Youth With A Mission Northern Ireland

Over the last five years in Belfast, there has been a movement called, StreetReach. It has been an initiative to encourage young people from Belfast to go into areas of the city that they may never have gone before, so that they might minister to people and see Christ at work in these places. The teams would do some hard work in gardens and in cleaning streets, but also connect and pray with people. These certain communities have been places that have been effected by poverty, division, and the Troubles. The first year StreetReach happened, there were a handful of people doing this work on the Shankill. By the fifth year—last year—there were over 1,000 youth going into over 30 areas around Belfast! Wow!

When StreetReach ended, a prayer was that many people would do their own versions of outreach, and that the movement would multiply.

Wells Church (which is an Anglican church plant just outside of Belfast), YWAM Ireland, and a few other churches and people gathered last week to participate in a few days of serving our area, the upper and lower Shankill. It was called FWD, or Faith With Deeds. The back of our cool t-shirts said, “I’ll show you my faith by what I do,” from the book of James.

I loved this part—we were put into groups to serve in, and they were called our “church” for the week. We spent time praying together and sharing in those little groups. I had very deep experiences of God in those groups. I felt as we prayed for people we met, that God was really doing something powerful.

Every day we met in the morning at had times of worship and prayer. Those times filled us with purpose and drive to go and meet people, pray for them, tell them about Jesus.

Each night on the lower Shankill (where I worked) we had a barbeque for the community. One particular night, I believe we served over 100 burgers! There were lots of people there, and the sun was shining. I loved meeting with moms and families that some of us have known for years through the local Breakfast Club we do at the primary school.

But beside the BBQs, we did a lot of praying, knocking on doors seeing if we could help with anything, and playing with the kids in the local parks.

As we were debriefing the week, I said that even though I’ve lived here for a few years, to me, this feels like a new neighborhood. I’ve never met so many people in such a short amount of time—people who were thankful to have been met! People were open to prayer and open to hear about the love of God, through words and actions.

Many of us in YWAM were very touched by our experiences during FWD, and we’ve already been talking about doing something like it more often. Who knows how, but I believe our love for the communities we live in has been somehow re-kindled. We continue to trust in God for a sweet move of His glory throughout these places, and in our hearts, too.

This weekend, YWAM Ireland is at Summer Madness! We are running a couple of venues there including one titled ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes’ - come get a taste of the world through our performances in dance and song, as well as hear some testimonies from South Africa. Come hear about our upcoming trips to South Africa in 2010, our short term missions program, and our Discipleship Training Schools. Or just come and hang out! We’d love to get to

Recently, I returned from a 6 week trip to India and Burundi where Erin Seibel and myself visited the Belfast Outreach teams. What a trip! Not only did Erin and I have so much fun visiting each team, but it was an awesome experience to be able to get out of the office and just get my hands dirty…literally.

INDIA OVERVIEW
Visiting the team in India was a great way to start our trip. While we were only in New Delhi for 3 weeks (the team had been in Mumbai for 2 weeks prior to our arrival and then headed onto Kashmir after we left), it was all I needed to fall in love with India. The team was involved in a variety of ministries there:
- helping out some Canadian business bakery owners who needed some marketing done in their neighborhoods as well as some serious cleaning behind their business building
- relationship building with Muslims in a local university
- working in slums sharing about Forgiveness
- leading worship at churches and youth groups (they did great considering the language barrier!)
On top of all this, we were kept quite busy by Indian hospitality. If we weren’t invited to someone’s house for a meal, then it was a wedding! Erin and I got to experience 3 weddings in our 3 weeks in New Delhi.

BURUNDI OVERVIEW

I had a great time in Burundi with the other Belfast outreach team. We spent time at Youth for Christ orphanage in Gitega (centre of the country) with 23 orphans, their ‘mothers’, and the orphanage workers. We did some manual labour there to help build a health clinic and from there, our team split in two to cover different ministry needs in different locations. I went up to Kayanza in north Burundi where we stayed with a couple who works for Food for the Hungry. We got to visit a pilot project for a Fair Trade Coffee Washing Station! What a great experience! It was great to meet all the coffee workers and see how coffee is produced. If only I liked coffee! I’m a tea drinker, through and through - I don’t even like the smell of coffee! Sorry, all you coffee lovers! The team in Kayanza also shared in a couple of different churches (with a variety of denominations) about Forgiveness and Reconciliation. The feedback was tremendous with many invitations to return to Burundi to teach more on both subjects…this is quite significant considering the church is extremely divided in Burundi. It was encouraging to hear the different denominations asking us to teach them how to love each other and live peacefully with each other. Northern Ireland has a lot to offer the country of Burundi.

The Reconciliation DTS students in Belfast are on their way back from outreach! One team went to India while the other team went to both Rwanda and Burundi in East Africa. Stories and photos will certainly be shared here over the next week from each team. Be sure to check back regularly for updates!