Canadian Mennonite
Volume 13, No. 20
Oct. 19, 2009


Focus on Travel

On a Hawaiian mission

Travel brings education to a new level

Reflection by Andrea Ykema

Columbia Bible College Release

“When I was reading the Old Testament and came across the name of a place like Hebron, I felt fairly removed,” says Christian Pye, left, a biblical studies major. “Being in Israel changed that.”

As a member of the youth work program at Columbia Bible College, Abbotsford B.C., Paige Handscomb, a fourth-year student, spent her entire third year in Hawaii working for Surf the Nations doing humanitarian outreach.

Christian Pye, a biblical studies major, travelled to Israel for three weeks over the summer to study at Jerusalem University College, capping off his time overseas with a backpacking trip along the Jordan River.

And Jamison Dyck, who is completing his fourth year of a worship arts degree, spent his most recent spring semester in Europe in order to expose himself to the ancient roots and modern manifestations of the Christian faith there.

They are different from most students who spend their entire scholastic lives in a classroom. From Kindergarten to college, they spend the majority of their days in a chair staring at a blackboard. And they learn. By the end of it they are able to comprehend, analyze, retain and regurgitate information presented to them in all the ways that classrooms allow. Thankfully, though, life is a bit more interesting than that.

So how can a college help students prepare for the real world if classrooms won’t cut it? One of the most effective ways to empower students for engaging the vastness of the global village around them is to drop them right in the middle of it. Suddenly, ideas, theories, emotions and fears all become real. Philosophies smash up against pain and poor communication. But unlike life after graduation, professors and students have each other’s back covered. What better circumstances in which to take risks and explore?

Why not pick internships closer to home than Hawaii, Israel or Europe, though? Or better yet for the environment, why not watch documentaries about Israel, or satisfy your curiosity with stories told by other world travellers?

“When I was reading the Old Testament and came across the name of a place like Hebron, I felt fairly removed,” Pye replies. “Being in Israel changed that.”

Discovering first-hand the overwhelming heat, 10,000-year-old buildings, the scarcity of water sources, bartering and the value of shade have added life and body to the Scripture for Pye that no documentary or textbook could have offered.

“It’s a physical and a cerebral experience,” Dyck adds. “I’d be walking down the streets in Munich, looking for a place to eat, and then I would realize I was studying and I hadn’t even known.”

Psychologically, there is much to be said for pushing oneself out of zones of comfort in order to internalize learning. There is also much to be said for this spiritually.

“This is how I’ve been made,” says Handscomb. “This is what my heart is for.”

Watching others has made her realize that far too many people lay down their “crazy” dreams and passions at the feet of employment, marriage and authority figures. “At the end of the day, passions are never going to go away,” she says. “It’s really easy to think, let’s be realistic, that’s not going to happen. . . . For me, I had to realize that these things were not going to go away unless God takes them away. But until then I’m just going to keep pursuing them. It sounds crazy, but maybe this is what God made me to be.”

It is certainly a risk to step outside of one’s comfort zone. But the benefits of taking theoretical studies and applying them in a practical context on the other side of the ocean for a significant period of time are unparalleled.

So try taking that wild idea in the corner of your mind, and feed it. Give it some time, some space to expand, and watch where it takes you. Because, as Handscomb says, “What’s going to satisfy you is what you’ve been designed to do.”

Andrea Ykema is preparing to graduate from Columbia Bible College with a B.A. degree in outdoor leadership next spring.

TourMagination celebrates 40 years of building bridges

By Susan Fish

TourMagination Release

Janet and Wilmer Martin are pictured on a TourMagination trip to Ayers Rock in the Australian outback.

In the late 1960s, Jan Gleysteen and Arnold Cressman were both working for the Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, Pa. Cressman knew that Gleysteen, whose father owned a bookstore in Amsterdam and who had sheltered Jewish people during the Second World War, had cycled around Europe and had been to many sites that had been important in Anabaptist history. So one day Cressman suggested to Gleysteen that they organize a tour of Mennonites eager to recover connections with the roots of Anabaptism in Europe.

Interest in this tour was strong, and in 1970 a group of people from Ontario, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana toured various sites in Europe in an attempt to retrieve the original Mennonite vision and to have fellowship with Mennonites in these places.

Soon the tours became regular events, allowing people to blend their faith with an opportunity to see the world. Gleysteen and Cressman called their fledgling Mennonite tour company, TourMagination.

TourMagination has expanded during its 40-year history. By 1976, TourMagination alumni were asking the company to lead tours to other parts of the world, while Mennonite World Conference (MWC) and mission boards were seeking ways to help Mennonites visit other Mennonites around the world to offer encouragement to local churches. TourMagination’s first tours to Australia/New Zealand and Siberia came about as a result of requests from Mennonite agencies. To date, TourMagination has brought the largest number of tour participants to the global assemblies of MWC.

Wilmer Martin was a young Mennonite pastor originally from Pennsylvania and serving in Tavistock, Ont., when he was invited to join a TourMagination tour in 1973, to help promote the vision in Canada. Martin, who shared Gleysteen and Cressman’s vision, became a part-owner of the tour company in 1982, helping to plan a variety of tours. Gleysteen and Cressman left the company in the 1990s, and Henry Landes was involved for a number of years as a part-owner and tour leader. Today, Wilmer and Janet Martin assume sole ownership of the company.

TourMagination has led tours to more than 50 countries worldwide, on all seven continents. New and classic tours—including the Anabaptist heritage tour—continue to be offered. Tour leaders are gifted storytellers who bring history and culture to life, while taking care of all the details of travel. Faith continues to be part of each tour, through daily devotionals, regular worship and fellowship with local believers. TourMagination’s mission is to “build bridges among Mennonites and other Christians and faiths around the world through custom-designed travel.”

Wilmer is passionate about leading tours, including planning more than a dozen that involve a visit to the world-famous Oberammergau Passion Play in 2010. But he says that for him, “a highlight is always the people. Janet and I have been blessed by the people we meet as we travel, by the friends who travel with our company. It has been a life-changing experience for us—and has enriched our churches.”


Back to Canadian Mennonite home page