HELLO FRIENDS AND FAMILY!
I am back from Spain and in England once again for one more final week of this Leadership and Ministry Development School (LMD)!!
Thank you all for your continual prayer and support for me while I have been working and growing here in Europe!
I am hoping that this update finds you well and that God is continuing to speak with you and teach you in His wonderful ways.
I am summing up this past 2 months with this update so I will try not to overwhelm you.
Feel free to just take a look at pictures.
I have put a bit of detail into some things.
Bournemouth, England:
First Week
For the first part of our outreach phase, we went to a church in Bournemouth, England on the 21st of July. We would be sleeping on the floor of their community event centre they have next to the church.
We kept ourselves very busy for the week.
The focus was to bless the church and prepare for the next 2 weeks that would be a missions camp.
We were a LMD school of 9. Every day we met with the pastor, his family and some other members of the church for a prayer and worship time in the mornings. We blessed them by preparing a meal and spending time with them, as well as painting an image we prayed about and giving them words we heard from God and verses in the bible.
We spent some time in that first week as well joining the church for its services and going out for sports with the youth.
We helped prepare for the Summer Of Missions camp by going around and handing out flyers with information about the events, as well as going to many cafes to ask if we could host open mics.
We also connected with the language school next to the church and played ping pong with them and made a pizza party night to hang out with them.
The first week felt very busy for me and to be honest was a challenge. But we got through and it turned out well.
~SUMMER OF MISSIONS~
For the next 10 days after our first week in Bournemouth, England, we had a missions camp with so much happening!
This was one of my favourite experiences in my LMD school. It was a time filled with joy!
As a group we were around 80 people. Not all of us were in YWAM. Some people came from other churches and some people were friends of YWAMers.
We broke into 4 different groups. We had a dance team, a drum line, a drama team and an arts team.
We had 2 days of street performances that were aimed to draw people in and share the joy of God.
The dramas were focused on the story of God or how people see God. Very powerful with well done performances by the group.
After the performances were done, someone would stand up with a mic and share the gospel of Jesus. One of the people in our group spoke Arabic, and because of the large number of muslims and Arabic people, she translated the gospel in their language. it was very powerful.
The response of the people who stayed to listen to the gospel was small, but those who stayed listened all the way through, talked with some other people in our group and some received Jesus!
After the performances, the groups would break into smaller groups and go through the streets to share the gospel one on one with other people.
For me, I was in the "arts" team. So we were in charge of face painting, giving out chalk for kids to play with, and blowing bubbles with kids.
Next to the church we were all staying in was a English language school.
We were given permission to do a small performance for the students.
(We also had people on stilts).
After asking cafes if we could host an open mic, we only got one "yes" from a bar. So, a small group of us went to the bar and sang songs, did dances and small performances. Myself and one of my friends sang a song while I played ukulele. It was a nice chill and fun night.
Every day, we met together as a group to worship and focus our hearts on God. We had people share devotionals as well some days.
We had nights where we played games together and enjoyed getting to know different people.
we also had smaller "family groups" so we could get to know each other and open up to one another.
During this time, I was working with a couple others from my LMD school to do snack break every day for everyone.
We also had a couple of night where we were able to worship on the beach and have baptisms from different people in our group.
6 people from our group got baptised!
Beautiful moments.
On the last Sunday of the camp, we had a big presentation for the church. We did all the performances and held a big bbq for the church and anyone who wanted to come join.
With the arts group, we had some who painted beautiful pictures to display, and some of us were doing photography.
I was in the photography team. We took photos of some of the people on our group, then wrote original designs about those people and posted them on the wall with a little exhibition for the final event. I really liked the way it turned out and enjoyed writing nice things about amazing people.
RETREAT
The last 4 days of being in Bournemouth, the base planned a retreat. We did many things like worship and prayer and teaching sessions.
I was working with the DTS and LMD school to do snacks and other things we were in charge of doing to bless the staff during this time. The sessions i got to be in were really a blessing as well.
We also got to set off lanterns one night on the beach to simplify letting go of our old selfs and readying ourselves for the new. (The lanterns did not fly off as easily as we were expecting. But letting go of our flesh is also a challenge anyways so it was still a good symbolic thing.)
The retreat went well, and a good way to end the first part of our schools outreach phase!
Spain Outreach!
On August 13th, we flew to Malaga, Spain for the last month of our LMD outreach phase.
Two of our team mates stayed back in London. One because he was unable to get the visa he needed for Spain.
So we became a team of 7!
For the first week we planned for a kids vbs type of event.
We were living in a church that was close to a fairly large city. The pastor's wife planned a kids week where the kids would come to the church from 9am to 2pm for workshops and events with us and a couple of the ladies from the church.
We danced a lot with these very energetic kids. We also got to teach them about hearing the voice of God and how they too can have that connection with God.
I got to pray for some prophetic words for the kids as well during one of our workshops. It was tons of fun!
On the last 2 days of the kids week, everyone had a giant sleepover! All the kids slept with us (and the ladies) at the church! They all came in the morning like usually, then we went to a swimming pool where the pastors family lived. Then everyone came back for the sleepover. The next day we had a full day with everyone again.
After everyone left me and my team set up for a little exhibition that would be happening Sunday night for all the parents and members of the church to get to see all the art, pictures and different events that the kids did. It was a bit of work but it was a blessing to the church!
Also during this outreach, we partnered with a pastor who has a small Language learning school in the city. Many refugees go there. I got to have a cool conversation with one young guy there who went on a long and rough journey to get to Spain. it was very crazy to hear all he had gone through.
During this time too, we helped the pastor by walking around the city on many of the days and posting flyers for advertising his school.
We joined in with the church's baptism. Four people from the church got baptised. as well as a lady who had only stopped to listen and watch what we were all gathered for at a public beach, came up to the pastor and asked to get baptised.
We also joined in with the bbq they had on the beach after the celebration.
We also got to spend some good time with the youth from the church as well. It was a small group of people, but they were very real and an awesome group of people.
We got to go to the beach and hang out with them some!
Also, got to share a testimony from Japan with the youth on one of our hang out nights!
And one of my favourite times with them was the couple of times we got to have spontaneous, prophetic open worship. Its been months since I have been in that kind of environment and I was so blessed by their crazy ways of worship style! I always left wanting more of God and just to stay in that place of worship.
During our outreach we also spent time prayer for the church, the city, Spain, and different things we felt God laying on our hearts. We went on a few prayer walks in the area.
We also had a full prayer day from 8am to 8pm. It was a day where we had devotionals, worship, prayer sections in the church with topics and places to write down prophetic words, art table and writing table. Everyone worked really hard on this day to make it look nice and flow smoothly.
I really enjoyed the day getting to pray for people and spend lots of hours with God.
Many people from the church joined us as well.
One final event we got to help put on was a Missions Day. We decorated the church and prepared it for a night where the church members would bring food from other countries. Some of our people sang songs in different languages. Some got to share testimonies and we heard testimonies from other in the church who have hearts for different places in the world. And I got to share about Japan and show the YWAM Tokyo video "Why Japan?". It went really well and was a joy to join and help put this event on.
We did many things on this outreach. Like painting the church, working on a video, visiting the ywam base in the area, preaching on a few Sundays, going to an Arabic church and other little things on the side.
But some things I feel I learned (and am still learning) are these things;
- The motivations of your heart in the things you do are very important.
- Its good and ok to go above and beyond for things to look nice and be exciting for others.
- Don't let my circumstances dictate how my emotions and attitude are.
- I have a lot to learn.
~NEXT STEPS AND THANK YOU'S!~
Thank you to those who have been praying for me and those who help me to get to London for this school!
This season has been life changing and I hope to continue my journey with God in the things He started in my heart!!
My next step is going back to YWAM Tokyo!
Being honest with you, one of the hardest things about this season has been being away from my family in Tokyo. But now I will be returning to them on September 23erd!!
I know it seems like I talk about a lot of schools in YWAM on here. But let me talk about one more.
Starting September 24th is YWAM Tokyo's School of Worship and Transformation (SWAT).
I will be auditing this school!
(*That means I will still have the role of a staff but attending the schools classes and activities along with other staff work).
I will also go back to my Japanese language learning!
Why? - I feel from the time I heard that this school was going to be happening I felt a leap in my heart. Something that was shown to me during this school in London was that my ministry and actions are getting A's in grades. But, my heart can be far from a connection with God. This school is built for intimacy with God and removing anything that is in the way.
If you have more questions please email me:
mcg11223344@yahoo.com
(Or facebook message is fine too)
For more info on SWAT:
Website: http://ywamtokyo.org/swat/
Blessings!!
God is good. God is big.
