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!
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!
