Zeke Byrne didn’t know what his trip to Toronto would entail, but he definitely didn’t expect it to involve cooking a hotdog at a stranger’s hotdog stand.
It started when an International Mission Board missionary there sent them downtown on a scavenger hunt and one of the tasks was to talk to someone in a restaurant into letting you cook something.
“This lady from Greece, we asked if she would let me cook,” said, Zeke, a 13-year-old member of First Baptist Church Columbiana.
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She said yes, and Zeke did. But it led to more than just a good hotdog, he said. “That was one of the things on the list that you could just tee off of — ask one question, and if they’re willing to talk you can ask them more questions to learn about them and eventually get into what they believe.”
Zeke — along with his dad, Scott, and 15-year-old brother, Nate — went to Toronto in late June as part of a student trip from FBC that was largely made up of fathers and sons, as well as some “surrogate” fathers and sons, said Andy Shelton, minister to students and education at FBC.
“We had 24 guys with us, and we had a blast,” Shelton said.
While there, they worked alongside International Mission Board missionaries to serve the community by cleaning up the neighborhood and engaging in other ways, as well as simply encouraging the missionary families.
They also experienced the diverse cultures of Toronto through ministry opportunities such as the scavenger hunt and attending churches with different language groups represented.
Scott Byrne said he thought it was “good for my boys and our boys from the church to see just how Jesus is not just a southern thing.”
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