2023 Short-Term Missions Mid-Summer Update

So far this summer, one Short-Term Missions team has traveled to St. Georges, Quebec to serve the local children at the St. Georges English for Kids Camp and six teams have served at the Boardwalk Chapel in Wildwood, NJ. Here's what they have to say about serving the Lord, reaching out to the lost, and spending a part of their summer on mission!

Olivia Durham, member of Covenant OPC (Barre, VT) and director of English for Kids in St. Georges, Quebec, writes:

We had an amazing, exhausting, wonderful week full of every ounce of energy we could all put into both the camp and time with each other. Several of the teens came up to me in the last few days to thank me for inviting them!

Each year God is answering our prayers with an outpouring of a sweeter Spirit of service. Spending time with these covenant youth makes me quite optimistic for the future church! Saints are being cultivated in these young volunteers, as well as the children they teach. With prayer and watchfulness, the harvest will come in; it is showing already. Those who sow with weeping will harvest with great joy (Ps. 126).

English for Kids Camp was hosted by 23 volunteers and served nearly 50 children.

Shiloh OPC (Raleigh, NC) member Calvin Hughes, a young man who served at the Boardwalk Chapel early in the summer, reflected on his time at the Chapel as a whole, including a particularly memorable conversation:

If someone is considering coming to the Boardwalk Chapel, they should expect to pray, and they should expect to evangelize to people. Don’t expect to just be there for the training and then just be quiet. I really enjoyed the evangelism. I was anxious as I thought about coming, but all the training empowered me. I could just share the Gospel; it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Expect to be empowered! And if you’re just scared to talk to people, this is a great place to work through that. It can be a really good growing experience.

I had so many conversations in my two nights at the Chapel. One night, I handed a tract to this guy and his friend. The friend responded, ‘Wait, wait, wait. This is about the gospel? Tell me: does baptism save you?’ I said, ‘No, baptism doesn’t save you.’ He didn’t really get it at first—it took a while, but I think he really did get it at the end. I went through the Gospel with him and explained the whole tract. They both got tracts at the end. That was really encouraging.

Landri Shope, member of Shiloh OPC in Raleigh, NC, shares one impactful interaction she and her friend had on the Boardwalk:

I was with another member of our youth group, Elizabeth. She was having a conversation with a young man who claimed he was an atheist. He started off the conversation saying that he knew more about Christianity than any of us. He also said that he never read the Bible. By the end of the conversation, he changed his position, saying that he didn’t really know enough about the Bible to be able to say whether or not there was a God. We asked if he would read the Bible and he said yes. We started to hand him the New Testament, and he saw the whole Bible under Elizabeth’s arm. He said, ‘Is that the whole thing? I want the whole thing.’ So he took it, and we bookmarked John. We saw him again the next night, and he said he was going to read it. It was really cool.

Tatiana Hamersma, member of Covenant PCA (Holland, MI) and a first-time volunteer at the Boardwalk Chapel, recalls her own experience on the Boardwalk and the many people she encountered:

The group I was with ended up talking to a girl who was Roman Catholic. Her friends were not super interested, and I think it was really brave of her to stay for half an hour and talk. She just wanted to know more and more, and I thought that was super cool. Later on, I had another conversation with a worker on the boardwalk. She came out during her break and was super engaged. At the end, she said, ‘That’s such an amazing message. I love it.’ She hadn’t heard the gospel before. There were many conversations like that where I hope the people went away with a deeper understanding and wanting to learn more.

Tatiana also shared about what someone should expect when they come to the Boardwalk Chapel, writing,

You should expect to get to know the people you’re with very well. That was another thing I really loved about [the Chapel]. Because I’m a newcomer [to my youth group], I had an awesome opportunity to get to know the people I was with on a much deeper level, which was important to me. The prayer meetings were also such an amazing time to see God working through everyone, his Holy Spirit moving through all of us, and all of us coming together in a joint effort to spread his gospel. Then it was so much fun to participate in the singing and the nightly program. We had so much fun practicing, picking out who is going to do which skits. Although I’m a little excited to go home and sleep in my own bed, I’m going to be thinking about this forever. It was amazing and I hope I can come back next year.

Hannah Foster, a first-year youth chaperone for the youth of New Hope OPC in Frederick, MD, writes about how impactful the apologetics and evangelism training was as well as her renewed perception of the Chapel, saying,

The youth group wouldn’t stop talking about how they loved the apologetics training, and how it was really interesting and helpful. Towards the end of the week, everyone was kind of tired. But they still found the training interesting and applicable to things they’d heard out there [on the Boardwalk] and to things they were wrestling with personally. The teachers asked a lot of questions, and I think that helped the youth to be able to think through questions on their own and answer them. The kids talked about how they enjoyed a lot of the real-life examples that the teachers gave. By the end, they could summarize what they were taught and even go to Scripture to support their statements, which was exactly what they needed when they went out to evangelize.

To be very honest, having never been here before and only hearing about it I thought, ‘They have this thing called the Heaven and Hell machine that they set out for people. What is that about? What kind of methodology is this that we’re working with here? What is their theology like?’ Then, getting here, I was absolutely blown away. The first thing I saw was that the people here live and breathe the Gospel, day after day. That’s just the air that we breathe here. There is biblical, rich teaching that is faithful to the Word of God. They practice what they preach in a Biblical, winsome, and brave way. There’s a culture of prayer that’s been a huge emphasis that I’ve seen, too. It’s offered us, as first-time visitors, raw, hands-on observation and actual practice for ourselves. All my doubts and fears have been put to rest about what this place stands for. It’s been a huge blessing. I would highly commend this place to anyone interested.

To learn more about the Short-Term Missions trips taking place this summer and in the future, visit OPCSTM.org/opportunity/.