Blog 2: The January DTS Begins!!
Blog 2: Happy New Year!!! February 2022
QUICK UPDATE:
I apologize for such a delayed update. This update was supposed to come out sometime in January but was delayed due to a covid outbreak in our building with over 30 people having covid. We had to prepare lessons, teach and lead a school while dealing with the covid symptoms and quarantining. I personally found it quite difficult and tiring but there was so much of God’s grace shown in these past few weeks.
Looking back I see God's faithfulness and that he was in control the entire time. As I look back I am reminded of Romans 8:28 shown below. The lectures during our first few weeks were all though zoom/online, it was a huge inconvenience but it created a dynamic were both staff and students were eager to intentionally connect with one another. Many of the students have said they appreciated it this period because they had a lot of alone time to process, pray and really be intentional with seeking God’s wisdom/guidance for the next few months.
Romans 8:28
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
In summary, from my initial perspective I saw the covid outbreak as just an inconvenience but as I prayerfully sought God's perspective I saw a unified school, students that really valued alone time with God and a school that values being able to meet in person. It was inconvenient, but because I value God’s kingdom more than my convenience I can joyfully look back and say to God, Thank you. I'm not gonna deny that it was inconvenient but just because it wasn't according to my plans but that doesn't mean I'm gonna deny God from sharing his perspective of his plans.
I pray this story inspires you as well to invite God to show you his perspective of your past or present circumstances. I'm not asking you to deny how you feel, I'm simply asking you to not deny God from sharing his perspective.
HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!
SOME MEMORABLE PHOTS SINCE MY LAST UPDATE
I know it's very late at this point but HAPPY NEW YEARS!!! When praying about what to write I really felt to begin by praying for you. My hope/prayer is that you feel the Lord’s presence as you're reading this update. Like I said in my previous update, I believe that God has every right to answer any prayer the way he wants, but I refuse to pray small for fear of being disappointed. I love God and I love to pray boldly because I know who my Father is, I know he loves us and I know he is capable of things way greater than I can imagine to pray for. I want my prayers to reflect this belief.
“God I just invite you into the rooms of all the readers, I ask that you speak words of encouragement, wisdom and love to every reader right now. I pray that as someone is reading this they are healed of any pain & discomfort. I pray for your peace & joy to enter them at this moment. God I love you and I pray that whoever is reading this feels your love and becomes desperate to fall deeper in love with you. I ask these things in Jesus name, Amen.”
THANK YOU!!!
This is the revelation that God gave me regarding the question “why missions?”. This applies both to the supporters and the supported. He said this “Missions are actively loving those whom God loves, with the same love that God has.”
Once again I want to say thank you so much to everyone who has supported me, encouraged me and shared words of wisdom with me. These past few months I was brought to tears on numerous occasions just thanking God. I am so thankful for how he has guided me, called me to missions and connected with an amazing family of supporters, friends & fellow missionaries.
I want to give an extra thank you to those who have financially supported me and enabled me to bless others as well. When it comes to finances below is my heart, this is something I pray routinely and I would love to encourage you and invite you to pray this over yourself as well.
“God thank you for how you have blessed me so far, God I ask that before you continue to bless me, first bless me with a generous heart. God help me to steward this life and these resources in a way that brings you the most glory, the most praise and the most love. God help to steward what you've blessed me with, so that you can get the most out of it. Amen”
MEET THE TEAM:
This year I have the pleasure of staffing the January Discipleship Training School with an inspiring group of world changers, followers of Jesus and last but not least, friends. I am so excited to staff this school with this team, they have been so welcoming and such an inspiration to my faith. They have made me desire to follow Jesus more, to love others more and they have inspired me with how to intercede and pray for the students.
JANUARY DTS STAFF TEAM
(Left to Right: Me, Camille, Amy, Zach and Laura)
MEET THE STUDENTS:
Below are the students of our January Discipleship Training School. I want to emphasize “we” because I couldn't be here to lead them without you. Therefore, we get to help them fall more in love with Jesus! We get to help them discover the freedom found in Christ! We get to help them find freedom from fears, break chains and discover their purposes. We are doing this together therefore I want to emphasize that we are actively loving those whom God loves, with the same love that God has.
“God I ask at this moment that you give each reader a revelation of how significant their involvement is and I pray that each reader feels just as involved and active in missions as I am.”
FUN MOMENTS WITH THE STUDENTS
In our school we have 13 students from various countries including South Africa, Chile, Canada, America, South Korea, Jordan, China and The Netherlands. During this time I’ve had the pleasure of seeing them grow in their intimacy with Jesus and in their boldness to share the gospel. In just one month I have seen these students set free from so many lies and fears that they used to believe. I've seen their hunger to know Jesus and for people to know more about Jesus grow tremediously in this last month. The students are recognizing their purpose, the gifts and talents God has given them and actively walking in it.
TESTIMONY:
I want to share a testimony with you guys about one of my students. She originally had a fear of evangelism due to a bad experience with some Jehovah Witnesses’. I initially did not know about this fear (an important detail). The story begins during our second week of evangelism. On this day this student and I get partnered together and we decide to go to Central Station for evangelism. Central station is the main train station in Amsterdam, a bigger & busier version of our Waterfront station in Vancouver. As we are walking to this station I clearly hear God's voice say , “today you're gonna speak to a Jehovah Witness.” I tell this to my student and she nervously agrees and says she heard the same thing from God. Keep in mind that at this time I didn't know this was one of her biggest fears.
As we were walking to the train station I begin to emphasize that as followers of Jesus our responsibility is obedience and God’s responsibility is the outcome. And that we need to take the pressure & responsibility of changing someone's life off ourselves because ultimately it's not gonna be us but God who convinces them to follow. I also emphasized that we will never share a message as beautifully as God and that God is a way better teacher & speaker than we'll ever be. I simply state that our responsibility when we evangelize is to boldly & lovingly be obedient to God.
Once we arrive at the train station I begin to share how I’m also feeling nervous/afraid and talk about what I do with these feelings. I tell her, if you're nervous don't try to hide it from whom ever you're speaking to and specially don't hide it from God. I tell her that often the only reason we're nervous is because we try to hide it. Then I pray with her saying “God I'm nervous, help us to be so in love with you Jesus and those whom you love, that these feelings go away”.
So my students and I start to walk around the station, and I'm just looking at people waiting for God’s prompting and boom!!! (not an explosion just a realization hahaha). I look at these two women close by and I hear God clearly say “talk to those two women”. My student hears the same thing. But we were both so nervous. Were maybe a couple meters away from these two women and me and my student have a comedically nervous conversation that kinda sounded like this….
Her: “I don't know what to say”
Her: “Cliff you go”
Me: “I don't know what to say either”
Me: “What do I say, how do you start it?”
Her: “Don't look at me”
Me: “Don’t look at me either"
This went back and forth for a bit then I decided to just go for it, hoping that God would give me the words to say. I go up to these two women and here's my opening line “excuse me, hi guys my name is Cliff and you know what i'll be honest I'm a bit nervous but we go to a bible school and we're just asking people what are their thoughts on spirituality or Jesus or God. The reason why we are asking this is because I love to preach and I feel that if I don't understand or hear other people's perspectives I won't be as relatable or as authentic. When I preach I want to be able to preach in a way that addresses many but has the same impact as an intentional one on one conversation. If you have time I would love to hear your perspective.”
Now, here's the exciting part. The two people we approached, one of them was a muslim and the other one was a Jahova witness. (WOAH, we heard God so clearly.) It was such a cool conversation because It was the first time this lady who was a Jehovah witness had ever been approached by christians. She was like “woah this is weird, it's normally me doing this”. The conversation wasn't that significant but the outcome was.
Throughout this conversation I saw my student regularly taking part in the discussion as she confidently shared her testimony and view of Jesus.
She has told me that at the she is completely free from her fear of evangelism & Jehovah Witnesses. Now she has an excitement for evangelism and every week we do it she gets more and more excited to do it. Every week she also comes back with amazing testimonies of her sharing the gospel. She is still in contact with this Jehovah witness lady and is even planning to meet up with her for Coffee to share more about Jesus.
This is just one testimony of the many that I've seen God do in our students' lives. I want to stress that you my supporters deserve the same or even more credit than I do. As a team we are seeing lives changed, and those whose lives have been changed are going out to change more lives. God is doing an amazing work here in Amsterdam.
Side note: The two women whom we evangelized to were also civil engineers. I thought it was a cool coincidence that this Jahova Witness woman went from going door to door to doing engineering and how I went from Engineering to doing missions. It's not a significant side note but for me personally it was even more confirmation that God was involved in setting up that meeting.
Here's a video of the same student making a decision to get baptized!!
ADDITIONAL TESTIMONIES:
God has done so much in this time with ywam. It is too much to put it all into words. My thankfulness towards God is endlessly big. Before coming here I struggled a lot with anxiety and I believed in a lot of lies about myself. As I get to know God more and more, the lies that I believed have been starting to break. This DTS really challenges you to step outside your comfort zone, I always felt to weak to do anything for God's kingdom, but I know that when I am weak God is strong. When I step out of that comfort zone, I know that God will provide, he will work because I trust him and will need him. I now know that can not do it on my own strength, I depend on him and not myself. Every time I step out I see God providing, I am more convinced that God wants to give good gifts for his children, thank you God.
- Evine, The Netherlands
During my time at the Amsterdam DTS, God has continuously spoken truth over my life in numerous ways. Being in an environment centred around knowing God more; surrounded by brothers and sisters, reading the expressive language of God's heart, surrendering everyday and being led by the Holy Spirit has allowed me to hear God's voice so clearly. Life before DTS was intense and knowing God to this degree was unimaginable and almost unattainable. I am so grateful because in just the past week I have had a multitude of revelations that have revealed more of God's heart. He has heard every thought/doubt I have and replaced it by speaking complete truth and clarity about how much He sees, hears, and loves me.
- Mallory, USA
This season has been so incredibly unbelievable and life changing already! He has been teaching me about not doing/fixing things in my own strength but instead hearing His voice, obeying it (even when I’m not certain of the outcome) and trusting/fully allowing Him to move etc.
He has been doing incredible things and changing my heart day by day. I’ve been growing so much closer to Him and truly learning so much about Him. I’ve found real Christian friends for the first time and have just been. Even the homework book was so transformative for me and each chapter got me more and more excited for all that God can do and will do in my life! I’m beyond grateful that God brought me here for such a time as this! And it’s only one month in!
- Joné, UK/South Africa.
Once again I want to say thank you for partnering with me as we help others to know more about God, help others find freedom from fears/lies and as we share the gospel on the streets of Amsterdam. I am so grateful that we get to partner with what God is already doing in the Netherlands. So thank you!!! If you're interested, below is a rough idea of my schedule of the January Discipleship Training School. Below is the students schedule, where there are gaps we as staff have time to prepare , meet and pray together!!. It's quite busy but I love it!!! Also below is a fun video showing one second from each day.
