US MIDWEST

Risks

It was a summer of risks. There was a financial risk: Would I raise all the support I needed and have enough money for school in the fall?

Then there were physical risks: shark tanks, rappelling down a 50-foot wall, mountaintop thunderstorms, white water rafting and scorpions in camp bathrooms. Most of these happened on our time off, and were considered by some to be fun!

Risk is the stuff that a YMI summer is made of. I was an intern leader on the team assigned to the US Midwest. We toured Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas, and were involved in a variety of ways: kids' clubs, working with youth, volunteering in the inner city of Denver and counselling at camps for inner city kids.

The most fearsome risk I took this summer was a spiritual one: obedience. At orientation, obedience meant confessing secret sins to someone. In the summer, it meant asking two homeless men out to lunch, washing the feet of a team member and asking for forgiveness. Obedience also meant cleaning up some of the junk in my life that was keeping me separated from God. Were the risks I took this summer worth it? Definitely. My faith will never be the same again.

Deanne Reist, New Dundee, Ont., Bethel Evangelical Missionary Church

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