meetings, meetings, meetings

I have spent this week in what feels like back to back meetings. Some better than others. However, I wanted to tell you about a few I am really excited about, starting with the most recent one tonight.

I have just got home from a meeting with about 15 people, representing 4 different faith communities in the Aurora Neighbourhood. We met to talk about 'Food on Aurora'. It was a time to find out more about what these local churches were doing to get food out the people living on Aurora and to see where we can help and support one another - also making sure we are not overlapping.
At Bethany we have a small food bank/pantry and at Crosspoint Church they have 'Good Friday' ministry which takes food to the people staying in the motels on Aurora. As we talked we saw how many connections we each also had as churches with other services, food banks, drop-in centres just to name a few. I was so excited to hear all the things that are happening, and really, really excited to meet more specifically to find ways to link in Bethany Community Church to what's happening. It made me so happy to see all of us there together, not determined to make our things bigger or better, no competitiveness, just people seeking ways to serve and encourage one another as we are all striving to reach out to our community.
I am so pumped up as I write this i think it will take me a while to fall asleep as I have a million thoughts and ideas running through my mind (i am hoping blogging this might help?!) What an awesome opportunity to truly represent the body of Christ as we serve together!!

Another meeting was last night when i met with the Missions Committee at Bethany. October is Missions month at the church and we have quite a few events coming up to plan. It was the first time I had met some of the people and it was good to get to know them and see their hearts for missions. The big planning happened around our 'missionary meet and greet' it will be a time for church members to come, eat dessert and talk to some of the missionaries Bethany supports. We will have a number of our missionaries in town for that night, and i hope the event gets the support from the church that we would like!

Finally, Wednesday mornings are our YWAM staff meetings. It is hard to explain these times well (i hvae started this sentence many times but it comes out wrong) I can say that today felt like a sweet time of being honest together. Some good things were shared some really sad things and some more questions for us to figure out. Today felt like we made at least one big decision, which was to move forward with YWAM having a flat leadership structure and not a base director/leader. For many reasons this has been a hard decision to make, but personally I believe it is the right direction for us as a base to be heading. I look forward to having more information to share with you about this process in the coming weeks as we figure it out. Thanks you for your prayers for all of us YWAM folk, we appreciate it greatly.

I am now going to try and sleep...