What is Happening?

Gillian Dean
Jan 5, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Jan 11, 2024

If you have been following along even vaguely with the story of my family's life, you will know that the last years have held a lot of twists and turns. The latest, as described in more detail in my last update, was our “Dean Team” moving from Germany and settling in Canada.

But in my last update, I did not answer a rather important question, “What are you doing now?”

So, now I will do just that. Simply put…

Restoring the Hearts of God’s Children

~ Member Care & Writing ~

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“What does that mean?”

Restoration through Member Care

Cultivating healthy, resilient, and long term missions workers through Member Care efforts of training, maintaining, and restoring.

(Prov. 27:23-4)

In YWAM, we call the person who does the combined work of Human Resources, coaching, mentoring, and some admin for the staff, a Member Care worker. I help other missionaries by providing Training, Maintaining, and Restoring tools and care. Training comes before and at the start of their term, a new project or assignment, making sure they are ready for what they are heading into. Maintaining is checking in regularly with the missionaries on how they are doing, providing coaching and advice as best I can or referring them to someone who can do it better than myself. Finally, restoring is after an assignment, term or project; debriefing the team or individual about their experiences, preparing them for the next thing or for reentry if they are leaving the mission field.

I am no expert and I am continually seeking more tools to be able to do my job well. But, most times, someone to listen and care makes a world of difference not just to ministry workers, but to us all. If I can help those who are reaching the city, the ‘labourers in His field’, be healthy and resilient, they will be long term in the good work God has given them to do.

Restoration through Writing

Reaching the lost through story; writing captivating truth that brings hope and life.

Telling the stories of God's faithfulness to inspire the church to play their part in God's great story

(Rev. 12:11, Eph. 6:13)

There are over 20,000 missionaries through YWAM alone, in over 180 countries, including some of the most unreached peoples of the world. And how many of their stories have you heard?

Most of the missionaries that I have met have beautiful stories; daily interactions with the lost that are building toward a life changed. Most of these stories go untold and the rest of us in the body of christ, do not hear them. You might think missionaries are doing big things all the time, but really it is not so different of a life than your own. Many of their stories can be your stories. Their sacrificial life and surrender to God’s will, are not out of your reach. The God that reaches out through them is the same that desires to reach out through you.

These are the stories I want to tell. To inspire all the body of Christ that Jesus is winning in the nations and He has not forgotten His people in a world growing darker.

- No one is forgotten -

This is also what I remember as I write my book. This is what I want to communicate to the person that picks up my fantasy novel.

Many of you might not have known that I am also writing a book. I will apologize here now if you did not. The reason, embarrassing as it is to admit, is I didn’t think it was good enough to be part of missionary’s life. I was wrong.

It takes about 10-20 hours to read through a book, depending on the genre. That is a lot of time to spend with someone. If I had the privilege of sitting with someone for that long and tell them about the truths of God in a way that they would listen to me, perhaps be captivated, then I would tell them a story that they would remember for a lifetime. A story in which they would feel the presence of God and His love. That is what Jesus did. He told stories. So many of them. If I could do just that, it would be a worthwhile task indeed.

With the fall of western civilization, people are not going to church and letting the stories of the Bible build their worldview. They are now getting their morals from books, social media, news and things like Netflix and YouTube. These are what is shaping western culture. I want to step into that place and be there with the truth of God, whether it has His name on it or not.

All of this is what I am doing now.

“What about Matt? How is he doing these days?”

Thank you for asking. 😉

Since his burnout and subsequent depression though the second half of 2022 and first half of 2023, he is doing much better. All the transition in the last six months has taken some toll on us both, but I have not seen so much strength and courage in him for years. God really has given him beautiful gifts in his walk through depression and I am very proud of him.

With the visa he is getting in Canada he will not be able to work. Regardless, as we settled here, it was obvious to us that homeschooling the kids would be best for our family and that he would be the best one for that job. They have joined a homeschooling group in the city and we hope that the structure of the curriculum we have chosen will be a good fit as they start again in the new year.

It is not what we imagined but, I believe, will be better than we hoped.

We have settled into our new home and look forward to dedicating ourselves to seeing the kingdom of God on earth in the city of Nanaimo while we have the privilege of living here. However long that may be.