YOU KNOW IF YOU'RE A YWAMer IF....

When you go to a food court in a mall and you know which restaurants belong to which country. Even if they're all Asian restaurants!!

when you live in a house with 8 people from 8 different nations

when dropping food on the floor has a 5-minute rule rather than a 5-second rule

when you know how to say "where's the bathroom" in 8 different languages

you have more friends overseas than in your home town

When you answer "where are you from?" with "well, I'm originally from America, but I've been living.....  for the past several years, and right now I'm on outreach in .......

you no longer have a definite idea of what "weird" food is...

when it's normal to say "yes" to God to go on a $3000 trip when you only have $10 to your name (saying "yes" and THEN ask God how to pay for it)

I thought I would start off with a few things I've heard some  YWAM friends say.  There are many running jokes among us about how YWAM works.

In Transition

Back in November, we as a base had to move out of the building we were leasing.  About a year and a half ago, we got to BUY our first piece of property since being here in Perth (25 years).  So, we began to build our first building and a place for training people in different topics to go to the nations and help them.  A lot of the money we needed to see this building developed has been donated!!!!  Wow! when God tells you to do something, you do it!  He provides!

However, the new building is still not ready to move in due to some arguing between the building company and the gas company, so we as a base have had to find creative ways of still getting together and functioning.  For example, every Monday morning, we get together to praise God. So, when we moved out, we started meeting at a park.....that is until the park rangers gave us a warning to not come back (apparently, you need a permit).  Now, we are meeting a church in the city.  

We use to eat all together in the cafeteria.  Now, we are divided into groups of 20 and eat at certain people's homes.  

You know, being a missionary really forces you to be flexible.  It's a whole new adventure and we're embracing it!

The old warehouse we use to rent

the new building we're waiting to occupy

the Park we were evicted out of

My School

Week 2 is complete!

The school (training program) I lead is called the School of Frontier Missions.  It's a school that trains people who want to do church planting among people groups who have never heard of Jesus.  This particular quarter focuses on a country in East Asia

It's a 12-week program and we just finished our 2nd week.  This week, we learned about what the Bible says about missions and also the history of major missions movements.  Did you know that the first commandment for missions was NOT the Great Commission given in Mark 16:15?  It was with Abraham in Genesis 12!  Cool, uh?  It's amazing to see that each major revival and missions movement started with prayer.  If you want to learn about an amazing group, study the Moravians and how they got their start.

Outside of learning in lectures, the school does house church so they can get use to leading a home church, language learning (Mandarin), prayer for unreached people groups, and evangelism in the city through feeding the homeless and backpackers.

The students seem to be doing good.  They are getting out there and practicing their Chinese when possible. They tell people about Jesus and they're great at meeting people on base.

New students registering

my school

For our first day, we went to the beach and grilled kangaroo steaks

Me, Justin (and Aussie), Deborah (America), and Jussi---pronounced "yusie" (Finland)

I made dessert

sun set at the beach

Me

I'm doing ok. I'm a bit tired because I just finished helping with a DTS in October and now I'm leading this school. However, I'm excited about the call on my life.  God keeps reaffirming that He has called me to the nations....specifically to those who have never heard of Christ and the hope He can give them.  He keeps reminding me that though I am to go, I am also called to train people to go.  In this way, I get to affect many nations at the same time.  So, I lead a mission training school and am now planning to take a small team to find unreached people groups (more on that later). 

Prayer Points

1)  my students-----that they get a deep hunger for God and for people

2) me------for wisdom to lead and discernment

3) the base I work with-------we NEED a miracle to happen to get into our building soon.  the gas company is stalling and is now threatening to pull out.  pray that all will be resolves

AND

we need finances to see things completed with the building