Family Week, Hurricanes, and Growth!

Hello from the aftermath of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Iselle!

It is absolutely appropriate that Samantha and I be writing this blog post in the wake of a hurricane, because that is what these last few weeks have felt like for us!  Two weeks ago Samantha and I spent the whole week preparing and planning to lead and facilitate DTS Family Week.  DTS Family Week is a week during the quarter that all of the DTS students and staff on base come together from their individual schools to learn as one.  Two of the base leaders or elders are the speakers during the week, sharing stories from the history and tradition of YWAM to stir faith in the students and encourage them by sharing over 50+ years of testimonies of the hundreds of thousands of missionaries that have been trained in Youth With A Mission since its founding in 1960.  During that week of training, we make it a point to share some of the stories from the beginning of the mission because it helps them better understand where we’ve come from and where the students might take us into in the future.  

Darlene talked about how difficult it was for her when YWAM was first being pioneered by her and Loren because of the lack of acceptance that she had for the gifts God had given her.  It helped bring understanding to the students who were unsure of how their gifts could be useful if they weren’t called to teach at the front or we the worship leader (which ninety eight percent of people aren’t).  It was so comforting for people to hear that Darlene, the founder of the mission, went through those struggles.  Danny Lehman came and taught to us about the Fear of the Lord and on the Word of God.  Admittedly in this organization, sometimes our YOUTH speaks louder than our MISSION, so the teaching that Danny brought on the Fear of the Lord was refreshing and helped to center us.  After all, the Scriptures say that the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!  We all need wisdom!

From the 21st of July through Friday August 1st, Samantha and I had the privilege of working with Darlene Cunningham (YWAM Founder) and Daniel Lehmann (Kona Base Leader) in setting up and running the Family Week.  It was such a learning experience being in charge of making things run for 180+ people during the four day lecture times.  We did everything from facilitating class to buying and setting up desserts for the intro night.  We truly learned all the angles of making things work for a large group.  Samantha and I were very stretched and it was wonderful!  Thanks to a lot of help and guidance from the leaders above us on base, and especially the Lord, the week and all of the teaching and tours of campus and worship went superbly well.

Samantha and I are walking through a very difficult time in our lives because we are unsure of what we are doing in October.  There are uncertainties about our lives that give us a lot of pause, but I don’t know a time in our relationship or even our lives when we have been happier and closer to God!  Our marriage is growing and we are learning so much about what it takes to be a Godly, loving married couple.  Samantha and I have become very versed in dealing with conflict and we can not put a price on what we have learned overseeing the DTS’s for this summer.  And we are only halfway through the quarter!  I have been learning how to take my burdens to the Lord instead of keeping them bottled up.  That has really helped communication with Samantha and I in our marriage. Samantha has been getting almost constant revelation from God on his love and intimacy with Him and she has really started to walk out in confidently discipling other women.  The Lord has given so much wisdom to her even before she came to Kona, and the experience she gained in school and teaching is so useful here!  In spite of the questions about our future, we are so incredibly thrilled by the present time we are in.  It truly has been one of the most fruitful times of our lives.  

Thanks for reading!  We love keeping this blog going and letting everyone who cares know how we are doing.  Please comment and keep in touch!

We pray that the Lord would bring love and peace upon you and that the Holy Spirit would bring revelation and understanding in your lives and guidance to your walk with Him!

Love and Hope!

Staff Training, Arrival Day, and The World Cup

Hey Folks!

We have just passed through a three week whirlwind!   Samantha and I led out DTS staff training, helped plan and run arrival day and orientation for 350 new students on base, and made sure everyone on base was ready to go for the upcoming quarter.  

DTS staff training is a week of preparation and information for the staff to help better prepare them to be ready for what is ahead of them.  During that week Samantha and I had the privileged task of teaching and facilitating at different times during the week.  I led off the week with a teaching on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  I use the term “teaching” loosely.  I firmly believe in the power of reading the Word of God aloud and letting it speak to people’s hearts, and so I read the entire Sermon aloud and then briefly spoke on the charge Jesus gives at the end about building our lives on the truth (Matt. 7:24-27).  It turned out to be a great way to kick off the week and throughout the next four mornings God brought an incredible time of  impartation and preparation to the staff.

Here’s a free insight to training young(ish) people who are going to disciple other young(ish) people: it doesn’t really matter how incredibly wise or qualified you are.  What matters is that the people who are doing the discipling be voraciously hungry for more of God, teachable, and truly surrendered to what God would do in their life and the people around them.  That’s one of the keys to success of YWAM despite our youth and general lack of deep understanding of the Bible’s mysteries.  We are humble, zealous, and passionate about God, and He uses that to inspire others to be the same.  

   

The week of staff training ended with a lot of very positive reviews from everyone involved, and Samantha and I both felt that we had followed (and led) where God had led us during the week well.  We ended the week tired and fulfilled in knowing that our Father had used us miraculously to empower people to lead, disciple, and follow Jesus in a deeper way.  The week that followed for us brought about a lot of finalizing logistic and practical aspects of the DTS’s that were about to start the next week.  Samantha and I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details of that.  Just picture one of us answering emails, running a school leader meeting, collecting receipts and budget info, and running all over the base and it will be pretty close to how our week went.  The first week of July brought about a bipolar reaction from Samantha and I: the DTS’s that we had been preparing for so long were finally beginning, but the United States Men’s National Soccer Team would be leaving the World Cup on the back of a crushing 2-1 defeat to the Belgians.  

On a side note, as many of you know, I love soccer and one of the benchmarks of every soccer fan’s excitement is the World Cup.  The Kona base is a very diverse place with people from nations all over the world and many of those nations favorite pastimes is soccer.  There are no televisions on base, and certainly no cable, so there were going to be little options for us soccer fans to watch the penultimate competition in our favorite sport.  We couldn’t miss the games of our respective countries, and because of the obscure local times we would be watching them at (the 3 group games each day started at 6 a.m., 9 a.m., and Noon), sports bars were out of the picture.  With the help of a few people on base contributing various knicks and knacks I was able to set up a large t.v. in the cafe on base and stream the games through an official ESPN account.  So every morning I have been waking up at 5:30 to go turn on the daily games to the joy of Nigerians, Dutch, Brazilians, Germans, Cameroonians, Colombians, Argentinians, Greeks, Japanese, South Koreans, Portuguese, Spanish, Australians, and many others.  It has been an unforgettable experience to watch the world’s favorite game with so many different parts of the world!  

...and we’re back!

From the afternoon of Wednesday, July 2nd to the afternoon of Friday July 4th Samantha and I went non-stop.  On Wednesday Samantha and I, and a team of other servants of the base, undertook the vital task of planning, setting up, and (on the following day) running arrival day for the summer quarter.  Thursday brought about 350 new students to base, a lot of problems to shoot, and a 8 a.m. to 1030 p.m. shift for Samantha and myself.  Friday morning and early afternoon was spent orienting the new students to the island and the base that had just become their home.  Although we had just put in an intense 48 hours of work, Samantha and I felt very similar to how we felt at the end of staff training: pleased at what God had used us for.  

Quarterpointing is an admittedly thankless job, but Samantha and I are so blessed to be working behind the scenes here on this base to ensure that 350 students and 100 staff have everything that they need to encounter God.  

The quarter has just begun, and Samantha and I will have some crazy times ahead of us, so we could really use prayers for grace in working with each other and making things run smoothly.  We are also very tight this month on finances, so please pray for God’s provision in our lives (and if you should partner with us through a monthly or one time donation! :]).  

We love you all,

With Love and Hope.

Home and Back Again

Hello all! I pray that the grace and peace of Jesus Christ is with you all in this busy and often hectic summer season!  Samantha and I have just arrived back to Hawaii to continue our work with Youth With A Mission from our visit home to Cincinnati.  While we were home we were able to spend much needed time with our families, and Samantha was even able to go visit her sister and brother in law and our niece and nephew in Virginia for a week.  We were so blessed by the Lord for our time with our families at home, and it is never easy to leave.  Far and away the hardest part of what we do is being away from our family.  But I digress! haha 

Samantha and I are now back in Hawaii, and have taken a position on base called the “Quarterpoint”.  The job is a bit hard to describe without some context of the base that we work on.  So I’ll explain a bit about the base first.  The University of the Nations in Kona, HI  is a Youth With A Mission base.  It is an international and interdenominational missions training center for anyone and everyone who is interested in being used by the Lord for the advancement of His kingdom.  With a focus in training people to live a missional lifestyle, rather than training people to be missionaries, the base equips people to live for the advancement of the Gospel no matter where they find themselves.  Whether people want to live in the jungles of NYC or the jungles of Asia or Africa, The U of N desires to make sure that they have the tools to thrive as extensions of the Body of Christ.  One of the main ways that YWAM does this “equipping” is through schools called Discipleship Training Schools(DTS’s).  DTS’s have a lecture phase and an outreach phase.  The three month  lecture phase is spent learning and growing in the Lord and His ways.  It covers everything from how to share the gospel, to how to effectively read your Bible, to why we practice worship and intercession.  Then, after the lecture phase the students and staff depart on a three month outreach phase to continue their training and to put into practice everything that they have been learning.  There are hundreds of DTS’s that run all over the world with all different kinds of emphasis in all different types of ministry.  The DTS’s run on a quarterly basis and start in January, April, July, or September.  DTS’s are organized and led by school leaders, run and functioned by staff, and filled and absorbed by students.  Every quarter on the U of N base here in Kona there are different DTS’s that run. They all have their own set of staff and school leaders who are all working their hardest to make sure the Lord has room to work in the lives of the students that come to take the schools.  Overseeing all of the school’s staff and school leaders for that quarter is the Quarterpoint.  That is where Samantha and I come in to play.  Our job is to facilitate DTS staff and corporate training for our quarter, approve each school’s set of logistics (budgets, school curriculm, speaker logistics, etc.), and problem shoot anything that might come up during the quarter that would hinder the schools running smoothly.  We are primarily servants to the DTS’s here on base this quarter.  We firmly believe that there are few tools better than DTS to learn and grow in a Christian community, and for this reason we are honored to be used by the Lord to do this. So that's what Samantha and I are doing for the next four and a half months!

Samantha and I are now in a position here that neither of us have ever been in before.  We are in charge of some things and have the ability to really make decisions and take responsibility.  We know that we are not qualified for some of the jobs that we are doing, but God has given us this opportunity to learn and grow and we are excited to take it.  We are learning how important humility and being available is in leadership.  This is Samantha and my first time working together in a more formal work environment, and with that comes a little bit of a learning curve for us.  So we are growing together to understand how we each work best and how we can help one another.  Please pray for us!