We currently have a resident Discipleship Training School of 14 students half-way through their lecture phase that started in late January. About a week and a half ago, we had the fortune of welcoming back the two returning outreach teams from DTS that commenced in October of last year, one team returning from a mobile outreach around the island of Ireland and the other from two months in Serbia and Bosnia. Although the newer school went away for mid-lecture phase outreach in Belfast between Monday and Friday, the crossover on the weekends was interesting.

This time happens every year (except usually the newer school isn’t in Belfast for most of the week), and the results are often mixed–some days a collission, some days amounting to nothing more than happy story times. Best case scenario, the DTS staff hope that the students in the midst of their lecture phase are able to take a step outside their DTS bubble and breathe the fresh air of a bigger picture, seeing:

What is, has been already,
what will be, is already….(Ec. 2:15, NJB)

On the other hand, sometimes this meeting can be more like the aforementioned collision, especially when rules differ from school to school, or a particular team has had a hard outreach, or when the old school takes umbrage at the sudden population of familiar spaces by new people.

I think neither extremes were present with these past two weekends, and the experience was probably largely positive for both schools. Since the Jan. DTS was in Belfast for much of the week, the Oct. DTS was able to have some of their old space back for a while; both Oct. and Jan. DTSs are relatively small (9 & 14 students, respectively), so there was also plenty of room available for everyone.

And after a week of debriefing, our friends who just returned graduated amongst celebration, and nearly all will have boarded flights within the day’s end. But, for the others, the adventure continues.

Related posts:

Pray for our outreach team in Bosnia (26/02/08)

Related pictures: