Good Afternoon Prayer Team!
I'm excited to bring you this week's update on our Short Term Mission Preparations for our team going to Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan!
We had a great training session yesterday continuing on the study of our book - Helping without Hurting in Short Term Missions and putting plans in place for both weeks of our time there. Jean and Beatrice lead us through a lesson focused on an understanding that not all poverty is created equal - that people going to serve communities as part of outreach can be for several reasons:
Relief - Urgent and temporary provisions of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering
Rehabilitation - An effort to restore people back to pre-crisis state
Development - Walking with people across time in way that move all people involved closer to being in right relationship with God and each other.
Our trip will be focused on a development approach. We further discussed the definitions of two different kinds of development service opportunities.
Needs Based Development - An approach that focuses on the deficits and shortcomings in life of a person or community - the solutions come from the outside.
Asset Based Development - Focusing on identifying, mobilizing and connecting the God-given capabilities, skills and resources of a person or community to solve individual or community problems.
We feel God is truly leading us to be prayerfully considering our approach to being asset based in our preparations and time spent with the people of Meadow Lake. We reflected on a part of our book yesterday that states that Healthy, effective poverty alleviation approaches start by recognizing and celebrating the gifts and resources God has already placed in a community, weather natural resources, people, families, neighbourhood associations, schools, businesses, governments or individual skills. This isn't ignoring the problems that exist, but rather it is recognizing that there are assets available within the community and its people to attack the problems and create new opportunities. The exciting process of asset-based development is focused on identifying, mobilizing and connecting these assets.
Team prayer for the week related to these preparations:
Pray for the work that God is already doing in the community of Meadow Lake, and that he would give us open eyes and hearts to recognize that work and see the gifts He has given to them. Help us to have wisdom as we prepare to enter the community, coming alongside of our brothers and sisters at Turning Point Youth Center, Door of Hope, and the other organizations we work with as they engaged in the long term process of poverty alleviation. Also continued prayer over preparation of supplies and our donation drive.
