Youth With A Mission Ireland

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!

This coming Monday, 8th of May 2009, five YWAMers from Belfast will be participating in the team relay event of the Belfast City Marathon, including our national director Jonny Clark.  We’re racing as a fundraiser for ministry and work needs in Northern Ireland.

Please consider sponsoring a YWAMer for this event.  Any gift will go a long way, and it’s easy to give with a debit or credit card using PayPal.  If you have any questions or have an alternate means of giving, please don’t hesitate to send us an email.

Check out what Jonny Clark has to say about the fundraiser and training for the marathon in this funny YouTube video.

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

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.

Sometime early Wednesday the 11th of March 2009 our ywamni.com domain address went off line. Until we can get it back up again (which may be a while), any email addresses associated (ending with @ywamni.com) are also down and will not receive messages.

Thus, please make the following changes to your address book immediately:

-Emails previously sent to the @ywamni.com domain with the prefixes dts-, closkelt-, or info- should now be sent to ywam.ireland {at} gmail.com

-Emails previously sent to the belfast {at} ywamni.com address should now be sent to belfast.ywamni {at} gmail.com

Any other @ywamni.com addresses will also be affected, so be sure to contact the owners by other means to get an updated address.

NB: Please resend any emails sent in the last 48 hours (since Tuesday the 10th) that you’ve sent to any @ywamni.com addresses to the new addresses.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Jonny Clark

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!

*****

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…