Mayon Marcelino and Andrew Aviso are two young Disciples whose names we may hear a lot of in years to come.
Marcelino, 26, and Aviso, 25, are active members of Broadway Disciples United Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. There they serve as Sunday School teachers, are active on several church boards and Marcelino sings each Sunday in the church choir.
And for young people their age, they’ve already started playing a pretty significant role in general church activities. They’ve attended the last two General Assemblies and at the ’09 Assembly in Indianapolis spent hours staffing the Young Adult booth inside the exhibit hall.
Marcelino is a member of the Young Adult Commission and as Filipino-Canadians both young men are involved in the work of NAPAD (North American/Pacific Asian Disciples). They are so excited about going to the 2010 meeting of NAPAD in Seattle that they are already charting out their travel itinerary.
I already knew Marcelino and Aviso before coming to Winnipeg, having met them at a NAPAD meeting in upstate New York last year. I was intriqued at the time to see two young guys so enthusiastic about church work , not to mention I thought that they were from this place in Canada called Winnipeg.
But God has a way of making things happen that you don’t believe will ever take place, so earlier this week, not only was I in Canada, but I was worshipping at their church in downtown Winnipeg, Broadway Disciples United Church.
After church, (which for Marcelino and Aviso also included teaching an early-afternoon Sunday School service, and for Marcelino attending a church leadership meeting), the two young men took me out on a six-hour tour of their city.
We headed off in Aviso’s car to check out some of the major tourist sites, including the Forks, a huge downtown gathering place where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red. (Hence, the Forks). About 4 million people come to the Forks each year for all types of outdoor events (e.g. salsa dancing in warm months, ice skating in the winter) and indoor celebrations (shopping, going to museums), and recreation. We also visited the St. Boniface area, the largest community of French-Canadians outside Montreal, that includes St. Boniface Cathedral, one of the most stunning church structures I’d ever seen. And finally, a stop at the Fort Garry Hotel, a magnificent structure built almost 100 years ago that still operates as a hotel and is now a national landmark. Along the way we stopped to sample the local fare, including really good food at at a tiny neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant.
I was really impressed that two twenty-something young men would spend their Sunday afternoon showing their community off to a person from the Indianapolis general office. But then that’s the type of people that Marcelino and Aviso are, young men with a passion for hospitality and giving that reflects the best that we see in those who represent our future.
(Photo: Andrew Aviso (on left) and Mayon Marcelino)
