Please continually pray that God's covering of protection will be on them and that He will give an abundance of wisdom and joy as they work to do His will.
Archie & Cindy Kenyon, Sean(6), Liam(2) & Caleb(infant)
Toronto Director, Power to Change - Students
Our mission is to change the world by helping students discover Jesus. We long for the day when no student in Toronto graduates without an opportunity to hear the gospel. To this end, we give direction to a team of 20 staff and over 250 students with a heart to reach the 250,000 university and college students in the GTA. We have movements at U of T, York, Ryerson and several smaller GTA campuses. In the last two years, God has launched new groups at six schools.
Often in partnership with local churches and other Christian groups, our focus is engaging students with the gospel in a way that is relevant to them whether they are atheist, agnostic, from another religion or nominally Christian. Even though it is an environment known for being hostile to Christianity, students are very open to talk about Jesus when we take the time to sincerely listen to them.
“The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. Change the university and you change the world,” declared Dr. Charles Malik, former president of the United Nations General Assembly. We have seen many signs of this after 16 years in full-time campus ministry, the last six in Toronto. After graduation, our alumni have gone on to missions in closed countries, humanitarian work around the globe, high-paying jobs on Bay Street, medical careers, pastoral ministry, leadership on other campuses and countless other spheres of influence.
Please join us in praying Christian students see their time at university as an opportunity to build God's kingdom and that those who don't know Christ yet will graduate with much more than just a degree.
Michael and Marianne Botting
We’re Michael and Marianne Botting. We are proud members of Bayview Glen Church. We met in Malawi, Africa while Mike was working for Emmanuel International and Marianne was doing her Master’s internship. We were married in Ottawa, Ontario and began looking for opportunities to serve overseas together. We both felt God’s call to serve the local church and minister in Jesus’ name in Africa, and in 2011 God placed the Acholi people of Northern Uganda on our hearts.
We are serving with Emmanuel International, an interdenominational missions organization which encourages, equips, and assists local churches around the world to serve their communities both physically and spiritually. We are living in a small town called Pader on a two year term in Northern Uganda. The Pader Restoration Resource Centre, which we work with, is a partnership between Emmanuel International and the Anglican Church of Uganda. The Centre is involved in training agricultural groups, demonstrating improved agricultural methods, building peace, organizing youth events, visiting prisoners, raising awareness about alcoholism, and the Community Health Empowerment (CHE) Ministry. And central to all of our activities is the transforming Word of God.
We are involved in all the activities of the Centre, but our primary focus is the CHE Ministry. The heart of the CHE Ministry is individuals and communities being transformed by Jesus to reconcile broken relationships and live healthy lives. CHE builds the capacity of communities to recognize and address their own needs using local resources, and helps communities to identify root causes to problems that they face. CHE combines preventative health education with evangelism, follow up, and discipleship. This pairing of physical and spiritual ministry is not an attempt to couple parallel ministries. At the core of CHE is a true conviction that the physical and spiritual health of individuals and communities are intimately related and thus the transformation of communities requires addressing both physical and spiritual needs together.
Our role in the CHE Ministry is as CHE Facilitators. We train CHE Trainers who are sent back to their home towns and villages to form local committees who set the health and spiritual priorities for their own community, and select community volunteers to act as Community Health Educators. The CHE Trainers visit the Educators weekly, teaching them one new spiritual and physical lesson that they in turn will teach in 10-15 homes each. This multiplying strategy helps CHE to spread and be sustainable.
We are humbled and amazed by what we’ve seen God doing in the CHE Ministry already. At the last training we were humbled by the stories. Stories of helping widows, orphans, and the elderly; stories of sacrificial giving; stories of churches coming together to work towards a common goal; stories of healings; stories of reconciliation; and stories of people coming to know Jesus or recommitting their lives to Christ. As Jaspher, one of the CHE Trainers said, “The CHE training has shown the strength of community. It is making the work of God easy.”
Warren & Debbie Reeve
Debbie and Warren were high school sweethearts. Debbie graduated from Thornhill Secondary and Warren from George Vanier. They dated through high school while attending the famous Bayview Glen Youth Group called High School Huddle under Marv and Lois Penner's leadership for over a decade. Pastor Arnie Reimer officiated the wedding August 18th 1984. They went on to study at Capernwray England and Austria, Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Seminary. Warren studied further at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Arrow Emerging and Arrow Executive. They have three grown children. Whitney a graduate of Tyndale University College, Courtney is competing her bachelors at Queen's and Taylor is half way through his Police Diploma at St Lawrence College.
In 1998 God moved the Reeve’s into International Church ministry. We started in Indonesia at the Bandung International church. While there for eleven years the Missional International Church Network was born. You can learn more about our network at www.micn.org. Through the connections of International churches we eventually found the Lighthouse. Then the Lighthouse found us. We started serving the Lighthouse full-time in 2010. We have spent the last twenty-eight years in pastoral ministry in Canada the United States, Indonesia and now Kuwait. Warren dreams of people movements that are initiated and supported by the International Church worldwide. The Lighthouse is leading the way.
Debbie is called to create! One way she creates is painting. Her paintings hang in private collections in Indonesia, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, France England, Korea and now Kuwait. She strives to capture the beauty of creation through watercolour paintings. When viewed through a fresh perspective she hopes that the viewer will be lifted to a new appreciation of the world around them, and to the One who created it. She is fascinated and challenged by the medium of watercolour, by both its happy and free-flow nature and the precise forethought and skill required to master it. She operates from her residential studio. Debbie's paints and teaches art. Debbie has students from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Kuwait, Canada, India, England, South Africa and Scotland. She teaches children in her "Kids Class," teens in annual Art Summer Camp," and women all year round.
In March 2012 Warren was installed as the Senior Pastor of Lighthouse church. He leads a large staff and a church that hosts 60 nationalities in 28 services on Middle East Holy Friday. Our children go to Friday school not Sunday school. People attend either the Compound services inside one of several church built venues on the same site or Extension Villa services in the basements of very large homes located throughout the city. Thousands of people attend weekly to worship God. The International Church worldwide is a collection of diaspora people from all over the globe. More than 99% of Lighthouse people are expatriates. The 3.5 million people of Kuwait are made up of 66% expatriate and most of those from Asia. Lighthouse church is constantly receiving people from the diaspora. We connect, win, train and mobilize them toward their next God designed destination.
Lighthouse is entirely self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating. The Missions Pastor operates a $500,000 dollar budget. Lighthouse has eight church plants happening simultaneously in Kuwait. These ethnic church plants are led by trained, ordained pastors born raised here in the Lighthouse. There are numerous church plants and networks initiated by the Lighthouse staff among several countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. In addition missions the self made child sponsorship program provides over $100,000 for 250 children that live, learn and love each other in Tanzania, India, Philippines and Palestine. Lighthouse is about reflecting Christ's light. She is a movement of people that transcends denominations, cultures and church liturgy. Lighthouse is a taste of heaven. Check us out at tlckuwait.com.
Nerry & Pam Duarte
Nery and Pam Duarte have carried out a multi-faceted ministry in Costa Rica since joining LAM Canada in the early 90s. Nery's current ministry focus includes pastoral and chaplaincy work at two local prisons, leading Bible studies and counseling sessions. He also counsels church leaders and missionaries.
Nery is currently working on the implementation of a pastors' leadership project in Honduras/Nicaragua among the Miskito population of the region. While in San José, as a community outreach, Nery volunteers with the Red Cross in search and rescue ambulance services.
Nery has led many short term teams projects, including two relief ones following Hurricane Mitch and Hurricane Felix. Both Nery and Pam are involved with their local church, the International Baptist Church. Their son Jonathan is studying piano in Moscow at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory; their daughter Andrea is working through her secondary studies in the International Baccalaureate program.
