Blog 8: September DTS Prep Season
PREPARATION SEASON
JULY - SEPTEMBER 2023
WELCOME AND HI AGIAN:
Meet some of my friends from Canada!!! They are the best :)
Hi Again and Welcome back!!! I am so excited for all of us to read this update about what God has been doing in this season of preparation. I am excited to share with us what I have been learning and how I have been seeing God’s faithfulness, love and leadership in my life and in the lives those around me. I pray that this update would bring us refreshment, help us to fall more in love with God and help us to find joy in bringing our Heavenly Father joy.
God is and has been teaching me so much in preparation for this new role of assistant leading a DTS and I am excited to share with you my journey of preparation and the prayer life that allowed me to peacefully follow Jesus in this journey. Since my last update I have been in Canada to connect with you all, in the UK at YWAM Harpendan and back here in Amsterdam taking part in staff training & preparation for the upcoming September DTS.
Before I go deeper, like with every update I want to begin this update with some prayers & thanksgivings. When praying over this update I was was once again reminded of Jesus’ last moment with the disciples before He gave Himself over to the cross, specifically John 14:23, where Jesus expressed a radical statement of love. It says this…
John 14:23
“23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
The key phrase I want us to focus on is when Jesus says this “we will come to him and make our home with him” or another way to read it is, within us. During a short coffee break my mentor/friend casually mentioned “Unity is a characteristic of God’s love” and he reminded me of how little I have explored this angle/side of God’s love towards us. In verse 16 of this same chapter Jesus says that He will send us the Helper or Holy Spirit. When you combine these verses together [verse 16 & 23], Jesus makes a radical statement that as we pursue Him and love Him the Trinity is desiring and willing to come into us.
I have heard it explained like this, He comes closer to us than our own skin. A thought I invite us to ponder as we read through this update and go along with our daily lives is what does God think about us, or how much does God love us, if He is willing to be that unified with us? Its a thought I have pondered several times and every time its led me to a place of worship, gratitude and weeping. Crying out God, how could you love me that much. I encourage you to let God’s love towards you overwhelm you. And that’s what I will be praying over us. I believe that God already loves us and that He really does want to be with us, its just that sometimes its hard to respond to His desire for us if we are not practiced in becoming aware of it. My desire is to pray for us to become more aware of His love towards us and more aware of His desire to spend time with us. If you would love to grow in being more aware of His love and more aware of His desire towards you, I want to invite us to pray this prayer below with me. Lets pray!
My Prayer for Us:
Heavenly Father, thank you for loving us first. Thank you for loving us enough that you would be willing to dwell inside of us. Lord, I ask that you would help us to fall more in love with you, by helping us to be more aware of the love You already have towards us. Help us to love you from a place of knowing confidently that we are loved by You. Lord I enjoy Your presence, Your company and Your voice. I ask that you would be with us and help us to be more aware of your desire to be with us. God I ask that we would fall in love with you deeper as we explore how much you want to be with us. I ask for all these things in Jesus name. Amen.
THANK YOU:
Once again I want to say thank you because I am so grateful towards everyone of you who has contributed to helping me to continue working as a missionary with YWAM Amsterdam. I am so excited to continue serving God in our Discipleship Training programs. Your generosity has helped me to apply for my visa to continue partnering with YWAM Amsterdam for the next three years. Thank you for enabling me and equipping me with the ability to continue leading people towards Jesus, growing in my own relationship with God and blessing me with the means to also be generous towards others. I will say it again in my section about coming home to Canada but I have felt so loved by you all when I visited. So thank you so much, I love you all so much and I am so so grateful for you.
OVERVIEW:
January DTS Graduations
Time in Canada
September DTS
Prayer Requests
JANUARY DTS GRADUATION:
On June 22nd I had the pleasure of graduating 10 of our amazing students from the January DTS. We had the opportunity to celebrate their graduations, hear wonderful testimonies of what God has done in thier lives in the past 6 months and said many hard goodbyes. Below are some pictures of this wonderful time. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pour into the lives of our students.
Fruit/Multiplication:
I want to end this section on the January DTS by giving a quick recap of the fruit/multiplication we have seen in just the students. I hope that this section brings you so much joy to see how your generosity is advancing God’s kingdom and changing the lives of many young people. This is all just from one school and I haven't even mentioned or fully seen the fruit of the many other seeds that were sown for God’s kingdom as a result of the many conversations we as a school have had with people during ministry, the impact of our ministries/teachings/sermons and the impact of all our evangelism times during both lecture phase and outreach phase.
In Luke 15 verses 7 & 10 shown below Jesus teaches us that our Heavenly Father celebrates when someone repents. Repentance is not just salvation and accepting Jesus as Lord over your life but repentance is the act of turning away from sin and turning to God. From these verses Jesus teaches us that there is so much joy & celebration over every choice we make to choose Him. I personally believe that the Lord loves us enough to celebrate every time we choose Him. My prayer is that as you read about the fruit and multiplication from our school, we would experience the joy that our Heavenly Father experienced watching these 10 new graduates declare thier desire to continue pursuing Him deeper.
Luke 15:7
“7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
Luke 15:10
“10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Student Updates:
1 student has joined us as a full time staff in our worship and prayer team.
1 student is continuing to do missionary work in his home country of Barbados with a missions organization called Campus Crusaders.
1 student is joining us this September for one of our second level schools, the Discipleship Bible School (DBS). The DBS is a three month bible school where participants will read the whole bible and have lectures on the historical & cultural context, literary genres and main themes of the Bible. If you are interested in learning more about what you have helped this student to desire take a look at this link. YWAM Amsterdam - Discipleship Bible School
1 student has expressed her interest in doing the DBS at a different YWAM base.
3 students have expressed their interested in committing to doing the School of Biblical Studies (SBS) or another form of . The SBS is one of our second level school and is a nine month bible school where the participants will read the bible five to six times over the course of the nine months. Similar to the DBS they will have lectures on on the historical & cultural context, literary genres and main themes of the Bible. If you are interested in learning more about what you have helped these students desire to do take a look at this link. YWAM Amsterdam - School of Biblical Studies
3 studnets have gone back to into university with a greater love for the Lord and a heart to one day step into missions again. One of them has expressed her interests in doing missions in South Korea and evangelism at her local university campus. Another one told us that she will be continuing to do house building/missionary work in Mexico with her family.
Multiplication is happening and God’s kingdom is advancing. These are not just students but now friends of mine. So thank you for playing such an important role in helping my friends become more convinced that knowing God deeper is so enjoyable and making Him known is equally great and exciting.
Graduation Day Pictures:
TIME IN CANADA:
During the summer I had the amazing opportunity to come back to Canada to connect with many of you. I am so grateful for my time back in Canada. In this time the Lord helped me to feel so loved by Him and by my friends & family, He led me to so many wonderful conversations and taught me more about His desire for unity with us and about the joy He experiences when being with us. In this section I hope to share some of these wonderful testimonies of God’s love and share some of the lessons He taught me.
A prayer that significantly impacted and shaped my time back home was this daily prayer of “Lord, how do you want me to follow you today". It is a very simple prayer that led me to so many wonderful moments and conversations. My understanding or way of following God is this; “I don’t necessarily need to have the overview or big picture plan for my life in order to follow Jesus, I just need to know what does He want me to do in the present moment”. My belief is that if every single day I seek God for wisdom on how to follow Him and fall more in love with Him for that specific day and I lovingly obey Him; I will naturally end up becoming and doing/experiencing all the things He desires & desires for me. Like with a GPS if I follow every single turn it says, I can trust that I will naturally get to my destination. The Lord’s leadership was so amazing during my time back in Canada and my hope is that as I share testimonies you too would be encouraged to trust the Lord leadership and trust that He delights to answer the prayer “Lord, how do you want me to follow you today”.
Testimonies:
My first testimony comes from my first week of being back. I was the best man at my best friends wedding. This was the first time I had the opportunity to be a best man and first time I ever wrote a best man speech. When I was initially writing this speech I was so nervous becuase I wanted to do it very well. So naturally I looked up YouTube videos of other best man speeches & read so many websites looking for tips/advice on how to write one. I spent hours doing this and still I had so much difficulty writing anything down so I quickly prayed this prayer of “Lord how do you want me to follow you into writing a best man speech”. The Lord answered and said “worship Me, thank Me and then pray for Avri & Nathan”. So I did and in the middle of worshiping God, I heard him so clearly telling me all the words to write, it was as if the Lord downloaded the entire speech to me. After the celebrations I had multiple people come up to me saying how good it was and through this I had several conversations where I got to share this testimony, talk about Hearing God’s voice and pray with others to hear God’s voice better. The main point behind this story is that, through this instance/prayer the Lord taught me how to pray in a more relational way. “Lord show me how to follow you into ____”. Do you see the small difference between Lord give me ____ vs Lord I want to follow you into ___. One is so much more relational than the other. I invite you to pray this way too and see what difference it makes in your relationship with the Lord. For me it made me so much more aware of God’s presence in the process and so much more aware that it was God who gifted me with what I desired.
My second testimony comes from my time of volunteering once again at Food for Families with City Reach/Broadway Church. When home I was really praying and asking the Lord “How do you want me to spend my time back in Canada & How do You want me to follow You Jesus in this time”. The Lord responded and asked me to spend two weeks volunteering with Food for Families, which was originally my old job before I left for missions two years ago. So I reached out and it was the most perfect timing. Unknown to me, the person who originally replaced me was stepping down from His position but at that time Food for Families hadn’t found or confirmed a replacement. All thanks to the Lord’s leadership I was able to help at the perfect time to cover some vacant shifts & also train the new staff which they eventually found. Through this the Lord once again reassured me that I can in fact hear His voice. Within these two weeks I regularly prayed “Lord help me to see the harvest from your perspective and Lord show me who do you want me to speak too.” I had the opportunity to have so many conversations about Jesus, my testimonies in missions and about the things the Lord was teaching me with many volunteers who had a heart for missions and with many volunteers who weren’t even Christian. I even got to pray one on one with some volunteers who weren’t Christian.
My last testimony is of my time fund raising. Desiring to renew my visa, I needed to fund raise and have funds for the next three years of missions. I honestly had no idea how I was gonna do it, I need to raise so much more extra money in such a short period of time. So learning from what the Lord taught me in the first week I prayed “Lord show me how to follow you into being fully supported”. The Lord never really gave me a a fundraising plan, He just asked me to daily love Him and fall in love with His word and I just obeyed. I never asked for more support, the extra support just naturally came in with friends offering to increase thier support without me even asking. I once was just getting water in the staff lounge at my church and Lori from the missions committee of my church just happened to be there and asked me to send her an email about my needs. My goal was just to get water and the Lord led me to such an amazing opportunity to be supported. I thank all of you, my friends, for supporting me because I was able to focus on falling more in love with God and prepare my heart in this time to lead my staff & students in this upcoming September DTS school, instead of being stressed out about not having enough funds. Because of your generosity I have been able to encourage so many other missionaries that the Lord does provide. With this amazing testimony of being fully supported by daily prioritizing falling more in love with God, I was able to give many others hope and many of the students I have discipled using this way of prayer have found themselves also being fully supported in thier missions journey.
So my hope in reading this section is that it inspires you to make a small change in how you pray and your heart posture when you pray by saying “Lord how can I follow you into ____”. The heart posture change is that being with the person of Jesus is prioritized over the desired outcome.
Some Highlights of My Time in Canada:
SEPTEMBER DTS - MEET THE TEAM, TRAINING & MEET THE STUDENTS:
September DTS Logo & Overview:
As most of you already know, I have made the transition from the January DTS team to the September DTS team. In this new team I have had the honour of being an assistant leader along with Laurine. As an assistant leader I get to work closely with Noah and learn more about the responsibilities of being a school leader and learn more about what it means to lead a school and a staff team. In this time of being back in Amsterdam we have had many different lectures such as Time Management, Outreach Budgeting, Vision gaining, Budgeting the DTS, YWAM Values & Intercession/Worship. I have also had the amazing opportunity to also just get to know my new team better. It has been so sweet to feel so welcomed by a new team, this new team already feels like family to me and I am so excited to lead with these wonderful people. I have included some picture below of my new staff team and some highlights from our staff training week at YWAM Harpenden in the UK.
During my time back I have also had the opportunity to be exposed to some new leadership responsibilities such as accepting students, determining speakers and determining outreach locations. As a team we have prayed narrowed down our outreach locations to four different counties. A word that we received from the Lord is “To the Ends of the Earth” so honouring this we will be sending four different missionary teams with 7-8 students each to four different countries. One in Central America, One in Africa & Two in South East Asia.
Meet the September DTS Staff Team:
Above (Left to Right): Annika from Germany, Sabrina from Switzerland, Olivia from USA, Micheal from The Netherlands, Robyn from Scotland & Moises from Brazil.
Below (Left to Right): Noah from Canada, Laurine from Germany, Me.
More Highlights from our Staff Training Week at YWAM Harpenden:
Meet the September DTS Students:
This year we have had the privilege of welcoming 50+ new students and staff to our base at YWAM Amsterdam, all furthering their training in missions & biblical studies. 23 of these new students are part of our September DTS program. We have spent one week together now and it has been a joy to already see so much growth in their passion for Jesus and evangelism. It is amazing that even in this short time I am able to already have so many testimonies of God’s faithfulness and desire to train up young people to spread the name of Jesus.
A Short Testimony:
One of my favourite testimonies from this first week comes from our time of evangelism. In our schedule evangelism is a regular thing that we do and challenge the students to take part in. It is very common that the first week is the most challenging for students, especially for students who have never done evangelism before. When we do evangelism we like to first pray together, split up into groups and then go to the city centre or local park. This time when splitting up into groups I asked who were the most nervous to do evangelism and told them they can go with me. I didn’t mean it in a prideful way, but I just know that students typically feel more at ease when they are doing it with a staff and not every student could be paired with a staff.
On the way to our location I tried my best to explain evangelism in a way that made it less stressful and light hearted. I explained to my students that ultimately it is the Lord that will pursue, love and transform those who we meet. Our focus is obedience to the Lord. I explained that we can also have confidence that because the Lord loves these people, we can trust that the Lord will send other believers, not just us, to the people we meet. So our goal with our obedience is to have us end the conversation or interaction with them going “wow that was a nice Christian, I wouldn't mind talking to more of them”.
During this time I went with two students Flo from Ukraine & Ryleigh from USA who both explained to me that they didn’t really want to do it. We went to a local park in the City of Amsterdam called Oosterpark and while walking around the park we prayed together “Lord I ask that you would highlight to us who you would want us to speak too”. We saw one woman sitting by herself by a tree and Flo felt that we should go to talk to her. Her name was Tilly and she was from Australia. Amazingly she had just landed and arrived at that park 15mins ago. I really saw that it was God who set this meeting up because we had an amazing conversation about the city, Australia (since I lived there for 3 months) and about traveling to different countries. She just graduated from Law school and was wanting to take a couple of gap years to travel. We talked about the bible school that we were doing and she had so many questions about it. She even said that if she had done something like this DTS bible school she would have probably even stayed with her church. She was very interested in this interesting school that allowed students to learn about God and travel to different nations. The conversation continued and right at the time we were supposed to connect back with the rest of our group she also had to leave so it was so perfect. We all exchanged numbers and made plans to meet up in the future. We had an amazing conversation but what exited me the most is how my two most nervous students felt afterwards. We ended this time of evangelism with these two students saying “Wow, I can’t wait to do this again. Its not actually that hard to tell people about Jesus”. This brought a huge smile to my face as it is just week one of this six month bible school. So I look forward to telling you more testimonies of thier growth.
PRAYER REQUESTS:
That is the end of this update. Once again I just want to say thank you so much for supporting me and enabling me to serve the Lord in this way. I look forward to what the Lord will continue to do in this new season with the September DTS. If you would like to prayerfully support me I would greatly appreciate it. You can check out some of the prayer points below. Thank you.
Prayer Points:
That God would be preparing the hearts of this year's September DTS students and that they would already be falling more in love with God now.
That God would help the students break free from the fear of man and that the school would be unified in a love for one another.
Prayer that God give me the wisdom to lead this staff team and these students well and into a deeper relationship with Jesus.
Prayer that I would be able to hear God’s voice so clearly so that I can really lead and disciple my team & students well.
Prayer that I would continue to fall more in love with God, His word and fall more in love praying for things that are on His Heart.
THANK YOU FOR READING & PRAYING!!!!! Love you all lots, thank you :)
Enjoy these Random Highlights:
