Mission Made Possible

Hey Everyone!

The month of June has literally flown by! The last couple weeks I have been learning about discipleship, missions, and evangelism! These past weeks have been so beneficial for our overall knowledge of the church/body of Christ and specifically for our outreach. In discipleship we learned about an 8 week program that we can help newly committed Christians in their walk with God. In missions we learned the WHOLE story of the bible. Most of the time spreading the word of God is broken into four parts; 1. God loves us 2. Sin is bad and separates us from God. 3. Jesus died for our sins 4. Repent, believe, and go to heaven. And this is a really good start but it leaves out some of the most important parts of the story. We then broke up the bible into 6 mains points and found out where we are in the story and what our purpose is. Evangelism lecture just started today but I can tell that it will be a life changing lecture. So far it’s about the boldness we should have with the Holy Spirit within us. It’s all been really really interesting. And the speakers have been extra nice to our class. One took us to Camp John Hay and we had class at the park, another treated us with ice cream.

But, after three very short months of the lecture phase, our class is ready to go on our outreach now to Compestella Valley, Mindanao (the southern island of the Philippines). For the past month we have been working especially hard on preparing dances and skits to grab people’s attention and also our testimonies, school assembly teachings, Sunday preaching and Sunday school lessons. We are somewhat physically prepared, but most of all God has been mentally and spiritually preparing us over the months too.

I, along with all of my classmates, have been remolded in this past 3 months and have been being worked on inward. Now our time is over and it’s time for us to give out what we learned to the people in Compestella Valley. We will be working with an organization linked with YWAM called Impact World Tour (IWT). The IWT has been travelling around the world for the past ten years doing shows to draw in the young people who are looking for God. IWT is made up of 3 teams;

·         Extreme team, who can break bricks with their heads and pull semi trucks and lift an obnoxious amount of weight.

·         Island Breeze is made up of cultural dancers.

·         GX team is made up of BMX bikers, skateboarders and break dancers.

Our part in this program is to go to the schools and churches to promote this event and get them interested in coming to the event. While at the schools we’ve prepared our testimonies, some school preaching on topics like; true love waits, destiny breakers, why education matters, and some other topics and also our dances and skits. Our goal is to help draw people to the IWT event, and our part after the event is going to be to disciple people, and connect them with local churches. During the event there will be people who first come to Christ or to recommit their lives to Jesus. We will take down their information and then form small groups of all the people who have rededicated their lives. After that there is an eight week follow up phase and small group meetings. During these eight weeks we will have small group meetings, answer questions, and help these people become followers of Christ in their everyday life and become their spiritual families.

It’s pretty exciting because we will help people grow spiritually and in their relationship with God, but scary at the same time because I feel like I’m not ready to be someone’s spiritual leader. I think it’s a huge responsibility and I’m still learning a lot myself! But I think if we just keep making excuses like that then no one will ever do anything that is challenging for us.

I am so blessed by this experience and really recommend it to anyone who wants to know who God is or how you can strengthen your relationship with him. It’s not only for youngsters but they also have a CDTS for older people and even a Family DTS. This has been the best and most challenging 3 months of my life and I’m so sad to see it end. This school wasn’t just sitting in a class room having information being jammed into your head. But it was learning with your heart, it was interactive, it was interpersonal and it was life changing. I still have a month left of outreach yet but I’m not ready for it to be over. I expected my DTS to be good but this is more then I could even have imagined.  I’ve also made friends that I know will last a lifetime.

We spend our free time composing songs and just laughing at everything. We also have family fun nights on Friday’s and last Friday was Mexican night. One of the directors Ate Joann, made homemade burritos and they were sooooo delicious! After that we did the limbo, had a piñata, and last but not least, we were blind folded and 4 chickens were let loose and we had to catch them with our partners directing us. It was literally one of the best nights of my life! Hahah! I was never able to catch one but it was sure fun trying!

The past couple weekends I became a part of the worship team at our church and was a backup singer. The majority of our class was the worship band. We have a class that is very talented musically. One boy can play the piano beautifully, one plays the bass, Cherrie my roommate plays the acoustic guitar and I was the backup singer. So that was really fun to be a part of and it was some good bonding time for our class too. The church was so welcoming! Last Sunday we were able to perform one of our dances, and I got over my fear of public speaking and gave my testimony, and we got to share about what we are going to do in Mindanao. God has really blessed our class. Right now we are struggling with finances for the outreach fee for everyone, but I just think God wants us to put more faith in him. We just need to do our part and he will take care of the rest. We all KNOW he has called us to be in this school together so we know he will provide for us to complete it together too.

This is all I have for now. I probably won’t have time to blog when I’m in Mindanao because we will have jam packed days, but I will write some more once I get home.

Thanks for reading and supporting me and my classmates. I’ll be home before you know it.

Love Ash