Trying to summarize this last 1.5 months feels a bit impossible--its been one for the books, that’s for sure! We have enjoyed another 5 weeks of lectures, learning lots from incredible teachers. We would love to go into detail about each week, but you would all be stuck reading for hours, so we will highlight a couple weeks and stories about what God has been doing this past month and a half.
One of the weeks that really stuck out was the week we had teaching on identity. We had a married couple, Christophe and Rhonda, from Kona Hawaii come and be our speakers for the week. Many students felt excited and expectant for the week—it was clear that God had specific things He wanted to do this week. Many students began to understand how much of they have put their identity in was built on lies they believed about themselves and God. As the week progressed, students were able to shed these lies and take on a new understanding of their identity based on the Truth of who God is and what He says about them. There were many moments of tear-filled release from the old identity that had trapped them for long, soon followed by great rejoicing as they experienced the freedom and truth that comes with every new understanding of our Identity as the King’s kids. After seeing such widespread response among the students that week, we can honestly say that many are not the same and are walking in a whole new boldness and authority. It’s beautiful to see how this type of freedom and celebration is so contagious, people want joy and freedom. A cool testimony about this is from the last day of this week. We spent the morning in worship, praying for each other, and declaring Gods truth over ourselves. We then walked down to the river where some students would be baptized for the first time as well as some who would confirm their baptisms after having walked away from their faiths. It was such a beautiful and powerful time. Every time someone was baptized, they would come up from the water declaring who they truly were in Christ, as we all loudly celebrated them, yelling, splashing, being crazy. We think He loved our messy childlike excitement. During this time a local garbage man was driving by in his truck and stopped to watch what we were doing. He came out and started up a conversation with one of our students. As he began asking questions and sharing a bit of his story, one of our students started sharing the Gospel with this man who had never heard it before (eye opening to how many people in western nations have still never heard the Gospel). He decided to leave as he needed to keep schedule with his garbage pickup route, but about 15 minutes later he drove back up and jumped out of his truck. He approached the student that had been listening to him and sharing the gospel with him and started telling him how when he had left he couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed to come back to find out what ‘those people’ (our DTS students) had. He shared that 2 weeks prior he had planned to commit suicide but right before, he saw a blinding light and felt so strongly that he shouldn’t and that there was more to life than what he knew. Two weeks later he found himself there, at a river with 60 young people celebrating loudly as they made statements in their faith. The student asked if he could pray for him, and he gladly accepted the invitation. He expressed his excitement and was eager to accept Jesus as his savior. So, right there on the bank of the river, Ford gave his life to Jesus, and then excitedly took off his uniform down to his briefs and ran into the water to be baptized. To say we all celebrated him exuberantly would be an understatement. The student he talked to is the only student that is actually from the Sunshine Coast, and they now get together regularly (someone else is meeting with him while our students is on the 2-month outreach though). God is so amazing and truly on the move! We all left that river feeling grateful, excited, encouraged, and a new boldness.
Another week that was really impactful was the prayer and missions conference that we hosted. Our base here on the Sunshine Coast hosted this conference for any Australian YWAM bases that wanted to be involved, and 11 of them did! It was 4 days camping in a church field and having 24/7 worship, prayer, and teaching with over 450 people. Everyone was involved with the full days of prayer, worship, and teaching, and then each base would take night slots in the prayer room so that there was constantly prayer and worship happening during the whole conference. This week was beautiful, seeing things that God had spoken to us about this school really coming to fruition. One of these things was the call to missions. We believe everywhere is a mission field if you are a believer--your workplace, at university, home, or other nations. Our base strongly believes and advocates for business as missions, which is something we really love. In the past years, we have seen a dwindling number of students that hear a call to cross cultural missions or have a willingness to enter into a journey of continuing to prepare for a life of cross-cultural missions. When we were praying for this school, we felt God saying there would be quite a few students that have this call to cross cultural missions and that we should gear the school towards the outworking of faith in Christ. This week at the prayer and worship conference was such a confirmation of this sense and direction. We were so touched watching many of our students weep over countries and unreached or marginalized people groups. For many of them, God had already been speaking to them about a life in cross cultural missions, but this week seemed to be a sealed stamp for many of them. Many publicly proclaimed their call to certain nations and have already began taking steps to further their preparation, and for many this call will take them to the 10/40 window in the years to come. Another reason this week was so impactful for so many was Holy Spirit was touching people in beautiful, healing, and powerful ways. There was so much emotional, spiritual and physical healing that took place over the week, as well as powerful encounters with Holy spirit. It was a week we will never forget, for all we saw God do in our students lives, in others lives, and especially in our own lives.
We as well were greatly impacted by many of the weeks of lectures, but what was most life altering for us was a period of about 1.5 weeks. We were invited to something called the Malachi gathering, which is a gathering of leaders within YWAM Australia and New Zealand. Its focus is to create relationship and foster unity among young leaders while also learning from elders of the mission. We were surprised to be invited as we haven’t been with YWAM for very long, but we were excited to go and see what God had for us. We fully admit the first day we felt a bit out of place, finding each other often during break time as a safety net in a room full of the “greats” in YWAM. Soon enough, our fear was dispelled when we saw that every person in the room was welcoming, loving, humble, and seeking after Gods heart. It was so powerful listening to the stories and testimonies of some of the very first people to be a part of YWAM with Darlene and Lauren Cunningham (YWAM’s founders). So many of us felt convicted and impacted by the simple principle of ‘Hear God and Obey’ that YWAM started with. Everyone wants to be able to tell crazy stories and testimonies, but no one wants the uncomfortable, sometimes seemingly unbearable chaos that comes before. The days were filled with joyful repentance, exuberant rejoicing, and taking hold of God originated visions that fear was blocking. We walked away with many things from this conference: a new understanding of how big and beautiful our YWAM family is, the knowledge that we will be cheered on and celebrated when we step out into the unknown of what God is calling us to, and the safety of being under leadership that is humble, willing to be corrected and redirected, and doesn’t shy away from conviction. Obviously, first and foremost, we are a part of God’s family, but we believe YWAM is just an extension of this and we feel excited about our continued partnership with this missions movement.
Right after this conference ended on a Monday afternoon, the following day is when the prayer and missions conference started. It went from full on to more full on, but we were excited as we felt God telling us that He was going to continue speaking to us about specific things and that He did (confirming things we share a little bit about a few paragraphs below).
In other news, we have been able to host a few people in our apartment this last 1.5 months, which has been a blast! Karis really loves hospitality and since our first year here we lived in a small room it wasn’t as possible. We love having our own space, so living just a couple blocks from the student and staff housing is perfect. We have also loved that since moving to our apartment our friends stop by for chats, tea, or to just work on projects. We have wanted to create an inviting atmosphere in our home where fellow staff feel welcome to stop by, know where the spare key is, and feel cared for and listened to. We hope to continue creating this space in our home and carry this with us wherever ‘home’ is throughout our lives.
We truly feel overwhelmed with gratitude for this last season, specifically these last 3 months. We began leading the school with the thought that it’s good for us to be challenged, but still holding onto the fear that we might not be able to hack it. Despite this, it has been amazing and we have come to deeply love all 46 of our students and our staff. We feel like God gave us the cream of the crop with this crew. It doesn’t mean there weren’t challenges or stress, but His grace was over it all and there was always a sense of joy in the midst of it all. We are going to miss the students and outreach staff as they are on outreach, but are so excited for all God will continue to teach them and grow them in as well as how He wants to use them in the nations they are going. The sports track has gone to Cambodia for the two months; the justice & mercy track combined with the worship track have gone to Uganda for the full 2 months; the youth ministries track has gone to Japan for 6.5 weeks and will finish their outreach here in Australia running a youth camp for local high schoolers; and the reach the unreached track will going to two nations that will remain unnamed on this public blog update for safety reasons.
So, what’s next for us? Great question! The school and outreach leaders left last Monday morning, and this week has been mostly finishing up paperwork and details for the school as well as packing and cleaning. We are packing for 2 trips actually! The incredible family that Karis nannied for in Wisconsin is taking a trip to Mexico for a week and is graciously bringing us along all the way from Australia. We are beyond excited to see them as they are such a big and important part of our lives. They have become family to us, and we have felt so cared for and loved by them in the years we have known them. We will be helping watch the 4 kids during the trip and can’t wait especially since Karis hasn’t seen them in almost 1.5 years! We then are heading off on a vision trip to the nation we feel God is calling us to. Some of you may know, that we feel called for a season to a specific unreached nation (feel free to ask us which one!). The last 9 months God began speaking to us about this place we had a heart for but weren’t to sure what to do with. We still feel very present in our current work with discipleship training schools, we feel we are exactly where God wants us, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t planting seeds and growing love for a nation in our hearts. We believe we will be continuing in a season of training and preparation for a while longer but will constantly be asking God for his timing and direction. So about 8 months ago, we felt God ask us to take a trip to this nation and was quite specific for us to not make plans; we believe He is going to continue to give us direction and leading. We will be staying with our friends that are from the nation but have moved to this specific region as God led them. We are excited to continue growing in this friendship while also gaining vision from God on how we can work with Him and them in the future! We will also be teaching for a week of lectures on a school they are running and would appreciate prayer for what God wants to do that week of their school. We will be there for about 4 weeks before heading back to the Sunshine Coast. Our students will be arriving back from outreach shortly after we return ourselves. We will have one last week with them, helping them debrief their time on outreach and prepping them for their transitions back home or wherever they are going next. They will graduate at the end of that week and we will sadly have to say goodbye the next morning--never an easy task. We will then have one week of debriefing as staff as well as training for the next school that will be arriving just one week after our students leave. We will be leading an outreach team on this next school and are so excited! We will share more details about this later on, but hope this brief overview of what is next for us is helpful.
Again, we so appreciate of all the support, love, prayer, encouragement, and finances that so many of you pour out to us. We wouldn’t be where we are without you all. Please feel free to email us personally if you want more details on anything that we have shared or have any questions or personal prayer requests we can be praying for! (as we are over seas the next month and a half, our response time may be slow, our apologies in advance).
We would love if those of you that pray for us would be willing to specifically pray into these things...
- Rest in these next months. This year is basically nonstop, which is incredible, but we would love prayer that God would continue to give us rest in the midst of a busy season of travel and leading.
- Continued growth in our marriage. We love leading and growing together but again we continue to know the importance to be lovers over ministry partners and we constantly want to keep this vital in our marriage.
- Strength and boldness on our vision trip. That we would continue to listen to His voice during this time, and that our time teaching would be impactful to the students, that we would steward what God is wanting to do with humility and boldness.
- The outreach teams from our school, that they would have great unity, growth, and impact (also for health, praying for no hospital trips for any students or staff while on outreach)
- Health, continued healing and restoring of Sam’s back from his surgery. As well he has been getting quite bad throat infections lately, his doctor gave him extra antibiotics for our time overseas but praying he wouldn’t need to use them.
*Photos*
1. Karis with some students for a picnic on a afternoon off
2. The students had to create presentations for one of their assignments on a saturday morning, so some of the staff were judges and created characters for themselves. It was something that could have been boring or tedious but the students did such a great job at making it so fun, and the staff as well, ended up being a favorite memory during lecture phase!
3. Our close friends girlfriend came to visit and stayed with us for about 11 days, she was our first guest ever to stay the night at our home, we had so much fun hosting her (:
4. Sam and I on a breakfast date that a kind friend payed for us to have!
5. We hosted one of the outreach teams that was going to a specific nation as got to have a cultural night with tea, dessert, and music from that culture! We had the opportunity to share about that specific nation as they prepared over the months and answer questions they had.
6. Long story short, the amazing family Karis was a nanny for (the ones we are going to Mexico with) are very good friends with this family in the photo, and we met them in Wisconsin for a week a few years back. They currently are in New Zealand with YWAM there but we saw them at the Malachi conference, such fun connections!
7. Karis speaking at a base worship time
8. Another incredible friend that stayed with us for a few days!
9. Most of the school on our last day of lectures (yes we dressed up, we don't normally look this put together), it has been impossible to get everyone in one photo, perhaps debrief week!
10. An ice cream sunday party we hosted for the team that one the presentation competition with the judges panel!
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