By Carey Jo Johnston, for the Ottawa ESL Prayer Network Team
The vision for networking people in Southern Ontario who are doing ESL ministry started with SOCEM. However, since most of the SOCEM events are in the GTA area, some of us in the Ottawa area thought we might have a subset of SOCEM. It started with 3 of us meeting for prayer. Jennifer from SOCEM initially connected us. Then we were 4 as another person joined us for prayer. We have a monthly in-person prayer time to support what we as individuals and mission organizations are doing with ESL in Newcomer ministries. We are now growing!
We began to collect names of people interested in connecting in the Ottawa area. To date we have 20 people on our mailing list. On May 12th we had our first connecting event: a potluck dinner to greet one another, share what we are doing with ESL, and find connections. We had 18 people attend.
Several of the people attending want to do something in Newcomer ministry but aren’t sure exactly what that looks like. Others are very active in using ESL for outreach from their churches and other organizations. (Unfortunately, we all forgot to take any pictures!).
So, we continue to meet monthly for prayer and will have networking events from time to time. We have encouraged folks to join the SOCEM mailing list to take advantage of the resources there as well as have access to the newsletter, webinars and other events.
If you live in the Ottawa area, or know someone who lives in the area, and are interested in ESL as part of a newcomer strategy, you can join the Ottawa ESL Prayer Network by filling out the google form to join our mailing list, at Ottawa ESL Ministry Network.
A big thank you to Jennifer who has been giving us names of people in the Ottawa area as they cross her path.