Over the last year we have been working with a small team of YWAM leaders on a prayer guide to encourage our mission to think about creation care. https://ywam.org/news/pray-for-the-care-of-creation In the process we were reminded once again how important it is to look after the earth diligently. It was God’s first mandate to us as humans and, even though the challenge seems immense, each one of us has a part to play. So often it’s the poorer communities who are most affected by climate change, pollution, degradation, etc as they are dependant on the sea and land for daily sustenance. This was such a motivation for us personally in challenging our mission to consider creation care. Of course change always starts with us. For many years we have been composting, recycling, trying to use less plastic and recently only buying products that haven’t travelled half way around the world (Dave really misses bananas!). Writing this prayer guide has even convinced us to look at how we travel, what we buy and encourage others to think about the effect we all have on our planet. A couple of exciting developments came out of the process. We were contacted by a group of missionaries who are organising an outreach to the climate conference in Glasgow later in 2021. https://ukcop26.org So, we will be supporting this initiative, and praying for it to influence the global response. Secondly, we have started a monthly prayer meeting by Zoom to pray for our mission, COP26 and other creation care related topics. If you would like to join us let us know.
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In 2004 a French YWAM couple, Jean-Marc and Martine Fritsch, moved to Tamatave in Madagascar. After a time of research, which revealed a desperate lack of health care, they decided to help remote villages create their own clinic. The government health department and other established NGO’s told them this was impossible as the villagers were uneducated, lazy and uncooperative! 16 years later we have 50 self-financing health posts run by local Malagasy people, serving around 200,000 villagers who used to walk for many miles to receive any health care. They also discovered that in the remote villages, outside of Tamatave town, there were no believers. So, alongside the health work they started a church planting ministry. They trained local young people as church planters and today there are more than 150 local churches each with a leader trained by YWAM. Over the years we have added several elements of ministry to influence the spheres of society. These include working with pre and primary schools, business groups, women’s enterprise training, discipleship training and youth ministries. We remain part of YWAM but use the name MM-Madagascar as we come under the umbrella of MM-Suisse Recently, we started looking at the whole area of food security. A small team from MM-Madagascar started researching crops, growing methods and animal raising. As a result, we have a long-term plan to: create a model farm where communities can see effective methods as well as learn more efficient ways to grow crops and raise animals train the local youth and those from other provinces in agriculture and life skills so they can be change agents in their communities generate funds through efficient agriculture and animal-raising to support our ongoing health, children’s and church planting work. On a recent trip we met Gary from Mthombothemba in Zimbabwe. Like so many other young people in the community, he dropped out of school after his mother died of HIV/AIDS. Over the last 15 years our YWAM ministry, in partnership with a local training centre and community leaders, has sent 300 young school drop-outs for skills training. Gary very successfully completed a one-year course in construction and has since started his own building company. He now employs 10 others from the community and has built over 100 modern houses to date. Traditionally buildings in the community were round, thatched huts without any windows. The people believed these huts provided protection from witches and evil spirits who are unable to enter the house due to the lack of windows. Gary became a Christian before he received his training and now builds modern houses with windows. This challenges people to seek protection from God through Jesus Christ rather than seeking protection from ancestral spirits or round huts with no windows. Gary is not just building houses but is changing people’s thinking and moving them closer to living in line with a Biblical worldview. Christianity is spreading in this community through these houses; Gary is really building lives and transforming the community. He also now participates in a community program to ensure that no child drops out of school and personally pays school fees for three children who are in need. We have just returned from an extremely busy and fruitful time in Uganda where we ran training for nearly 100 people in 2 workshops. We always love going there but this trip was made extra special because our good friend Gideon from Zimbabwe came with us! Looking back on the trip we saw again the huge value of African leaders sharing their story and experience with other Africans. Gideon could address cultural practices and beliefs in a way that we can’t. This empowers and inspires other African leaders and young Africans to grow in their ministries. During debriefing, Gideon was so aware of how much he had learned from our two weeks in Uganda and that he is going home with new insights and skills to bring to his own ministry. Thankfully this doesn’t make us completely redundant but it does compliment and reinforce what we bring to our training workshops! Can you help? The challenge for Gideon, and others like him, is that travel in Africa is very expensive, so we are currently looking for partners who can help fund their travel. If you are interested, please ask us for more information. Moussa and Francisca are a wonderful West African couple who work in Senegal. They have been working in YWAM for 6 years, faithfully serving in a ministry to women and children in Dakar. For some time they have had a heart for the poor in villages outside of the capital but didn’t know how to start. We met them at a leadership training course and straight away we could see they were leaders, especially Francisca. In their context it is hard for a woman with leadership giftings but we were able to spend time with them and really encourage them to follow their calling. In a recent whatsapp conversation they said that during the course God had showed them many things about themselves and how they could serve others. Moussa recognised he is an evangelist and Francisca recognised her leadership gifting. They also learned how to better organise their finances and the small businesses that help support them; how to make sure they are looking after themselves and how to improve their decision-making capability. They came away with a real sense of what their next step should be and, despite the challenges, they are stepping into their calling in faith and obedience. Moussa and Francisca are just one example of how God uses leadership training to release people in their calling and give them tools to succeed.
‘Do you stay in hotels when you travel?’ We are asked this question from time to time. Occasionally we do stay in a hotel or a training centre but we mostly stay with local teams. This has given us many varied and interesting experiences 😀.
On our latest trip to Zimbabwe we lived in a tiny, remote village for two and a half weeks to run a workshop for pastors and local leaders. Here is a glimpse into our time there. Run the cursor over the picture for a caption This is Silas. We recently had the privilege to run a 2-week workshop in his community in rural Zimbabwe. He grew up in Makamure, which is where we held the training and where he still lives. Tragically, his wife died 3 years ago. His oldest daughter is married, his middle and youngest daughters live in town, one is a teacher and the other is studying so he lives alone. He works as a child protection officer with responsibility for those caught in domestic violence and sexual abuse cases. He is also a pastor and oversees 3 rural Pentecostal churches. Our project team in Zimbabwe started working in Makamure a couple of years ago. One of the first things we did was to appoint a community development committee and Silas is the chairman. He is extremely motivated and has already organised the community to build a dam for themselves. At the workshop he was totally engaged and was encouraging the other participants to get the most out of the training. He told us afterwards that he now has the tools to move his community forward. What an honour for us to be part of his story. Over the 29 years that we have been working with communities in the majority (developing) world, we have seen many changes and new trends. Financial aid is no longer the default response; many agencies talk more about empowering people, helping communities help themselves and self sustainability. Recently we have been looking at how business and job creation can be a part of transformation in many parts of the world. Urbanisation and growing economies are also pushing us to adapt our approach to poverty. In response to all this there is a growing initiative called Business as Mission http://businessasmission.com
YWAM is part of this movement and in February we attended the annual summit in Thailand. It was amazing to hear stories of how business is being used to gain access to closed countries, creating jobs, impacting societies and bringing the gospel to the workplace. Our main interest is to see how we can encourage our teams on the field to embrace the changes and equip them to see small businesses and additional jobs created in their communities towards the end goal of transformation. We are learning as we go and are excited to see how this will bring new opportunities on the field. We sometimes struggle with being called ‘elders’. It must be a vanity thing, not wanting to admit our age! But with 29 years’ experience in missions and being a certain age it’s probably time to admit this is the season we are in!
In January we were two of the elders attending a training course run by the ALLC (Asian Leaders Learning Community https://allc.asia) for young leaders from across Asia. What a privilege to sit, eat, chat and pray with these courageous young missionaries working in some really tough places. We are thrilled to be part of the strategy of bringing together elders and emerging leaders. We have already seen how this can make a profound difference to their outlook and ministry: We were talking with a small group of leaders and the subject of transition from one location to another came up (something we know quite a lot about!) Ali was able to give some really helpful advice and input based on her training as a debriefer and from personal experience. The sense of new understanding and application was tangible for so many of them. The refugee crisis has been in and out of the news over the last few years. The reality for the refugees is that they face extremely challenging situations every day.
In June we were invited to Amsterdam to speak at a conference for refugee workers from all over the world. We heard about ministries ranging from teaching cultural and language skills with small groups of resettled migrants, to work in large scale refugee camps in the some of the hardest places imaginable and many other initiatives in between. The common thread was God’s character and love being demonstrated by His followers in creative ways. They had recognised that this is an incredible opportunity to bring Good News to people who are in great need, coming from countries where it is illegal to share the gospel. This offers an unprecedented opening and many refugees are responding. We became aware of so many ways and opportunities the Church can be involved in making a tangible difference in the lives of refugees. As is often the case when we go to speak somewhere we come away inspired and challenged ourselves! |