We returned to Belfast on Friday after six weeks in South Africa leading a Discipleship Training School (DTS) outreach, making about 9 weeks total away with the prior three weeks with the team in Cork. Our team continues their work in South Africa for another two weeks without us, then they will be back in Northern Ireland for their final debriefing at YWAM’s new base in Rostrevor during the last ten days of this month.

Our time in South Africa went really well. We had the opportunity to work alongside a few partner organizations in kwaZulu-Natal (Durban area, mostly), and our team was involved in quite a few different types of ministry: leading worship, home visits and praying for the sick, youth evangelism and discipleship, running ‘Bible camp’ and kids’ programs, practical work, prayer ministry, giving teaching and testimonies. We (Mikael & Renee) were active as well in trying to facilitate spiritual growth and leadership abilities in our team members. As usual, we tried to open up opportunities for them to be active in their particular gifts and talents, as well as help them take more and more responsibility in every aspect of the outreach. Thus, we’re confident in them and their progress while we are away. Each team member has clear responsibilities (from organizing team worship times, to doing the accounts and organizing grocery shopping), and we turned the overall leadership over to two of them.

South Africa is a beautiful country of many contrasts. It has one of the largest income inequalities in the world, with some of the poorest and richest people within its borders. In some places, we felt as if we could easily be in an opulent Southern California suburb. Out of town and down the road are the offspring of informal settlements, with open sewers, ramshackle dwellings and no indoor plumbing, where the inhabitants (almost always exclusively black) live on less than $2 a day. With 11 official languages, South Africa is layered with different cultures. The kwaZulu-Natal province, though, is 80% Zulu, with English and Afrikaaner whites fitting into the remaining percentage alongside the other people groups. Durban has also the largest Indian population outside of India.

Our work was mostly in Zulu communities. When not with YWAM Durban, we had the opportunity to stay in the tribal areas, once at a community centre, and the next with one of team member’s (Spha) family. We traded indoor plumbing, showers and privacy for the beautiful views of valleys and red earth, spotted with brightly-colored traditional round houses. Alongside our official ministry, it became apparent that our presence as a team of mostly white people in areas where white people don’t often come was a ministry of reconciliation in and of itself. People were delighted to see us fetching water, crammed into the noisy minibus taxis, and trying out our lackluster Zulu language skills. We often heard the phrase, ‘You’ve made us feel human.’ Our words about Christ came more alive in these experiences.

There is much more to say about our time in South Africa – about the beautiful and inspirational people we met, the challenges they face, and what we’ve learned – but we will save it for another time.

You can see photos from our trip in our photo gallery, or by following the link below:

	South Africa: Outreach 2010 Pictures from the DTS outreach we lead around Durban area May – July 2010. The last two weeks are student-lead, and we are back early. 54 photos

Also, we encourage you to check out some of the amazing groups we’ve been blessed to work with in South Africa. Here is a summary (they’re all Christian organizations, by the way):

• YWAM Durban – They do a whole host of stuff, but we have been (and the team will be again before they leave) primarily involved in outreach in a local township called Burlington.
• Maskhane – A community organization in kwaNzimakwe tribal area (South Coast) where we did evangelism, discipleship, and kids programs, as well as some home visits. They do counseling, home care for HIV and AIDS patients, and many other things.
• Light Providers – A organization in kwaNyuswa in the Valley of 1000 Hills that seeks to empower youth with vision for their life. It was started by Vusi, who did his DTS in Closkelt, and a couple of their staff have done DTSs now in Belfast.
• Sethani – A community organization working in kwaNgcolosi, Spha’s community, offering life skills, counseling, and youth programs. We ran a program for kids and youth there.
• World Changers Academy – Offering life skills and leadership training in various communities around kwaZulu-Natal. It was started by a YWAMer about a decade ago. Several of its staff have done DTSs in Belfast, including our current trainee, Spha, who works for them. Our team is working with WCA this week, helping with life skills courses.

We’ll fly from Dublin to London to Johannesburg, then to Durban. Our ministry will be in Durban and surrounding villages.

We’ll have very limited internet access until July, so if you need to get in touch with us, be patient! As always, keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter, and we’ll see if we can get updates going this way.

I took a van full of boys and bags from Belfast on Wednesday morning while the girls took the train, and we’re now in Cork. In the next couple weeks, we’ll be helping with a couple local ministries, including the Haven – an interdenominational ministry of a coffee shop, bookstore, and prayer room. We’ll also be on the streets busking for money for homeless ministries, praying for people, and leading worship and services in churches.

We’re back in Belfast for a few days mid-May, then we’re off to South Africa for the remainder of the outreach.

Our team will be working with a variety of ministries in the Durban area, primarily helping with discipleship, evangelism, and helping empower people in practical skills. I’ll tell you more about these ministries later…

We certainly appreciate your prayers. We’ll be leading nine trainees from this DTS – four guys and five females; five Americans, one English, one South African Zulu, and one Israeli Arab. They’re a great group with lots of talent.

Creideamh (pronounced something like kray-jiff, the Irish word for faith) was dubbed the Festival of Faith and hosted a couple hundred people from around Ireland and the world for an outreach in Galway for fifteen days this July. We came along with several other people representing YWAM Ireland to help with the facilitation of the festival and its events – our members doing everything from planning and administration, to electrical work for setting up the festival gazebo on Eyre square, to hosting the various artists who came to perform for the festival.

Renee and I primarily took over the management of festival operations at a local restaurant after its normal closing time, feeding all the festival teams each evening and helping run the festival’s public entertainment venue there, where we hosted musicians, magicians, mimes, and testimony-tellers every night.

Creideamh seemed to have largely been a success. The volunteers got on well and feedback from the community was positive. Teams met in the morning for services, followed by lunch and training, and then would spread out across Galway according to their ministry – ranging from engaging people in discussions about faith to kid’s ministry in local parishes. The artists would perform around town, sometimes on the street, and sometimes in a handful of festival venues.

Well, I could go on, but I suggest you just check out the photos I’ve uploaded to this site (which were also put on the YWAM Ireland Facebook Page, I think), as well as the YouTube video of a member of YWAM England escaping from a straight jacket during Creideamh.

Also check out some of the artists who worked the festival:

• L’Angelus – cajun roots band from Louisiana
• Flip Francis and Sammy Blaze – hip-hop artists from Dallas, TX.
• Crossing the Jordan (CTJ) – band of musicians from four continents, based with YWAM in Harpenden, England.
• Yan Nicholls (E-team) – magician, escape artist, and evangelist based with YWAM in England.
• Collin and Halie (E-team) – acoustic music duo based with YWAM in England.
• Steve Murray – mime artist.

More info at Creideamh website.

I recently traveled to South Africa to visit our DTS outreach team and see a few people ahead of planning for a mega outreach from Ireland to Durban in the summer of 2010.

After waiting at our gate only to find out our flights were cancelled, Chris (a staff member from Closkelt) and I were finally able to fly out early morning three days later. Skip ahead 30+ hours, we arrived in sunny Durban – a city of 3.5 million situated on the east coast of South Africa adjacent to the Indian Ocean.

We joined the team after a drive outside the city to a former sugar cane plantation, where a community of missionaries live, going into towns and collecting bread and food discarded by stores, sorting out the bad stuff, cooking or preparing the good stuff, and distributing it to hungry people in local poorer areas. Our team were serving for a week with this ministry, Missions Ablaze, after having worked the last few weeks closely with YWAM Durban in a township called Burlington.

During the course of my time with the team (only about five days), one of my objectives was to gauge the health of the team in spending time with them corporately and individually, as well as do a bit of ground work in preparing to promote a mega outreach YWAM Ireland is planning to organize for July of 2010 in South Africa. About half way through my time in Durban, we migrated across town to Word Changers Academy, a training facility for the World Changers organization, where I was able to see a few of YWAM Belfast’s sponsor students who work with the organization in various positions of leadership. It was really great to sit down with some of these guys and hear how they’re doing, also collecting video clips for helping to promote our 2010 outreach (‘I came to Belfast and served; now you should come here!’) and have them explain some of the things they’re involved in – life skills courses in poor townships, empowering people in health (some townships have an 80% HIV prevalence) and finding work, among other things.

Overall, I was really pleased with the health of our DTS team and their willingness to roll up their sleeves and do practical work with Missions Ablaze, as well as go out with World Changers and teach practical and spiritual skills in the townships. As I was leaving Durban, I was talking to our local YWAM contacts and got some great feedback; one of the leaders of a ministry the team had worked with said they were the best team they’d ever had.

From Durban, I flew to Johannesburg and spent a couple days there before flying back to Dublin. I was able to see Vusi, a friend, graduate of World Changers, former YWAM Ireland DTS student, and extraordinary entrepreneur, who has started various works around Durban related to life-skills teaching and rehabilitation of criminals (please check out the post I wrote about his ministry last year, including video – “Light Providers, South Africa”). He recently moved to Jo’burg to study criminal justice on a full scholarship at Monash University and is also, characteristically, developing a prison ministry there on top of continuing to oversee his ministries in Durban. Aside from just catching up with him, it was helpful to toss around a few ideas for future outreach (especially in 2010).

I had the privilege of witnessing the incredible, community-transforming work our Zulu friends are doing in South Africa. Beyond their own amazing testimonies of personal redemption, they are pouring out their lives into their communities and successfully helping lift people out of crime and abject poverty into living purposeful lives that transform others through local leadership, and through incarnational spirituality.

Consider taking another look at the work of World Changers Academy or Vusi’s Light Providers ministry and supporting them financially. The volunteers generally don’t receive compensation and come from communities in need themselves, where they would be expected to provide for older parents. For about £50/$75 per month, you could sponsor a worker to do this important work full time. Pray about making a donation of £600/$900 through bank transfer to cover a worker for a full year.

Useful, related links:

• Photos I took in South Africa
• Previous blog entry on Light Providers and Vusi
• Light Providers (lightproviders.com)
• World Changers (www.wca-sa.org)
• Greg’s blog (blog.gregcolker.com) – the blog of one of our outreach team leaders
• Zach’s blog (www.zacharystock.com) – blog of a student on our outreach team
• YWAM Durban

We were only in India for two weeks, and 98% of our time there was spent in a city called Varanasi. We sent a team of seven people (including one staff leader) to India from our winter DTS in early May, and by the time we came in late May, they’d just arrived in Varanasi for a three week stay, after one week in Delhi and two weeks in Calcutta.

Varanasi
Varanasi (formerly known as Benares) is considered the ‘holy city of India,’ and is an important place of pilgrimage for Hindus; a contact described it as ‘the beating heart of the Hindu universe.’ The river Ganges flows through the city, and along it are a multitude of ghats – the famous steps leading down to the shore of the ‘holy river,’ on which temples are built, religious ceremonies performed, and bodies are cremated. The river is considered a Devi goddess, and bathing in her is supposed to grant forgiveness for sins committed in many lifetimes; although samples have put the fecal coliform bacteria levels at 1.5 million per 100mL, bathing and scrubbing in the Ganges is a common sight (safe bathing levels are 500 bacteria per 100mL! [1]).

Currently, Hindus comprise the vast majority of the population of Varanasi, but in the past, the city has had a vibrant Buddhist history. Saranath (or Sarnath) is a park basically on the north-eastern outskirts of Varanasi, a two minute walk from where our team was staying, where Gautama Buddha is said to have preached his first sermon [2,3]. Since it’s currently off-season, the area was scant of the tourist and pilgrims which normally flock there in the winter, although quite a few temples and monasteries are run and stocked by foreign Buddhists, such as Japanese, Thai, Korean, etc. Very few locals are Buddhists, according to a contact, who said the number is probably less than 1%.

Local Christians are also quite few, though definitely worth mentioning because of their commitment to prayer. With the spiritual centrality of Varanasi coupled with a multitude of 330 million Hindu gods, the heavenly atmosphere can feel quite intense (and I’m not one to say such things very often). We found that most of our organizational colleagues based in Varanasi are from other parts of India, and that they, along with the visiting teams and volunteers from YWAM and other groups, feel strongly that unlocking Varanasi for Christ will be key in unlocking the nation as a whole.

Team and ministry
Our main purposes in visiting our team in India were to offer support to the students and staff leader, to see how ministry was going, and to ascertain the potential for a long term relationship with the contacts. We knew the team had been facing some difficulties in dynamics and in health, especially as one of the students had been diagnosed with appendicitis a few days before our arrival. On the day we landed in Varanasi, that student went into a local hospital for emergency surgery to remove her appendix and would spend the next week recovering after a successful operation. We were thankful that another of our students is a fully trained nurse who has previously been to India and that she was able to stay with our recovering student and make sure they got everything they needed before a parent arrived to bring her home for recovery.

In the midst of this, the rest of the team were pressing on with their ministry, despite travel-related sickness and heat that hovered between 35 and 45 °C (95 – 115 °F), exacerbated by constant power-outages (no fans then!). Local YWAMers run a home for widows [4] (often treated poorly in India) where the team helped with practical work in and around a self-run bakery. They were also running computer and English courses for Christian Indian workers, as well as going out with local YWAMers for ministry and evangelism in nearby villages and prisons. In light of the spiritual atmosphere, praying and prayer walks, especially along the ghats, were also important.

Our time
Our last impressions of India were of an extremely helpful and friendly people. Though wary of touts and salesmen, we were so encouraged and blessed by the random strangers who would so willingly help us out of sticky situations. In particular, during a stopover in Delhi city centre before our flight back to Europe, we were having a really tough time finding a proper taxi to take to the airport until we came across a man who offered to walk around for us to find good transport. That sort of thing happened at least two other times that day alone. (But if we came again, we’d pick another time of year, like winter!)

After spending time with the team as individuals and as a group, we decided to change their plane tickets so they would return to Northern Ireland to finish the last two and a half weeks of outreach directly with YWAM NI, and particularly working with us at an upcoming festival (Summer Madness). Finishing their time in Varanasi, they would have spent their last couple weeks at a prayer house and in Delhi, and we felt it would be best in their circumstance to come and be actively engaged in the variety of things we have going on here right now. Thus, we’ve been busy modifying our plans, but the team has arrived this past Thursday, rested and debriefed a bit over the weekend, and I’ve dropped them off to work with a ministry contact of ours in South Armagh this morning.

Photos: Check out photos from India in our photo galleries.

References:

1. According to Lonely Planet’s India Travel Guide (ISBN: 9781741043082). Also a similar entry about the Ganges on the Lonely Planet website.
2. You can read more about Saranath at this Buddhist website.
3. Sarnath on Wikipedia.
4. A website on the YWAM widow’s home can be accessed here. The website looks a bit out of date, though, and the picture of the home on the main page is not at all how it looks now. Great info on the roles of widows in Indian society, as well as more info on Saranath.

We’ve certainly appreciated all the prayers and encouragements from all of our friends and colleagues, and Christ has certainly looked after us. In travel, we received many mercies, especially in stumbling across a very friendly helper in Delhi late at night to help us find a good taxi to the airport after a ten hour lay-over that we spent in city centre, and also in regards to being able to rebook a flight from Varanasi to Delhi at a reasonable price with only a couple hours before departure (we arrived at the airport outside Varanasi and were told by our airline that our flight had been rescheduled for earlier and that we’d missed it. Even though the airport was rather small, with only a few flights each day, we found a flight on a different airline that left only an hour after our original scheduled departure, and our first airline issued us a refund).

In the next few days, we’ll post a couple entries regarding our time in India over the last two weeks, as well as a few photos.

We were two weeks in the United States seeing friends and family, which was mostly good, minus allergies and mild sickness affecting our short off-time.

We’re used to the possibility of air travel delays in our mode of living. However, I am still a bit frustrated at the lack of airline responsibility regarding weather related delays. They basically have to do nothing, and as a result I’ve spent overnights and days in airports in the past because of cancelled flights, and recently, these five hours of little information, and of course, no vouchers for food or anything. I know it’s not really their fault that aircraft get held up by weather, but is it the travelers fault that they don’t have any extra aircraft or air-traffic management to deal with those largely common occurrences? And certainly it’s not the company’s fault in those situations, but they are still under law responsible to pay their staff overtime. Why not any sort of concessions (at least regarding food and accommodation) for their loyal customers?

Anyways, we’ve still time to make our flight to India and get ready. And we’re not loud complainers. I’m just giving some thoughts towards the logic of ‘market guided’ consumer related laws. Perhaps the FFA should take a look at some of their regulations and some of what their European counterparts have in place. But I understand it’s hard times for the airlines. Right?

Catch you in few weeks! God bless.

Last week, the January DTS finished their three-month Lecture Phase, and today, two teams of seven (six students and one staff each) are leaving for two months of outreach: one team to India, and one around Ireland. They will return at the beginning of July for a week of debrief before their DTS officially ends.

The Ireland team is lead by Sharayah Prowse (of Canada) who will also be working closely with some YWAM staff in Belfast. For a majority of their outreach, the team will be in Belfast, living on the Shankill in the YWAM Belfast offices, working across sectarian divides in largely working class communities. During the weeks, they will be working with the Forgiveness Programme, bringing workshops on forgiveness to youth of all ages in segregated neighborhoods and schools, and helping out in a YWAM outreach cafe on the Shankill Road. The team will also be doing youth outreach in Kesh, Co. Fermanagh, as well as outreach in conjunction with Summer Madness (Ireland’s biggest Christian youth festival) in Belfast and the Urban Soul street outreach in Dublin.

The India team is lead by Francis Khamanra (of Sierra Leone), who will be teaming up with a variety of YWAM and non-YWAM ministry contacts across India. They will arrive tomorrow in New Delhi, where they will meet up with a DTS team from Belfast for a week and orient themselves to a new environment, before heading off to Calcutta for two weeks. In Calcutta, the team are ministering in local churches, as well as participating in outreaches to homeless, widows, and orphans. Similarly, they will also work in local churches in Varanasi, where they will be for three weeks, also offering practical assistance to local missionaries and helping with evangelism in surrounding villages. The team will also be working with colleagues in Greater Norda.

Our desire for these next two months is not only that these teams, through partnership with long-term contacts, will be able to impact their nations for Jesus, but furthermore, that the participants in these outreaches will be changed to live long-term missional lives. The purpose of a DTS is not a one-off fulfill-my-commitment-to-Jesus time of missions service, but rather a time to lay foundations for a life of dedication to the Great Commission. Having spent three months in lectures and Christian community, only applying that time of learning to the needs of a world that ‘groans’ for a new existence (Rom. 8:22) will make it more than just personal theory. We pray that this experience will be transformational for all that are involved.

Related blog content:

• Renee and I will be visiting the team for two weeks while they are in Varanasi. Read about our pastoral visit plans.
• Pictures from the final days of this DTS’s Lecture Phase are available in our photo gallery.

Some of our community will be aware that both Renee and myself will be traveling to India in the last few days of May, staying for two weeks with an outreach team we’re sending out from Closkelt. The outreach team is leaving in less than two weeks for a two month DTS outreach all around India – six students and one staff. We will join them in Varanasi (and possibly Calcutta), primarily in a pastoral role to see how staff and students are interacting with each other, India, their ministries and their responsibilities.

Related links

The Closkelt DTS team will be piggy-backing a team from the Belfast DTS that left in April. That team is on the ground right now, and you can read about their adventures via a couple blogs. Two colleagues from the Leadership Teams of YWAM Closkelt and YWAM Belfast (respectively) have been them for a couple weeks on a pastoral visit and have particularly good stories about the haps.

• Heather Clark is director of communications for YWAM NI, and writes about some of her mishaps and joys in India on her blog.
• Erin Seibel has been leading DTSs in Belfast for the past couple years and is visiting her outreach teams with Heather in India and Burundi.

I met up with Renee after a few days of separation at YWAM Amsterdam on Saturday the 29th of March. She had spent the past week with a group of others from various parts of YWAM Europe praying for YWAM, the leaders, and for the upcoming Western European Leadership Consultation (or WELC – I think this is the fi). That Monday, we traveled with a few friends from YWAM Northern Ireland two hours east by train to a small village called Delden near the Germany-Netherlands border. We were arriving for the WELC, unsure of what to expect (my previous experiences with YWAM gatherings outside of Northern Ireland, although very limited, is that they tend to be very enthusiastic and “Pentecostal-ish”; I’m not opposed to these adjectives, but I prefer them in small, evenly spaced doses).

I was very pleasantly surprised with the ‘consultation.’ Although the schedule was full, it wasn’t overwhelming according to YWAM conference tradition; although over 200 people were there from all over Western Europe, it felt somewhat more intimate (and 200 isn’t necessarily a whole lot either). Through the four days of the WELC, we had some lectures, talks, discussions, worship, interaction, prayer, and working groups (sort of like seminars with small group discussion and think-tanking). In our free-time, I enjoyed catching up with old YWAM acquaintances from other parts and hearing what was going on with them, as well as meeting new folks.

Most constructive, however, were the specific points we tried to cover during the consultation, either in lecture, discussion or our working groups. A lot of ideas were traded, and new thoughts voiced. Here’s an idea of some of what we discussed throughout the week:

• Update on what is happening with YWAM globally, YWAM in Western Europe
• Working together as a multi-generational YWAM (the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob generations), now that YWAM is 40+ years old with three generations of leaders.
• YWAM and the ancient traditions – exploring how YWAM can be a greater part of traditional denominations (especially the Catholic world in Western Europe)
• YWAM & the emerging church.
• Defining the word ‘base’ – What is a base? I highly recommend the wiki over at the YWAM Knowledge Base on the subject.
• Homosexuals in YWAM
• Pioneering new YWAM teams.
• Immigrants and asylum seekers, opportunities for YWAM to work in those communities.
• Do big bigger bases suck too many resources away from smaller bases?
• The church in exile – The role of missions in a post-Christian Europe. (Transcript/summary of Jonny Clark’s talk at the YWAM Knowledge Base)
• Risk taking.
• The 4k project, Omega Zones, and world evangelization (more at ywam4k.org).

And a lot more. -Mikael

Relevant links:

• The YWAM Knowledge Base Wiki has a category with summaries of all of the main talks and devotions given at the WELC ‘08. A lot of the points listed above are further explained at this link. A great resource.
• Sixteen photos are available from our time in the Netherlands and at the WELC in our photo galleries.
• Donovan Palmer’s blog – Donovan is the national director for YWAM England. He had a couple sweet posts on his blog regarding the WELC ‘08, the first one a great post about the WELC in general (here), and secondly a nice video blog interview with Stephe Mayers, YWAM’s regional leader for western Europe (here), which I highly recommend.

We’ll be attending with a team of several others from YWAM NI, mostly others from the Belfast and Closkelt Leadership Teams. We hope that we can share the vision God has given for reaching our island and our outreach locations, and we hope as well to be able to glean some wisdom off of other wisened colleagues and do a fair share of recruiting to our cause!

We’re quite excited because, although there is a programme and seminars, the Consultation is geared to create space for brainstorming and constructive dialogue. So, unlike a typical YWAM conference, the WELC will not be packed full of crowds and event after event after meeting after event (and so on!).

Renee will be leaving this coming Tuesday, however, (a few days before Mikael) in order to meet up with a collection of other YWAM intercessors in Amsterdam for a time of prayer for YWAM and the WELC (I think). The event is called Prayer Shield, and is an idea to cover a town or a people or an event in such fervent prayer as to create, in a sense, a shield of prayers regarding the subject. In any case, it is also meant to be a time where some of the older generation of YWAM’s prayer warriors pass the mantle to another generation, and we hope this can be an opportunity to learn and grow for Renee as well.

The trip:

• Renee flies to Amsterdam on Tuesday the 25th of March with Ros Oman for the Prayer Shield
• Mikael flies to the Netherlands on Saturday the 29th with some colleagues and meets up with Renee for the WELC.
• We fly back together to Belfast after the WELC finishes on the 4th of April.

Links:
WELC ‘08 Netherlands website
WELC ‘08 Facebook group