1