Our outreach team from the October DTS, comprised mainly of North Americans, crossed over from Serbia to Bosnia days before the declaration. The last we’ve heard from them, they are safe and reacting with intelligence to the situation.

Today, 10,000 Bosnian Serbs (Edit: numbering 100,000 according to CNN.com on 27/02) engaged in peaceful protest in the town of Banja Luka, the town where our team is staying. A minority have apparently tried to rush and attack the US Consulate and are being resisted by riot police.

We are confident that God will continue to protect our colleagues, but we would ask that you could join and pray for extra wisdom for the two leaders (Darcy and Shelby) and their team to know how to handle this tense situation. Pray especially that the Americans are able to communicate well their intentions for being in the country, as citizens of countries having recognized Kosovo will surely feel unwelcome in ethnic Serb-dominated areas, like Banja Luka. As well, the outreach is scheduled for another few weeks in Bosnia and Serbia; pray that appropriate decisions can be made for the timing for traveling back to Northern Ireland.

In the news:

Bosnian Serbs try to attack US consulate (CNN.com)

Bosnian Serbs stage Kosovo rally (BBC)

2008 Kosovo declaration of independence at Wikipedia

Pictures from the Serbian Prayer Walk in 2006

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.