So No One can Boast

It was the first week of January when I got the call from our base leader saying, “Our Outreach Leader is not coming back with the team. Will you step in for her and help us staff the last four weeks of the DTS?”

Now, you have to picture me, still in my pjs, just recovered from the third round of sickness that had run through our home. Though I love discipling young people, my job description (as explained in my last update) did not include mentoring students and attending classes with them. It is taking care of the staff of our base and making sure they thrived in what God called them too.

Nevertheless, the need was there: Nine students coming back, the original staff team of four was down to two. They needed help.

As I considered, not only did saying yes mean that I could ease the pressure on the remaining staff but I could see what they do up close. Rubbing shoulders with them would equip me to do my job much more than anything else. So, I said yes to staffing the last weeks of the Discipleship Training School.

The first week was full. My part was facilitating the debrief for the outreach team. Debriefing is telling your story: It’s verbal processing of past events. It includes both the facts and emotional responses and invites feedback. It’s an opportunity to share with someone who is willing to listen and care, without judgment or criticism.

“We do not learn from experience... We learn from reflecting on experience.”

— John Dewey

The next three weeks I was a mentor for three of the students, while helping practically in the kitchen and meeting with the 12 other staff members of YWAM Nanaimo. I was also happy to get to do two things that I haven’t got to do for a long time: Participating in city prayer meetings and leading worship.

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For us on staff, one of the privileges of DTS is that we get to see such change in people’s lives so quickly. Lives change before our eyes.

 — Four students were baptized in the fall. —

 — All of them learned how to hear God’s voice for themselves. —

Following His voice 

While on outreach in the Middle East they were able to share the gospel through kids ministries, house visits, giving away food and inviting people into their home for baking or parties. In such a relational culture this time with the people meant the world to them. Some of these students had never shared their faith with others before but it became something that they loved to do.

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Some of the team were praying by a mosque and asked God to send them someone to talk to. A man then approached them and asked, “Are you Christians?” They were able to tell him about God and His love for this man.

On another day, the team asked God again to send someone to them. A man was walking by with a hurt knee and two of the team members asked through sign language, as he could not speak English, if they could pray for his leg. He nodded and they prayed for his knee. The man began to cry. They signed out that God loved him and gave the man a verse written in his language. It was about salvation. The man became joyful and pointed to heaven saying “Jesus… Lord…” These were the only words they could understand from his language. He hugged them and he went on his way blessed.

These amazing students got the heart for missions and the courage to share their faith through the intentional discipleship and teaching of our DTS team. And I am so blessed to be a part of it, even for just a month.

We all can hear God. He is our Father and wants to communicate with us.

We all have a part to play in the great commission.

We all are part of God’s great story of love around the world.

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I hope these stories inspire you in your walk with God; amazing things can happen. Whether you are on top of the world, or sitting sick in your PJs. God can reach in with a new opportunity, a new strength, a new hope.

"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. So that no human being might boast in the presence of God."

1 Corinthians 1:27-29

The students are gone, but we continue on. Our lives are surrendered to God in service to what He wants us to do in the world, in Canada, and in Nanaimo.

Till next time!

— Gillian