For seventeen years Pastor Hugo Reimer has been taking the youth of Nechako Community Church (NCC) on a Spring Break Missions Trip.  This spring break he did so for the last time.  Hugo is leaving NCC and will continue his ministry elsewhere.  He will be missed at NCC and in Vanderhoof.

The missions trip has not only given youth something exciting to do during spring break but an opportunity to learn about the missions fields in the greater Vancouver area.  They helped out in downtown Vancouver at Union Gospel Mission Thrift Store, which helps by distributing clothes to those in need; at Quest, which sells rejected food items such as dinted cans real cheap; at Potter’s Mission, which is a church in downtown Vancouver that reaches out to the needy in that area; at Lifeline which operates a soup kitchen out of a bus, at Ward which runs an after school daycare and tutoring sessions for needy school children; at More Than a Roof which provides low income housing; and at Wagner Hills which is an addiction recovery program run on a farm in Langley.

Some of the work involved helping with renovations or cleaning at some of the facilities.  The youth also helped with tutoring at Ward and in the kitchen fields  and plant nursery at Wagner Hills.

We all came together for supper most evenings and then went to downtown Vancouver to hand out blankets to the homeless, who actually refer to themselves as houseless because they often have a place they call home, or to worship at 614.  We also went swimming one evening.

For the past couple of years the Gospel Chapel youth group has joined together with the NCC youth group for this trip.  This year youth from the Evangelical Free Church of Fort St. James joined in as well.  There were 73 in the group and how well they got along was amazing.   It was great to see the love they had for the people at the places we visited and how hard they all worked.