Youth With A Mission Northern Ireland

The time we have spent in India so far has been an intense time of growth and of ‘experiencing’. I had said I was sick of knowing and wanted to DO, and this trip has been the perfect opportunity for that. I have loved learning the Indian culture; wearing the kurtas, trying all the food, and picking up on bits of the language. But even moreso I love the relationships that have been formed.

We have been keeping busy switching between different ministries, and have had the chance to work alongside a few different organizations as well as YWAM. The first two weeks we started out with Mercy Ministries in two different slums – teaching in the preschools and helping with the clinic. The second two weeks in Delhi we were doing university evangelism in the afternoons and helping in a ‘daycare’ for street kids called King’s Kids School in the mornings. Those same kids we have gotten to know really well during our time here in Delhi as we also help with a Street Kid’s Ministry on Saturdays. It fast became our favorite activity, and we spend any of our free time with these kids in their local hangout/place of ‘work’ – the community centre. It’s where we eat lunch and where we build relationships. These children, for most of us, are the reason we are here, and the reason we want to come back! The relationships we have built are so filled with life and beauty. We give the children the love and attention they are starved for, and in return they give us their trust – and their help whenever they can! It gives me so much joy to see a kid helping us negotiate the price of a rickshaw in Hindi, or when they take us by the hand to their parents to pray over them. These are small steps towards a much larger dream, and it is inspiring to be able to be apart of it.

In the middle of our outreach, we took a couple weeks out to go join up with another team from Northern Ireland in Pune, India. There we helped run a Christian youth camp with SOS communities, and joined again with YWAM to visit a number of different orphanages and homes for children over the period of a week. From there we made a short trip to Mumbai to spend time with one of the SOS communities there, and then it was back to Delhi for another couple weeks with the same ministries. It was a good break from the hard work we had been doing in the slums and on the streets of Delhi, and it gave us a more rounded view of this country.

It is encouraging to see God’s hand at work in so many places and through so many of His willing servants. All of our group has been impacted in a powerful way because of this experience, and we are all looking for different ways to stay connected and apart of what is going on in India. In many ways, this trip to India is just the beginning…

Jennifer Volkman
R-DTS Student

Outreach in India has been life changing. It has been an opportunity to go to a place that needs God desperately and serve as the hands and feet of the Lord. It has been a time of great cultural learning and more importantly, growing closer to the Lord.

In India I have had the chance to see God at work in the lives of people so different than me and 1000s of miles from my home. I have learned from them and been inspired to dream bigger while at the same time helping serve them and their ministries. Outreach in India has meant being face to face with poverty, child abuse, and suffering. But, it has also meant experiencing the power of the Lord as he leads his people to action. I return to Belfast with a personal connection to India, and names and faces to pray for and seek the Lord about.

Carolyn Betts
R-DTS Student

Thank you to everyone who supported our 5 runners in the Belfast City Marathon! The team had a great day in the relay race and plans to enter the race again next year with a larger team!

Greetings from Burundi!

We are a team of six people currently situated in Bujumbura, Burundi on the DTS outreach. We’ve had a busy time so far of being involved with a lot of different ministries including working ina hospital, an orphanage, running reconciliation seminars and courses and also playing a lot of football with streetkids! Things have been busy for us, but good.

As a team we have been so aware of God’s hand of protection on us as we travel through the centre of Africa. We have been blessed by health (for the most part) incredible ministries to be involved in and some incredible contacts (now friends) who have welcomed us more warmly than we could have imagined or expected.

Rwanda and Burundi are beautiful countries that are blessed with natural resources and sunny climes, but that have also seen a history of conflict, hatred and division that has scarred the land and the people here over the last half century. As a team, our prayer is that we will be a group that brings Christ and his healing forgiveness and gift of reconciliation to these places. We know that there is nothing within US that can do this, rather, we are simply here trying to be willing vessels of his power, authority and grace to the people living here. We are blessed and privileged to be used in this way, and it is a gift to be here and see God choosing to work through and use us.

With four weeks left, we are heading to the middle of Burundi today to work with Youth for Christ at an orphanage they run. Our team was there last year and had an incredible time of ministry and getting to know the children and workers there. Please pray for us as we continue on our journey and seek God for us and for those we are meeting!

Tom Tate
Rec.DTS Leader & Burundi Outreach Leader

If you are interested in being a part of our South Africa outreach to the city of Durban in July of 2010, then please consider coming to one of our South Africa info meetings this month!

- 22nd April, 10:00 – 11:00am at the YWAM House at 41 Woodvale Road at the top of the Shankill
- 23rd April, 7:00 – 8:00pm at the YWAM House at 41 Woodvale Road at the top of the Shankill

We look forward to seeing you there!

YWAM Ireland is excited to be partnering with Tine ministries (http://tine-network.org/) this summer in Galway from July 4 – 19, along with a number of parishes from across Galway.

This Festival of Faith will include concerts, practical projects, cafe discussions, parish mission nights, street outreach, as well as opportunities for quiet prayer and worship.

YWAM Ireland’s Closkelt DTS is half way into their outreach in Durban, South Africa. Below is a letter about what they’ve been up to so far! Enjoy!

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While working with YWAM Durban, we were able to go with them into a township called Burlington. While there we cleaned houses for some of the Grandmothers who have never seen a white person clean before, many of them were amazed that we were even there. In the afternoons we were able to play with the children there, they were so sweet and playful, they taught us new kinds of games and even helped us learn more Zulu. We are all thankful that God has given us the chance to show these kids his love.

While staying at YWAM Durban also we had one week of lectures. One of the staff members of the Durban location, Geoff Kingsford, taught us about relationships. It was a myriad of different types of relationships and how they all come together. It was both a challenging and an encouraging week for all of the students.

We next arrived at Missions Ablaze on February 8th and by February 9th we quickly found out how the next week was going to be. Currently Missions Ablaze is a place that requires a lot of physical labor. Everything from taking care of their property (using machetes to trim overgrowth) to helping make the food they serve in and around Durban (They serve about 5000 per week). They are also in the middle of building an orphanage to hold 100 kids that they would like to see open by June 1. We were involved with all these things and are very excited to see what the last 3 weeks of outreach bring us.

More to come later on!

In no less than 4 days time the first of 12 students will be arriving in one of Belfast’s two airports. Laden down with luggage, we will welcome them into our community here in YWAM Belfast.

Next Monday begins the 7th DTS to be run in Belfast (at least this time around! I keep hearing rumour about a DTS that was run here in the 1970′s….) and I think the 4th to have a distinctly Reconciliation focus.

So what’s that all about? Why “reconciliation”? In many ways, reconciliation is becoming one of those buzz words, thrown out there to sound impressive though no one really knows what it means. Here in Belfast, we long to be serious about it. In a world where anger, violence and revenge are often the “go-to” tactics in conflict situations, we wonder whether there is another way?

We believe yes, and we’re going to be spending the next 7 months exploring this idea with this group of 12 students. YWAM’s motto is “To know God and make Him known” and one of our foundational values is “Do first, then teach”. There’s something special about knowing something personally before you move on to ministering out of that. In this time, we want to share with the students the God who came to them, who has reconciled Himself to them, and from that place of knowing God as a reconciler we can move on to trying to mirror His image and be peacemakers in these situations that surround us.

During the DTS students will have lectures, be involved in local outreach in the local community, have a chance to hear stories from people affected by conflict and learn from them, and also engage in a 10 week trip to a post or current conflict area to put what they are learning into practice.

Our vision is for a group of people to emerge from this DTS, trained in both discipleship and an awareness of their relationship to God, but also skilled to speak into conflict situations, to speak out “this is NOT the will of God!” To cry peace in a land of war, and forgiveness in the midst of revenge.

After all, we’ve been told to get on with it: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18). We have a mandate…. This DTS exists to raise a generation of people willing to live it… Those willing to give up everything to see it come into being.

This weekend we’re receiving ten new members to our YWAM Ireland team, arriving from a few different countries to take part in the Discipleship Training School which starts this coming Monday in Closkelt and runs through until the end of March next year. During that time, they will work along side us in our ministries, as well as receive training and guidance in missionary work and their relationship with Christ.

With only hours left to prepare, the staff in Closkelt are busy with the preparations for their arrival, cleaning and painting and typing and praying a week’s worth of work into the little time remaining. The students are essentially doubling the size of the team in Closkelt while they’re here, so the community is buzzing with the excitement of impending new arrivals.

We’re currently operating with lower numbers in Closkelt than usual, and thus also a smaller DTS, but we’re excited to continue to be a participatory part in what the Lord is desiring for our local community and around the island. Through training of teams for outreach, individuals for missions, and in reaching the local area, we’re happy to continue serving in His vision to reach all people with His gospel of forgiveness, love, and reconciliation. This coming DTS will be participating in kids’ ministry in our local area (rural Co. Down), as well as working with Outreach N.I. in Banbridge, reaching out to weekend party-goers through the local Nightreach initiative. Come January, the DTS team will also spend two months in South Africa, working alongside YWAM and local ministry contacts of ours, the latest in a string of outreaches we’ve sent there over the last few years. In this, we hope to continue to build important bridges between Northern Ireland and South Africa, recognizing our shared experience of conflict and of trying to answer questions of forgiveness and reconciliation.

This past week, our Closkelt DTS staff have been doing their training in preparation for the DTS starting on September 29th. Steve Sullivan, from YWAM Harpenden, flew over to Northern Ireland for the week to lead the week of training. Thanks, Steve!

As my role here is in Communications, I am not on DTS staff. My office, however, is across the hall from the training room where the DTS staff were meeting with Steve…and I’ve never heard that much laughter coming out of a training seminar in my life! Its good to know that in the midst of preparations and training, YWAMers still like to have a fun time!

The Belfast DTS staff also came down to Closkelt to join in some of the training seminars and activities in preparation for the Reconciliation DTS starting in early November. Take a look at the Closkelt and Belfast DTS staff posing with Steve for a lovely team shot…

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.