Youth With A Mission Northern Ireland

Recently, I returned from a 6 week trip to India and Burundi where Erin Seibel and myself visited the Belfast Outreach teams. What a trip! Not only did Erin and I have so much fun visiting each team, but it was an awesome experience to be able to get out of the office and just get my hands dirty…literally.

INDIA OVERVIEW
Visiting the team in India was a great way to start our trip. While we were only in New Delhi for 3 weeks (the team had been in Mumbai for 2 weeks prior to our arrival and then headed onto Kashmir after we left), it was all I needed to fall in love with India. The team was involved in a variety of ministries there:
- helping out some Canadian business bakery owners who needed some marketing done in their neighborhoods as well as some serious cleaning behind their business building
- relationship building with Muslims in a local university
- working in slums sharing about Forgiveness
- leading worship at churches and youth groups (they did great considering the language barrier!)
On top of all this, we were kept quite busy by Indian hospitality. If we weren’t invited to someone’s house for a meal, then it was a wedding! Erin and I got to experience 3 weddings in our 3 weeks in New Delhi.

BURUNDI OVERVIEW

I had a great time in Burundi with the other Belfast outreach team. We spent time at Youth for Christ orphanage in Gitega (centre of the country) with 23 orphans, their ‘mothers’, and the orphanage workers. We did some manual labour there to help build a health clinic and from there, our team split in two to cover different ministry needs in different locations. I went up to Kayanza in north Burundi where we stayed with a couple who works for Food for the Hungry. We got to visit a pilot project for a Fair Trade Coffee Washing Station! What a great experience! It was great to meet all the coffee workers and see how coffee is produced. If only I liked coffee! I’m a tea drinker, through and through – I don’t even like the smell of coffee! Sorry, all you coffee lovers! The team in Kayanza also shared in a couple of different churches (with a variety of denominations) about Forgiveness and Reconciliation. The feedback was tremendous with many invitations to return to Burundi to teach more on both subjects…this is quite significant considering the church is extremely divided in Burundi. It was encouraging to hear the different denominations asking us to teach them how to love each other and live peacefully with each other. Northern Ireland has a lot to offer the country of Burundi.

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