The rain has come...

It's officially no longer summer here as the rains have started and my feet are constantly cold. It's been a super busy summer here in England, although I haven't actually been in England for most of this summer. So many opportunities have come up for me to travel and also be mentored in my leadership skills. 

When the January school finished, I had a bit of a break. A a good friend of mine from home and we traveled around France and Italy. We were basically running around the cities non-stop to make the most of our trip but it ended up being such a relaxing trip to be able to travel and to have a real break for the first time in 8 months.

After getting back from my trip, there was an opportunity to go to the YWAM Herrnhut base in east Germany for the 'Western Europe DTS Leaders & Staff Gathering'. It was very last minute, but all of the finances came together for me to be able to fly and have my conference paid for in just a week. The purpose of the week was to provide refreshment for DTS staff while also providing tools for the next school. I also got to see someone from my home church who was staffing the next DTS there and someone from my own DTS two years ago.

I was back on the base for only a week when I left for Malaga, Spain. The B2B leadership conference was something I've been planning on going to since early on this year. There were teachings in the morning about different aspects of leadership, a siesta in the afternoon, classes before dinner and workshops after dinner. The staff team were also available during the week for one-to-one conversations. Every day they covered a different aspect of leadership, including spiritual, servant and shared leadership. The week was very helpful in terms of figuring out more of my leadership style and how to look at what I want to do in the future and what obstacles might be in the way. 

In between these events, I've been helping out another staff member to get a mobilisation framework up and running on the base. Most of what I'll be doing in the fall will be slightly random but mostly helping other departments in what they need to get done. I'll be working in the communications department, the DTS office with mobilisation and schools and the kitchen. And hopefully, I'll be going to France with some of the members of the DTS centre team for a workshop on the more practicals of running a DTS.

It's been an exciting, full year in YWAM already and it's a bit sad to think that I only have a year left here on the Oval before moving on to whatever's next. Already, I'm thinking about what I would like to do after next August. Some include going back home for school, and some include continuing to work with YWAM. If you're interested in more details than that, just send me a message!

Albania Outreach

While in Albania, we worked with the International Protestant Assembly church in Tirana (the capital). We did a variety of different ministries every week but did them on a consistent basis. That meant that every week we were able to see progress and build upon the relationships that we had made. Every Sunday, we took part in the church’s services and usually had an opportunity to speak and share our testimonies. We also hugely took part in the church's youth group.

We also started two different ministries for the church to continue on when we had left. Every Tuesday, we would go out in the morning and try to find English speakers to come to the coffee shop at the back of the church at night. A vision of the church’s is to see the Tuesday night in the coffee shop to become a mix of people off the street, to regulars, to Christians and to people who are being discipled regularly. The other ministry was their worship night that they had. It was always so encouraging to see people want to come to simply spend more time with Jesus.

Three times a week, our team would split up and go to three different projects to do practical work. One group went to an orphanage, another went to a church plant and my group went to a village outside of the city to work with a Scottish lady who was preparing to open up a physiotherapy clinic for the disabled. There had been an explosion in the village that had left a lot of people needing rehabilitation. Our team also worked with a church and spent some time going into different houses to share the gospel. In one house that we went to, I was given the opportunity to share my testimony concerning anxiety and trusting in God. And thank Jesus, she became a Christian! One week, our team split into two and I went with two other trainees to meet with a large Muslim family. They had seen the power of prayer to Jesus before and so I was able to pray with each of them for different things. Our team was so blessed by the different people we worked with in that village and it was encouraging to see Christians working faithfully in mostly Muslim villages.

For a couple of days, we headed up to the mountains to work with a church on a youth graduation event. At their Sunday service, one of our trainees preached on the power of the cross and another shared a testimony on spiritual warfare. We stayed with host families from the church while we were there and spent a great deal of time just eating food with them. The family that I stayed with was amazing with the hospitality they showed us and how they welcomed us into their family. 

The village held a short amount of time in Albania but ended up being my favourite time. It’s sometimes easy to forget that there are so many churches out there that only hold 20 members and their faith is put to the test a lot more than mine is in the day-to-day practicalities. 

Working with YWAM Albania and Campus Crusade for Family Day

The Albanian team

Working at roma camps

In the village

Newcastle Outreach

A week after getting back from Wales, we left for outreach! One team left for Liverpool and my team headed up to Newcastle to work with the pioneering YWAM team there (my old DTS roommate, Stephanie, is now a part of the team). The outreach went very well, with our team matching all of the YWAM leader’s expectations for a short term outreach. Because of the outreach we did with different churches and ministries in the city, there are doors that used to be closed that are now permanently open for the YWAM team to invest into.

One of the first things that we did was a faith day. We split the trainees into two different groups and they left the house for twelve hours with no money or food. They had five minutes to pray and then leave. It was an amazing day of tears, provision and learning to work as a team. We also led a Messy church for kids, worked quite a bit with a youth centre in the arts and sports, worked with a homeless ministry and had the trainees plan an arts day in the park. The arts day consisted of us wanting to be a light in the park by handing out flowers, playing sports with kids and writing encouragements with chalk on the sidewalk.

I also got the opportunity to plan and lead an empty slot of creative outreach in the streets. We took a couple of minutes to pray for a word or phrase to focus on and then wrote questions regarding the theme. The theme turned out to be hope and freedom so we wrote phrases on cardboard and 'What brings you hope?' on a white board. We got various reactions (mostly positive, which was good) and quite short, key conversations with different people. The people in Newcastle were very willing to stop, read the signs and then talk about it with us.

We also went into lots of youth groups. There was one youth group that myself and another trainee went to that opened a door for the long-term Christian youth leader to follow up on. There were only two girls at the youth group (it was during vacation time so about 10 girls were missing), so we just played card games with them, ate food and got to know them. For the last part, I got to share my testimony of how God is a friend, that he speaks to us and the reason for life. I could tell that one of the girls was listening very carefully to what I was saying and I was expecting her to ask questions at the end. We ended up leaving without any real discussion afterwards, however, a couple of days later, our host got a call from the youth leader saying that the girl was now asking questions about God (she never has before) and opening up about things that she had never shared. 

It was awesome how something like that could come out of a short term outreach and reaffirmed the benefit of short term outreach. It’s to come alongside long-term ministries and to even act as a catalyst for different things. And that ended up happening a lot in Newcastle. Most of the time, we would work with existing ministries that had Christian workers but held lots of unchurched, non-Christian participants. They always allowed us to come in and to speak about Jesus as openly and honestly as we wanted to. And through that, lots of conversation came up with us but also with the workers after we had left.

Myself with another staff, Stacy

Creative Outreach

Arts Day in the park