January is usually a month of change here at YWAM Closkelt, and 2008 is no exception. The two outreaches (one for the island of Ireland; one to Serbia and Bosnia) from the DTS that started in October left last week, and in just over a week, new students for the January Discipleship Training School will arrive. So our colleagues and ourselves have been busy cleaning up, debriefing, and preparing for the next bunch. A lot of work goes into making sure everything is ready, especially at our current volume of base staff, which isn’t particularly high (there’re thirteen of us here and three on outreach).

Amongst continuing to paint and patch our new apartment, the two of us are enjoying getting back into the fray of what’s happening within YWAM Northern Ireland and the YWAM Closkelt DTS programme. We will be joining a team of five others as a base leadership and management team to represent the different ministries and needs in planning for YWAM Closkelt’s future. We’re also feeling out our role in the Discpleship Training programme and are busy, this week especially, meeting with past and present DTS staff and gathering ideas and experience. For now, we’re taking an active role in the support and development of the January DTS staff and their school, all DTS related administration and communication duties (emails to speakers, student registration, etc.), and also taking steps to present and develop new initiatives and structure to evaluate and preserve experience from past, present, and future schools.

Next week will be a particularly intense period of DTS staff training, so we will appreciate your prayers. We will be involved in that process as well; in fact, our main involvement with this school will be from a position of accountability and development of the staff. We’ll be helping and guiding them throughout the school in their interaction and leadership of the students, in addition to preparing them for outreach. Renee will actually be in the classroom for at least the first month, modeling staff leadership and offering input. (For clarification: we’re not leading the January DTS; it’s being lead by a colleague called Jessica (from Montana, USA), and staffed by Cheryl (USA), Sharayah (Canada), and Francis (Sierra Leone), as well as some one-on-one discipleship help from other staff. These individuals’ ministry will be to the students; our primary ministry will be to them, though both of us are taking one student for one-on-one discipleship.)

The January 2008 DTS starts on the 28th of January.