Cssm Ministries Mm Newsletter Fall 2007

MANITOBA

MISSIONARY FALL 2007 Reaching our province . . .

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s this is being written Hurricane Dean has been ravaging the Caribbean and the east coast of Mexico. The latest word is that it has been down listed to a ‘tropical storm’ status from the once ‘level 5 hurricane’ status with winds reaching as high as 260 km/hour it had when it was at the peak of its fury. Many lives were lost and billions of dollars damage done as this devastating storm moved through its life cycle. In the spiritual battle we constantly find ourselves in as Christians Satan wreaks his havoc as well claiming lost lives and causing untold damage along his life cycle. We must never forget that he is the present ruler of this world but despite his havoc-wreaking ways, there is a place of peace and rest in the eye of the storm! And, it is this place of calm that all those in our summer ministries have been encouraging our many campers and ministry attendees to seek out and find along their journey through life. Our full-time and seasonal missionaries have been working hard throughout this past summer to ‘present the Gospel (Good News)’, ‘evangelize the Lost (those without Christ), and ‘disciple the converted’! Be sure to read about the many storms faced and ‘centers of calm’ found in the summer-end articles written for this Manitoba Missionary update.

for Christ! FALL/WINTER/SUMMER CSSM Ministries Manitoba Branch 200 -189 Henderson Hwy. Phone: (204) 668 - CSSM (2776) Fax: (204) 667-1496 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.cssm.ca/mb National Office - Winnipeg, MB

It continues to amaze me as I travel from camp to camp and ministry point to ministry point throughout the summer how many people are involved in making all this happen. I used to think it was hundreds but lately as I become more observant (comes with age, I guess) I am more and more convince it’s in the thousands. From prayer warriors to financial supporters to kitchen and maintenance volunteers to our in-the-trench front line cabin leaders (counselors) and everyone in between, it takes a mass of people to make our ministries happen! Thank-you so much for being a part! I’m not too sure where they came up with the name HERricane Dean but, regardless, we need to realize that although the ‘eye of the storm’ can be a safe place for a period of time, there are many storms ahead that need to be battled through before we come to that eternal place of peace and calm. Might we set our minds and hearts on continuing to ‘grow in the Lord’ while teaching others to do the same as we, together, face whatever storms are ahead!

“And there arose a great storm … …and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” Mark 4 v 37 - 39 “Keep Encouraged!” Dean Davidson Manitoba Branch Director

Shine Like Stars

By: Rod Reimer - ROSEAU RIVER

“Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.” Philippians 2:14 &15 “Shine like stars” was the theme verse for Roseau River Bible Camp for 2007 and there where lots of shining moments. The first star goes to an amazing God who answered many prayers: provided a camp speaker with 1 week notice, 9 cabin leaders within 4 days, provided health for the ministry workers, safety with only a few minor incidents and blessed us richly in ways too numerous to mention or remember. A second star goes to a great ministry team. I started as director in late spring, not sure what to expect from the ministry workers but they have been amazing. The ministry team has given of themselves and invested greatly into the lives of the 1000+ campers this year. A theme that was used often in team meetings was RELATIONSHIPS. First and for most we need to work on having a strong, growing relationship with Christ, second with each other and finally with our

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xperience It! Richard & Carma Bankert - DAUPHIN

As our second summer at Dauphin Bible Camp winds down we have so much to be thankful for! We have had an excellent summer and have had the privilege of influencing so many lives and all for the glory of God. One of the highlights has been the addition of Brooklynn Dawn to our family. She was born May 1st and has experienced her first summer of camp from our arms. It has been a privilege to watch her grow and we are looking forward to what the future will hold. Our summer theme was ‘experience it!’. We were to experience the Christian life and not just talk about it and that really came out in putting God first, “do all things for the glory of God, not yours”. Another theme that emerged, perhaps because it was a personal area of growth was simply trusting in God; allowing Him to work in His time as opposed to rushing in my way. This summer God brought 681 campers through the doors so far. We still have a final teen camp and teen retreat to go as I write this. Many came to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and I thank Him for that. I also know that many, especially the summer missionaries, grew in Christ this summer. He is truly amazing! There was one point during the summer when Dauphin was hit with a major storm. There was rain, lightning, hail and plow winds that tore through our area and right over top of the camp. As I stood on the deck and watched the storm roll in I prayed for three specific things: Carma as she was driving back; that God would surround and protect the camp; and, that the campers, ages 6-8, would sleep through the storm. God protected us and put a dome overtop of

campers. The ministry team has done this and they’ve been able to model Christ’s love to the campers and draw them all closer to GOD. A star also goes to the campers. They came, they heard and they were challenged to live the life that God intended for them. Summer is basically over and I can’t believe how fast the time has gone! Thank you for your prayers and support and please continue to pray for RRBC’s Board as they prepare for a planning session in fall; for the follow-up program that it will be effective in the discipleship of the campers; and, for funds to come in to meet the budget and our capitol building projects as well. Thanks and God Bless!

the camp and around Carma. She drove through the middle of the storm with out even a scratch. As I looked around I watched lightning strike in all directions including above us, but none came down to hit the camp. Giant trees were broken and uprooted on the road to and from the property, but the camp grounds remained untouched. Tennis ball sized hail that destroyed windows in Dauphin did not even touch camp. All I can do is praise God for His protection of us, and, how He allowed all the young campers to sleep through the storm. God is good!



This winter brings excitement as we are looking to build on many of the plans that were started last year. Our website: Upgrading it again to help reach out to today’s campers and provide resources for parents. A Skating Rink: Hoping to build one so we may have the possibility of having skating times with kids from the Dauphin area. New kitchen/dining hall building Plans: This would enable us to have year-round camp facilities. Camp expansion: expanding for next year in an attempt to reach more campers for Christ.

Please keep Dauphin Bible Camp in your prayers. Pray for wisdom in our decisions, an expanding financial support base to help cover the cost of ministry, for prayer warriors to fight along side, for many more campers and the summer missionaries to reach them! I thank God for each of you, “blessings on you”! “I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.” Psalm 57:9-11

Being Used By God!? By: Don & Charlotte Roe - GIMLI

Do we feel ‘used by God’ or are we ‘being used by God’? Our summer missionaries had to answer this question every day. Our answer determines our usefulness to Him. It also determines whether we burn out or are refreshed. Some of my memories of this summer that stand out: Going into chapel on Thursday evening, after sending 5 children home that week and correcting seemingly endless swearing and misbehavior, and watching 90 kids aged 10-12 praising God with all their hearts and mind and strength! Having an 11 year old boy take me aside, after being after him for bullying and being disrespectful all week and share the “secret” that his cabin was going to win the best cabin award that week because he had memorized so many verses. Listening to the girls joy and excitement as I drove them to their overnight tent-out that they had won. Having to restrain a boy several times because he couldn’t control himself—and the times talking with him afterwards. Watching the ministry team grow in confidence in themselves and God as they minister to some very needy kids. Last December, when we were designing this year’s shirts, we were discussing whether we should have a Bible verse on it and what it should be. I jokingly picked one at random - Habakuk 1:9 “and they all came bent on violence”. We had a good laugh at how appropriate that “theme verse” would be for us. We see so many children here that are angry and acting out that it is sometimes difficult to look past the rebellious behavior and see the hurting child inside, crying for help, that God sees. One 11 year old got into a fight with another boy but then went wild, seemingly wanting to kill anyone or break anything in sight. We protected the other children and tried talking him down for over half an hour until he put his fist through a window. As George and I moved to restrain him before he could hurt himself more he curled into the fetal position and in a baby’s voice begged “don’t kill me”. As we comforted him I cried because of all the violence that boy had experienced at the hands of his father. He did not leave camp “rejoicing in the Lord”; but we trust that God will preserve the love that he received while he was here. We praise God that He chose us to be used to share His love in this way.

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Spectacular Summer Gordon & Jennifer Giesbrecht - VALLEY VIEW

It truly has been an exciting summer! What an honor it is to serve God in such an exciting ministry here at camp! God truly blessed us with some outstanding workers! We made some changes to our program this year that we believe will improve our ministry. Added a Leadership Development Program for 15 -16 year olds. 1st week: Start out with a solid grounding of Biblical teaching, leadership techniques and activity skills development. They also learned how these new traits can be used together to share Christ with those they lead. 2nd week: Some interaction with cabin groups and more sessions about cabin leading and Bible lessons.



3rd week: Putting their new skills to work in cabins as junior cabin leaders. This program will help grow our own summer missionaries and put strong leaders back into churches and communities. Teen camp change: Camp was split into 2 age groups, a Jr. Teen (13-15) and a Sr. Teen (15-17). Sr. Teen was ran more like a youth retreat and it went over very well! We did this so that we could better minister to the teens at each level. This summer also brought a lot of growth to our intermediate camp ages 8-12 as both these weeks were full to capacity. What an amazing summer!

As everyone goes home and a quiet settles over our camp, please join us in praying for those who served this summer and are now back in school or at work. Pray for those kids who came and heard the gospel for the first time; that they will continue to have that desire to know more. Also pray for all those seeds that were sown and watered; pray for the growth that will follow. Please pray for us as we change over to “retreat” mode and get back into hosting rental groups; and into the preparing of our toboggan hill and its schedule. It is hard to believe that another summer is complete, however with that said, we are feeling more excited and settled in the ministry God has called us to!

Thank you for your continued prayers!

Amazing God

The Werry Family - BEAVER LAKE

Our first year directing camp came and went way too quickly! We had many challenges, amazing memories to look back on and a whole lot of fun. On one of our many trips to and from camp I came across a song that God told me was our ‘theme’ for camp this summer: I love you more than the sun and the stars that I taught how to shine, You are mine and you shine for me too, I love you yesterday and today and tomorrow, I’ll say it again and again I love you more through the joy and the pain, I love you more. It’s amazing how God works because all through camp that was the message. God made the sun and the stars and he taught them how to shine. He wants us to shine too! Cabin Leaders took advantage of this and had devotionals outside under the stars. 2 Corinthians 4:7 “We now have a light that shines in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay pots containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God and not from ourselves.”

God used the same message through each speaker. Each was unique and the kids really understood. We expressed to each and every one of them that they are special, came to camp because God chose them to, that they have a purpose and that God loves them regardless of their situations or past. Beaver Lake Bible Camp’s 2nd annual canoe camp was a hit again this year with a 48 km trip around ‘Amisk Lake’ (which stands for ‘Beaver Lake’ in Cree). Despite all the weather glitches, God provided the strength and the endurance to press on to the night’s destination. The trip was a huge success not just for the campers but for the leaders as well. We touched base on many teenage issues. All the campers listened, were involved in many of the discussions and had questions relating to what God had to say about each situation. BLBC would like to thank all our helpers. Especially our Beaverette family (ministry team), and, we won’t forget our beloved Muskrat. We would like to extend an invitation to anyone who would like to join and experience our BLBC Family. Just give us a call; we would love to see you here next summer. God Bless!

“Dear Children, let’s not merely say that we love each other, let us show our love by our actions.” 1 John 3:1

Upcoming Events Guide Seniors Music Night

DATE: Friday October19, 2007 TIME: 2 p.m. Practices start (Seniors welcome to listen) 7 p.m. Program starts (orchestra prelude will likely start 6:30 or so) LOCATION: Winkler Senior Centre, Winkler, MB

Low German Music Fundraisers! Coming to Winkler and Steinbach in November. Dates & locations TBA (to be announced)! WATCH FOR THEM!

FInancial

Update

CSSM Manitoba Branch (October 2006 - August 2007)



ACTUAL

SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR

INCOME

$207,653.61

$193, 521.29

EXPENDITURES

$223,701.48

$210, 711.59

TOTAL

-$16, 047.87

-$17,190.30

Did You Know?! CSSM Manitoba Information



Each month (Sept. through May) a group of people join together to pray for CSSM ministries in Manitoba and across Canada.

Why not join them? Call 668-2776(CSSM) for a prayer guide that is prepared for this important group of supporters! Prayer is upholding God’s work and workers before Him, and, in responding in Praise and Thanksgiving at seeing Him work.

Each summer we conclude with a Camp Directors’ (Ministry Leaders’) meeting to review the past summer of ministry and plan ahead for the fall-winter-spring ministry. Pray that the right decisions are made and that we have great discernment as to how to carry out the plans formulated! The fiscal year for all CSSM Ministries ends Sept. 30. Pray that all the ministry points will end their year in the black and not the red so the gospel will continue to go forth unabated by financial shortfalls. This year marks the 80th Anniversary of the Canadian Sunday School Mission. In early November all the full-time missionaries will gather together in Pinawa, MB for their ‘once every five years’ Personnel Conference. Pray for this time of spiritual renewal, fellowship and celebration for our CSSM Ministries Family! We’ve just spent considerable time and expense to reduce our mailing list to who we think are the ones who really want to be on it. Pray that we continue to be sensitive to our constituency members’ wishes while being good stewards of their trust and support.

Neighborhood Bible Day Camp Ela Klaue - CSSM MB Children’s Ministry

My first summer as a Day Camps and Follow-up Coordinator has been filled with many activities and exciting visions for the future. Standardation of several different forms, posters and brochures has greatly contributed to the smooth operation of this year’s Day Camps. I am also thankful to have received 150 Gideon Bibles for free distribution. I praise God for the loving body of Christ that welcomed us and worked along side with us in 8 rural communities. As a special element of some Day Camps, the ILD (Introductory Leadership Development) encouraged teens to take on several roles of responsibility. One of these roles included the creation and recording of audio dramas. These dramas were used as backdrops for the camp’s puppet shows and will potentially end up on our Phone-a-Story line as follow-up material.

I also thank God for our faithful and enthusiastic Day Camp teacher, Rosario Klassen, and the rest of the team helpers. Our team included Ashley Friesen, Corey Klassen, Dan Klaue and Monika Kaczorowska. For your information, we are still several thousand dollars short of our Rosario and her husband, Corey, were excited for the opportunity to do Branch Office obligations to the ‘Student Worker Assistance Program’ ministry work together as a married couple team in Pierson, and I was (SWAP). DO HELP US continue to encourage those who served with equally excited to do the same with my husband, Dan,in Goodlands. This brought a unique aspect to those Day Camps this year as young us as summer missionaries as they return to schooling costs that are boys had a chance to meet and to be led by Christian male role models. becoming more and more burdensome as the years go by! THANK-YOU! However, the most exciting part of the Day Camps for Rosario and ALSO: going by how we ended our fiscal year (end of Sept.) last year myself was to see positive growth in the children we met last year. (approx. minus $8,000.00), we encourage you to consider an extra gift at this time to help keep us from going further in debt (as possibly indicated I’m looking forward to walking alongside these young people as they looking at the figures above) at the end of this fiscal year. MUCH grow towards God’s direction throughout the rest of this year and for APPRECIATED!! [NOTE: much of our income and expenditure comes years to come. Let’s pray that these children answer the invitations in and out through our summer missionary assistance programs.] to learn more about God through the “U.B. David & I’ll B. Jonathan” correspondence lessons and the Phone-A-Story ministry. The Lord has ATTENTION: If wanting your gift to go to a specific camp, please mark clearly been at work, encouraging us onward and seeding His Word and it clearly on your donation insert so we can pass it on to the camp His Love into many hearts across Manitoba. We praise God for choosing indicated. Otherwise, donations received go for the operation of the us to be His messengers of His ‘Good News’ and we’ll continue to trust Him to help us in our work for Him as He grows His seeds of love. Provincial Office and the services it provides.

All Things Are Possible

Howard & Kathy Weir - TURTLE MOUNTAIN

Nothing is as remotely powerful as when God’s people go to the ONE who rules a hundred billion galaxies to focus His love and power on a ministry, person, situation or need. We are deeply humbled and grateful for those who come alongside us through prayer, finances and active involvement. Your partnership enables the ministry to impact the lives of staff and campers for His glory! We rejoice at the opportunities God has given Turtle Mountain Bible Camp the past 60 years in sharing the truths of the Gospel with precious campers. This message has not only changed the eternaldestination of many campers, but has given their lives hope and meaning. Many were very receptive to the message and as children have given their hearts to Christ, we can never underestimate how far reaching the effects will be as they impact their family, friends and world. It is always encouraging to be contacted by individuals who have witnessed a change in the lives of campers and staff when they return home. As part of our camp promotion in the spring we showed a DVD entitled, “Facing the Giants”. It emphasized that: “WITH GOD, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE”. We can truly say we have evidenced the prayers of God’s people and His intervention in ways that are nothing but miraculous. A few weeks prior to camp starting, we only had about 25% of our summer missionaries in place. Once again God has proved

Himself faithful in providing an incredible, united, godly and focused staff to meet each need. Seven staff came from Ontario and Shirley, a dear Hutterite lady (who left the colony in June) provided consistency in the kitchen all summer. She won everyone’s heart and was such a testimony in her deep hunger for God and desire to learn and grow in her faith. She was such an encouragement to Kathy who faced new challenges in preparing menus and food orders this summer. Megan, a blind cabin leader, had such a positive attitude and listening ear. Her passion for Christ and the campers and perseverance amidst her ‘challenge’ was an incredible testimony to us all. God enabled the ministry to side two more cabins, install a safety barrier on the climbing wall, relocate several buildings, make some waterfront upgrades and build a new and much needed washroom facility (see picture). Only God could have raised up the needed volunteers and finances to see these projects to completion. We still need volunteers to help us complete the basement of the staff/guest accommodation. We praise God for the safety, wisdom and staff unity He provided. PRAYER is the language of dependency on God! It is through prayer that every victory, provision and breakthrough comes from God’s throne room. Our hearts desire is to give HIM the glory as He has done ‘exceeding, abundantly, above anything we could ask or imagine!’