If you are interested in becoming a participant in Blueprints, you must attend one of these orientation sessions.

Here are all the details you need to know:

• When: Call Paul or Meshell at 416.901.1625 and they will set up a convenient time to do an orientation session with you.
• Where: Second floor of 265 Eddystone Avenue (see map below)
• Any questions: email us at blueprints@yunorthyork.com

View Larger Map

On the day that I first went into Willowtree I had made plans to arrive with my tool box at around 10am. A long-time resident, also a friend, was to meet me and help introduce me to the community. But on my way I found out that she was going to the hospital with her sick daughter. I no longer had a guide.

While I was scared to go into Willowtree, I was frightened even more by the fact that my only contact with “them” had abandoned me. Would I get there and fail to meet anyone? Or, worse yet, meet youth who promptly rejected me? What was I doing!? Let me go back to looking at those maps!

Well, God is extraordinarily talented. There’s nothing like being forced to trust him. As I approached Willowtree and prayed that kids would be somewhere I could meet them and that I’d be given a way to get involved in their lives, God already had things pretty much worked out. And had maybe been prepping this for years.

When I was growing up my brothers and I would build bicycle ramps, get hurt, rebuild, get more ambitious, hurt ourselves, and then do it all over again. Well, when I arrived in the middle of all these buildings, the homes of the youth that I wanted to serve, and no kids were there, I got worried. Then I spotted a young guy on a bike and thought: hey, maybe he needs his bike repaired because I, conveniently, have a tool box that can do just that! So I followed him and saw that he was headed to the basketball court where he and his friends were building a small and rather dangerous ramp. I hesitated, turned around a couple times, pretended to be a little lost, then said aloud: “Do you want to make that ramp better? ‘Cause I could help you do that.”

And I was in.

After three days of repairing bikes, building and tearing down ramps, talking, playing manhunt and mediating between a wielder of a BB gun and the prospective human target, we can only begin to imagine with much excitement what lies ahead. // Jesse J

Don Mills/Finch Community Youth Outreach Worker

Youth Unlimited (Toronto Youth For Christ), in partnership with Immanuel Baptist Church, is looking for a Community Youth Outreach Worker with a passion for community outreach in an urban setting, a love for the local church and a heart for young people. The Community Youth Outreach Worker will have strong relational skills, and will function well in a team environment. An undergraduate degree is expected, a Masters of Divinity is an asset, and experience in mentoring and discipling young people in a relational ministry setting is helpful.

YU is a Christian youth-serving agency that invests in wholistically developing young people and is dedicated to seeing communities transformed through the youth with whom we work. Through YU’s partnership with Immanuel Baptist Church (IBC), which has been active in Toronto for over 140 years, the Community Youth Outreach Worker will join both the growing team of YU staff in North York, as well as IBC’s youth ministry that is strongly rooted in the Don Mills-Finch neighbourhood of North York and is committed to connecting with the local community youth through various ministry programs.

The Community Youth Outreach Worker will be under the direction and mentorship of the Pastor of Leadership Development, who has served in the community for over twenty years. Youth Unlimited will also provide training, support and supervision to ensure an effective ongoing partnership and the personal development and wholeness of the Community Youth Outreach Worker.

The salary of this staff position is determined on a scale based on education and experience and is funded on a missionary basis—requiring the gathering of a personal support team. Immanuel Baptist Church is committed to contributing support for one-quarter of the Community Youth Outreach Worker’s salary.

Please send a cover letter and resume to yu@youthunlimitedgta.com.

Contact:
Sherri Petrovich
50 Gervais Drive, Suite 302
Toronto, ON
M3C 1Z3
Phone: 416.383.1477
Fax: 416.383.1447

Learn more about this partnership here and about Immanuel Baptist Church at www.immanuelbaptist.ca.

Just the other day I was sent a quote from Jean Vanier about idealism. Interestingly enough, I have spent over the past five years or so, since my Pyschology of Personality class and university in general, mulling over in my head – like a cow chews its cud – how truly idealistic I am. And according to Vanier, giving ourselves over to ideals is the part of life where children are found, rather than adults.

In a way, that’s saying children believe in Santa Claus, but adults don’t because they know the aisle in the store where that remote control car came from, and they know how expensive that PSP was.

But I am 24. I’m not a child…right?

Here’s what I’m thinking. A chap named Eric Ericsson described what he saw as the life stages that most humans go through. The two stages that concern me right now are the “adolescent” stage (one that I have passed through…more or less), and the “young adulthood” stage (the one that I have mostly passed into, I hope).

What intrigues me about the “adolescent” stage are the two traits that Ericsson saw as the fundamental challenge for everyone at that point in their life: Identity vs. Role Confusion. He describes an adolescent’s tendency to devote themselves to ideals which are conflict free, unimpeachable, and strong as fortresses. Great ideas, philosophies and broad statements were enormously attractive to me at this stage because they seem to give order to a chaotic world, or fly like an eagle above the messiness of the earth. They make a mockery of “reality” which is not conflict free but confusing, contradictory and unpleasant. I don’t like confusing. But I’m not a die-hard capitalist either.

He says that folks in this stage need to discover their individuality which is separate from those they grew up with, and identify themselves as members of a wider society. In this process we need to establish a “philosophy of life” which makes us susceptible to idealisms and eagle-like understanding of things in which we have no experience. We easily, and wrongly, substitute fortresses for seemingly defenseless little towns because our very limited experience says that these fortresses are like the Titanic: can’t be sunk.

I think I am full of ideals. And the process over the last few years has stripped away much of my naivety to the point that I am rather embarrassed that I thought I knew so much, and probably alienated people with my strong and absolutist language about life.

And this process has brought me to YU. It would be very easy, but equally as wrong, to come into this ministry with an idealistic, and unrealistic, approach. It would be foolish to think that the Willowdale region in which I am now working will be transformed in 6 months, or even 2 years (or, sadly, even 20 years).

The stage I’m in, and the stage that many of my coworkers in North York are in, happens to be the one that struggles over “Intimacy and Solidarity vs. Isolation”. The thing is, once we have figured out a little of who we are as individuals and that our great answers to life are not as great as we thought they were, then we will do one of two things: move closer to people or move further away from them. Either we’ll cling to ideals that, like a fortress or an eagle, separates us and isolates us from the world, or we’ll knock down the walls and come in for a landing so that we can be where the people are; where our battlements and soaring-in-the-clouds won’t keep us from one another.

The only “idea” that seems to keep my feet planted is the knowledge that servanthood breaks barriers and lifts other people up rather than protecting only me or letting me fly alone among the mountain tops. The only “philosophy” that encourages me to seek solidarity and intimacy is the knowledge that all are made in God’s image, and that Jesus has made a way for us to achieve the otherwise unachievable.

So, as I begin my ministry in Willowdale with Youth Unlimited, it is my prayer that, as Vanier said, we would “struggle to be truthful and free and to be servant-leaders like Jesus.” And that we all would “grow from spiritual childhood and adolescence to spiritual maturity, and discover the presence of God in the pain of reality.” THAT is no Santa Claus idealism. // Jesse J

• Tim Horton’s at 370 Steeles Avenue West – gift baskets
• SilverCity Yorkdale – movie passes and free popcorn
• Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Grande – movie passes
• Boston Pizza at 180 Rimrock Road – gift certificate
• Bob & Ruth Keller – Toronto FC tickets and scarves
• JDS Insurance – Blue Jays’ tickets
• three clothing – staff t-shirts

Your generosity makes a difference in the lives of young people in North York. Thank you!

Thank you to all the Racers! Sponsorship pledges are still coming in, but we have raised over $4,000 of the staff and ministries of YU in North York. Thank you to all those who contributed for their generosity in helping young people reach their full life potential.

Book off your calendars for the Amazing Race 2011 in May!

Register now!!

My placement student Priscilla led a discussion about the movie after we watched it. The girls had lots to say about what they had seen and shared about their own experiences, both positive and negative. We concluded our time by looking at this passage from the Psalms, the ancient prayer book of the Jewish people:

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.

In the midst of the challenges the girls face to live up to what the world tells them is attractive, we shared with them that God created each of us and He didn’t make any mistakes. So much of a young woman’s confidence is wrapped up in how others perceive and treat them.

Our program is designed to help young women discover themselves as creative beings made in the image of God and precious in His sight. We seek to build up their confidence as they succeed in discovering and developing their creative gifts. We also seek to build a safe and healthy community among them, that they might be able to care for and encourage each other.

May we remember that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made.” // Karen R