Mission Boat takes God’s love to remote B.C. communities
PARKSVILLE, BC—Several times a year, Marcus Huff takes a mission team to Klemtu, a small First Nations community on Swindle Island off the coast of northern British Columbia. They know him so well by now, it almost feels like a homecoming.
"Individuals come up and say, 'Welcome home,'" he says. "I've been traditionally adopted into two different families in Klemtu, which provides me awesome opportunities for ministries within those families specifically, and within the community."
Huff is executive director of the B.C. Mission Boat Society. Launched 13 years ago as a ministry of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Parksville on Vancouver Island, it organizes, transports and leads mission teams to five remote First Nations communities along the B.C. coast—Bella Bella, Ehattesaht, Kingcome, Kyuquot, and Klemtu.
For one week each trip, the teams work alongside local Christians and church leaders.
"We help give them a spiritual boost or a break, if that's what they need," Huff says, "such as bringing in extra people that can do more stuff with children and youth when they don't have the resources and ability to do that."
"There's such an awesome willingness to work together with us. Like they don't come in and just take over," says Glenna Hunt, lay pastor of the Pentecostal church in Bella Bella.
"They help with Sunday school, and that brings in more children to the Bible stories, the games, the songs, and the different activities. And the children invite their friends."
"We have had mission teams come back for six, seven years repeatedly. This will be the tenth consecutive year that Concordia University in Edmonton has joined us," says Huff.
This summer, Shireen Bell, a member of Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Red Deer, Alberta, will be making her seventh trip to Bella Bella, bringing with her perhaps a dozen or so teenagers plus some adults.
"I was looking for a way to introduce young people to missions service in Canada," she says, "so that if they were to consider going abroad, this would be a way for them to do that without leaving the country, but yet seeing something culturally very different."
What they see, Bell says, is the strength of these communities, especially "the way they really thrive and take care of each other, whereas we tend to have a much more nuclear way of being and thinking and living our lives. It's a very positive learning experience."
Before they head out, teams are given sensitivity training in First Nations culture. And despite the good rapport built up from past visits, the society still seeks the permission of band leaders to be on their land before coming again. They have never been refused.
Nor do the relationships end when the teams leave. "We spend a dedicated amount of time," says Huff, "logged in to social media, if they have needs or just want to talk."
More than that, he says some of the youth and adults they serve are now themselves serving other communities.
"We've had them join us on mission trips. It's really neat to see their faith grow."
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