On Eagles Wings - Ron Hutchcraft Ministries

Update from Team Canada

A Gathering of the Nations

Huge crowds lined the way as athletes from hundreds of Nations passed by during the opening ceremonies of a much anticipated international sporting event. No, I'm not talking about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. What I'm referring to is where a gathering of close to 5,000 athletes would compete and represent their nations.

Months ago, several of our On Eagles' Wings leaders met with the leadership to see if there would be an opportunity for On Eagles' Wings to once again help serve their needs and provide outreach opportunities where we could share our message of hope. OEW has been involved in previous events like this one, so there's been a track record of involvement before. We also connected with some wonderful local church leaders in the host community who had already been mobilizing their churches to help by volunteering their services in behind-the-scenes ways. The local ministerial group was happy to partner with us and help bring in and host OEW, and the event leadership affirmed their desire to have OEW participate by providing programmed activities for the athletes during the hours that they were not in their scheduled competitions.

There were two main areas of this community which were being utilized for athletes and events. One was a cultural village with a main stage and large array of vendors selling their Native arts and crafts, etc., all catering to the tourist crowd. There was another area blocks away where the athletes were fed, and cared for, and where a lot of their down time would be spent. It was at the local high school and arena area where this concentration of athletes hung out. This is where the event organizers secured a large field behind the high school for OEW to do our programmed activities. It would be in the heart of where the athletes were at, giving us the best opportunity to interact with our target audience.

Excitement built as the two OEW teams from the U.S. and Canada merged into one, new team during our two day retreat prior to the start of the Games. We built some days in to care for unanticipated travel challenges (both teams had to travel by ferry boats to the island, with one having to cross an international border in the process). During this retreat, we celebrated what God did through us during the U.S. and Canadian outreaches, and then did some team-building activities that helped merge two unique teams into one new team. Our leadership team was thrilled with how this new hybrid team came together in unity and singleness of heart for the sake of the Gospel. We were blessed with a wonderful private Christian camp that we had to ourselves, provided for by the local ministerial group, to use for this important team-building retreat.

Our ministry started on a Sunday morning as we visited three of the churches who were helping to host OEW's involvement at these events. Many of the visiting athletes and leaders commented how well the local community had treated these visiting athletes and leaders, and the local Body of Christ was front and center in that process.

The venue was set, the team was ready, much prayer had already preceded the team's arrival, and now God was giving us four scheduled opportunities in three short days to connect with Native youth from all over North America. Would they respond to our events? Would they come out? How would this hybrid team function together?

When we do our regular OEW outreaches we have several days in the same community with the same target audience to build upon. We normally will see a growing crowd as excitement continues to build from event to event. But here at the games it would be different. We would have limited opportunity to build with the same crowd, as the athletes would be available on a revolving basis, based on their scheduled competition events. For most, we'd only have one shot at getting them to the venue, raising interest enough to keep them, and weaving the Gospel throughout our programmed activities. The organizers gave us a three hour window from noon to 3:00 p.m. each day to do our events, plus an hour and a half performance event one evening.

These challenges made it that much more important that we maximized every moment of the outreach events. Most of the crowds we drew were walk-by crowds, and they would come and go based on their schedules. At one moment we could have 100-plus people gathered, but within 30 minutes, the crowd would drop to 30 because some had to board their shuttle busses to take them to their competition venues. Within minutes, a new crowd of youth would happen by, and the crowd would grow again.

We designated some of our team members to circulate through the busy street in front of the school where many of the athletes would congregate, inviting them back behind the school to our location. We also battled very warm temperatures in the heat of the day, which affected attendance.

Our largest sustained gathering was during our evening performance, and in every one of the outreach events, our team did a powerful job of proclaiming Christ through their hope stories and through clear and concise explanations of the Gospel of Christ.

When all was said and done, God had used the team to connect with hundreds of Native athletes from all over North America, and from these hundreds, 36 of these athletes came to the foot of the Cross to repent of sin, and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior!

Since our Summer of Hope began at our Warrior Leadership Summit, and after an amazing month of traveling to hurting isolated communities, and after God gave us the opportunity to impact many more tribes at the athletic events, God used the On Eagles' Wings teams to help lead 856 people to faith in Jesus Christ!

We couldn't have done it without you, our faithful prayer warriors, who stood with us in prayer and financial support. On behalf of all of us, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, for being there with us in another amazing season of harvest in Native North America.

To God be the glory!