We recently announced we’d be leading the October DTS in Belfast. Instead, we have combined the DTS with the one that was scheduled to start in January, and we’ll be staffing the school under Jonny Clark’s leadership, also starting in January.

During all of this, we had some good ideas cooking about DTS that we’re excited to develop, and we’re glad for this extra time to give it more thought, planning, and action. YWAM Belfast is smallish in staff numbers, and so we need to run the DTS in a way that it comes alongside everything that the staff are already doing. So we’re looking at how to do that… and we think it’ll be good.

Another idea that has come up is to develop a volunteer programme that runs before the DTS that some of the attendees can apply to come early for. We’re now in full swing of putting this together, hoping that the earliest of them could arrive in mid-November. We want them to get some input on reconciliation and Irish history, but primarily to link them with our ministries and our contacts based on needs. We’ve launched this under the name of Mission Belfast, and it has generated good interest.

The next few weeks will get us a solid foundation for putting structure to the coming year.