Amsterdam & Albania May, 2022

WELCOME

I want to begin by saying thank you so much for continuing to support me prayerfully & financially in missions. Since my last update I have seen the students have grow so much in their faiths and boldness to share the gospel. I have also seen God do a work in me as he did what I like to call spiritual heart & eye surgery. I have learnt a lot about missions, people and I have many new revelations that I’m excited to share with you. Since my last update the students and I have had various lectures & began serving the local missionaries in Albania. If you are interested to find out more please check out our instagram page linked below. Here you can find some pictures and hear some testimonies from our students.

CHECK OUT OUR INSTAGRAM PAGE BELOW

You can follow them @albaniamiddleeast_dts, picture below is just a screenshot from the actual instagram page but you can click the instagram icon just below this text to head to the actual instagram page where you can view, like & comment on the posts.

THANK YOU

In my last blog I discussed a revelation that God gave me for missions. The revelation was this definition that God gave me for missions: “Missions is actively loving those whom God loves, with the same love that God has”. God has continued to expand on this revelation showing me that missions is more than something we go do, but missions is a lifestyle choice. For me that meant “missions” has more to do with our relationship with the Lord than our physical location. Its not about where we go, but its about who’s love are we responding to. Do we allow God’s intense love for others to interrupt our daily lives? How are we responding to God’s love for us and those around us?

God has been showing me that the idea of doing missions (ei. Matthew 28:18-20) is not just a goal or something on our task list but it is a natural response. The desire to share God’s love, share the gospel & invite people into a relationship with Jesus is not a box we tick off, but something we should naturally do in response to the overflowing love that God has for us. This season has taught me that a big part of living out this lifestyle of missions requires us to continual seek out a deeper intimacy with the Lord and daily ask God “how do you want me to respond to your love for me and those around me today”.

Below is how I currently view missions. I say currently because know God will continue to expand and refine it.

“MISSIONS” is actively loving those whom God loves with the same love that He has. MISSIONS is actively inviting people into a relationship with Jesus. MISSIONS means leaving a life where we allow God’s love for people to interrupt and lead our daily lives.

This lifestyle of missions is something that I am continuing to grow in and continuing to lead my students in.

Matthew 28:18-20
“18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.””

I just want to say thank you again to everyone who has supported me throughout this journey. I am so grateful for all your support, encouragement & prayers. As a DTS team over the past few months we have been discipling 13 students from across the world who I know will continue to make more disciples. Because of your generosity I have seen these students fall so in love with the Lord, make great steps of faith, find freedom from lies they were believing and I have seen them radically share the love of Jesus with people in Amsterdam & Albania. God is moving in them and through them. Thank you for advancing His Kingdom, thank you for loving His sons & daughters and thank you for helping people get to know the love of Christ through your generosity.

Your generosity has allowed me to be generous with both my time & my finances. Through your generosity I know lives are being changed, God’s kingdom is expanding, people are encountering the love of God & disciples are being made. So thank you so much!

LECTURE PHASE:

PHOTOS FROM AMSTERDAM

AMSTERDAM:

During our last four weeks in the Netherlands, us staff and students had lectures on the topics shown below:

LIFE IN THE BODY OF CHRIST
LIFE IN MISSIONS & LIFESTYLE OF MISSIONS
RELATIONSHIPS & COMMUNICATION
SPIRITUAL WARFARE
I hope to write little updates on what we learnt in each of these weeks, so stay tuned!!

As staff we were responsible for learning alongside the students and further discussing these topics with the students outside of lecture times. While in the Netherlands we would continue to do evangelism and share the gospel on the streets of Amsterdam. We would also spend hours in worship and in intercession, where we prayed for various topics chosen by the students and the base worship/prayer team. As a school we also studied the bible together with a focus on the book of Genesis and do a variety of team bonding exercises prior to our outreach in Albania.

My co leader, Laura and I were responsible for leading an hour of intercession every Wednesday morning. Every Tuesday night after worship, we would meet together to pray and ask God to reveal to us what was on His heart and what He wanted us to be praying for during these intercession times. It was cool how everytime we would do this, even if we prayed separately, we would hear the same things from God. It was so encouraging to know that we were hearing God’s voice correctly and encouraging to know that we were doing something that was on God’s heart. For me this season was centered around prayer and a dependency on hearing God's voice. I grew so close to him and fell so in love with the Lord.

Outside of our daily schedule, shown below for those interested in potentially doing a discipleship training school, us staff were busy preparing for our outreach in Albania & the Middle East. Practically this included looking for places to stay, contacting people from these countries to set up ministries/work and looking into flights/transportation. We also spent numerous hours in prayer and worship because a staff team we recognized that God is ultimately the leader of our teams. I will be honest, during these times I would often be tired but I recognized that I would much rather go on an outreach/missions trip led by Jesus than an outreach/missions trip led by myself and us staff. During these four weeks we spent a lot of time just waiting/listening and allowed ourselves to be interruptible at every stage of planning. Time and time again during our planning times we felt like God would say just pray, worship and listen to me. It was great but when it was getting close to the deadline of leaving the Netherlands, we realized we didn't have much planned because we spent most of our time praying and worshiping. Despite this lack of preparedness from our end, as a staff team we still felt peace and as we allowed ourselves to be interruptible, we saw God work.

DTS SCHEDULE

This season taught me to seek out God’s perspective and taught me to not rely on my definition of what is productive vs unproductive. During these times of planning, over and over again, we would see the faithfulness of God as we chose to depend on him and chose to not rush. During this time God provided us with the right people to contact in the countries of Albania & Middle East. In fact they had actually come to the Netherlands for a quick visit and we met them by chance at an optional 24 hour worship night. This night I was completely exhausted from work but heard God so clearly say “Cliff I need you to go to this worship night”. That very night Laura and I ended up meeting our outreach hosts who would go on to do a lot of the work for us. They found affordable places for us to stay and they connected us with other local ministries within these countries.

As I look back at this season I continue to ask myself the following questions:

Am I willing to let Jesus interrupt my definitions of what is productive and unproductive?
Am I willing to let Jesus interrupt my definition of what success looks like?
Am I willing to let Jesus interrupt my plans for rest?
Am I willing to let Jesus interrupt the goals & plans I have for today?
How interruptible am I?

HOW INTERRUPTIBLE AM I?

These weeks in the Netherlands have taught me how crucial it is to be interruptible and how important it is to take a step back to just listen. Through this time God had showed me that in our pursuit to follow Jesus and do His will, prayer & listening is the most effective use of our time. It is the counter cultural concept of “prayer saves time”.

If i'm gonna be honest there have been times where I have seen prayer as something that takes up time rather than something that is an essential use of my time or the most effective use of time. As I look back at my life, especially in my early christian life, I have always said I want to follow Jesus but I would hardly ever give Him the time to speak. Often I would attempt to listen but when God’s direction did not come as fast as I wanted or how I wanted it to come, I would often make a rushed decision. As I asked myself the question “how interruptible am I?”, it resulted in deep conversations with God about His trustworthiness and how loving His timing is. It was this heart revelation that allowed me to grasp the love that is so deeply woven into His timing. As I look back at my life I constantly see the love, the faithfulness & wisdom of God’s timing. I would love to encourage you to ask yourself the questions above and have a discussion with God about His timing. Allow Him to give you a greater awareness of the perfect love displayed in His timing.

In summary this season has taught me the following things:

Our ability to follow Jesus is proportional to our interpretability.
God’s love & wisdom is deeply woven into His timing. His love is perfectly expressed in His timing.

Before we continue I want to pray for you!

“God I ask that you give us a greater awareness of the depths of your love shown in your timing. God I just pray that as people are reading this prayer they would feel your presence, your peace and your comfort. I pray that you give them a heart revelation where they understand that you have never lost control, that you God are always in control. I pray that as you're reading this you will encounter Jesus in a new way this week and fall so madly in love with him. I pray for healing over your body and over your friends & family. I ask for all these things and command this healing, in Jesus name. Amen.”

OUTREACH PHASE:

Outreach phase is what I like to call the 7 weeks we spent in Albania. Over the course of these seven weeks Laura, Zach and I led a team of 12 students on a mission trip to Albania. Albania is a very relationship oriented country therefore we spent a majority of our time in Albania supporting and partnering with the local long term missionaries who can build deeper connections with the locals. Before I dive into what we did in Albania I feel that it is important to share some quick facts about Albania so that you can best understand the need for the gospel in Albania.

ALBANIA:

Albania borders Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia & Greece as shown in the map below. Albania was under communism rule up until 1991. During communism the practice of religion was not allowed. Although communism ended in 1991, religious freedom was only granted by the government in 1998. The majority religion in Albania is Muslim, making up 60% of the population and christians making up 37% of the population. These numbers vary depending on what website but mulisms make up a majority of the population.

In Albania many christians are quite new in their faiths, due to the religious freedom act being quite recent in comparison to other countries in europe. This is why the need for missionaries in this country is so great.

ALBANIA