“My priority is to give native people hope and a future,” said Rev. Hoosik Kim, director of Edmonton Urban Native Ministry. “Sticking to the past cannot draw people into a better future. I recognize that aboriginals in this land need both physical and mental healing. They also need reconciliation in various relationships. Going one step forward, they require leadership for the generations to come.”
To do this, Kim concentrates on children and youth. “I like to make aboriginal students into role models. Even one person's influencing power is uncountable. Many native leaders in various fields will be made at EUNM and they will change their families and communities.”
Kim came to Canada in 1999 as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Korea, and worked at various native ministries in the west before starting the Edmonton ministry three years ago with Canada Ministries and the Presbyteries of Edmonton-Lakeland and Western Han-Ca. He said many Korean congregations are involved in native ministry, and he began this work when he felt a calling from God to do so. Edmonton has an aboriginal population of about 43,000, the second-largest in the country.
EUNM currently offers a drop-in centre, hot meals during winter, emergency support, counselling, job training, Sunday worship, vacation Bible school, youth camps, a healing workshop, discipleship and leadership opportunities, music, Tae Kwon Do and crafts, all of which were designed with Kim's desire to not only help and heal, but to strengthen, enable and encourage people to turn their lives around.
Kim is the only person on staff, and he relies on dedicated volunteers to make things work. Whenever possible, he encourages aboriginal people to assume leadership roles, such as the two volunteers who help things run smoothly at the drop-in centre and are in the mission's first steps job training program.
Although it can be difficult to see if people are actually changing, Kim said he can “feel the differences.
“I see it in their attitude, and they way they approach me. Some people ask me to have consultations and prayers even though I didn't request it. The new generation is very different; children and youth have many more possibilities. At the youth leadership camp, I saw how some youth were changed. On the first day, they ridiculed Christians, but after, they prayed and cried with others.
“The greatest need is prayer,” he continued. “Of course I also need money, volunteers, materials, and many supports, but I believe that the ministry does not belong to men but to God.”
