By Emily Nisch-USA

This week Sue Pratt taught on “team building and conflict resolution.” She emphasized that differences between people should compliment each other, not produce tension or strife, and that conflict is a realistic part of life, so an unresolved conflict, not the conflict itself, is the problem. Our whole school has been in a process of learning to live with each other in unity and love, and this week we were provided with more practical ways in which to do that. As we prepare to head out on outreach, the importance of actually living together in a Christian way has begun to move more from my head into my heart, and I have had more of a passion to really live the unity and love that Jesus tells us to live. I have seen this activated to a greater degree in all of us, and there has been a greater effort on everyone’s part to understand and encourage one another’s differences, and not assume that we know someone else’s motivations for doing something.

Sue ended with Philippians 2:1-11, highlighting verse 3: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” This verse was accompanied by several other helpful quotes. One by G.K. Chesterton really stuck out to me: “There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the really great man is the man who makes every man feel great.” Together, this verse and quote showed me how humility, obedience to God, and the love of his ways over our own, allow us to show God’s love to others, build others up, and live with the servant heart that Jesus displayed.

This week has definitely given me guidance that has already been changing how I live, and that I expect will continue to do so!

By Heidi Quiel-USA

The week started out with a statement: if you are in a place without power, you are in a place to learn. Sarah Lanier came to our class this week and talked about different cultures and how we are to fit into cultures other than our own. It was amazing to step back and see why I felt different and weird with others and why they didn’t understand me. It was very eye opening as we learned about hot or cold climate cultures, and high or low context cultures. The two cultures are very different and can often clash. I have experienced this in my own room. I share a big room with a girl from Holland, Brazil and Ecuador and we all came from very different cultures. Some are direct and others are very indirect, some think everything matters where others are relaxed about everything. My room would often be a place of misunderstandings, until this week when our eyes were opened. We began to understand each other and from there we began to learn about each other’s culture. I learned so much about how to understand people and the importance of not having power in order to learn and grow in God.

By Nelly Munoz-Ecuador

It was a very productive week with Reona Joly. I really liked the way she spoke to us about Spiritual Warfare. She brought us her wisdom and personal experience about this subject. Well, the Bible talks about spiritual warfare as the confrontation between light and dark, how God manifested his glory and sovereignty over Satan and the evil forces.

Most of the time we don’t realize that the real war is fought in the spiritual world, we really need to understand what we are up against, and as 2 Corinthians 3-4 says: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” In other words, we have the responsibility to plant the seed of the gospel in the people that cannot see the truth of the love of God.

Another scripture that I really like on this subject is Ephesians 6-12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The aim of spiritual warfare is not to destroy Satan or the spiritual forces, it’s to rescue all of those that are under their authority, breaking all the ties. That means that all of our attention has to be focused on people and not on Satan.

By Megan Harbry-USA

This week Ken and his son Tim came to speak on the topic of the Holy Spirit. It was amazing to see how much knowledge and wisdom they had on this subject. I feel like I have learned so much and have deepened my understanding of the Holy Spirit. One thing that has really stuck out to me from this week was a question he proposed as a challenge of “How long would someone have to be around you before they discovered you are in love with Jesus?” We have the Holy Spirit right here within each of us, we should realise the significance of that and have a personal relationship with Him.

By Charlotte Coleman-UK

Last week we had a speaker called Daniel Shannon come to speak to us about the fear of the Lord. Daniel said “the degree to which we understand the character and nature of God is the degree to which you fear him.” Daniel described what he meant by the character and nature of God, the character of God being God’s stuff and the nature what he does with that stuff. Daniel spoke about the importance of the Old Testament and how we only get half the cross if we only read the New Testament. This really inspired me to read the Old Testament more. Daniel also talked about making ourselves available to God, which challenged me to do more often. Daniel was a very animated and enthusiastic speaker with lots of passion for the gospel.

By Rachael Prince-USA

The January DTS recently went on our first outreach to Leicester. It went well and everyone on the team was encouraged by our time there. We stayed in a house owned by a local church in the city named Trinity Life Church and we were able to team up with several people already working in the city. We spent our days in smaller groups doing a variety of things. Some people were able to do practical work to bless Trinity Life Church, others went into the city centre to have conversations with people about Jesus, and another group went into the muslim community to share God’s love with them. While we were in Leicester we were also able to help put on a youth evangelistic concert. This concert was led by a local ministry in Leicester called “Transfusion”. It was a great experience and a chance for us to get outside of our comfort zones. Our speaker for the week, Britt from Norway, was able to come to Leicester with us and participate in the outreach. She gave us outstanding teaching on evangelism and showed us how evangelism is a lifestyle, something we model everyday by the way we live. One thing she said that really stuck with me was that “we need to build bridges that are friendships and are strong enough to hold the truth.” I really enjoyed our outreach in Leicester and I feel that we were drawn closer to God and to each other during the five days there. This experience gave me a deeper excitement and passion for our upcoming outreach to Asia!

By Melissa Leon-UK

We learned so much in this week’s classes on Relationships taught by Serena Baker. The main focus was on our relationships with our families and how much they influence us. We also briefly explored dating relationships. It was significant to see how easy it is to accept negativity through name calling and labeling, even though God sees us as His children who He loves unconditionally. Serena highlighted the fact that we need to be more aware of negative influences and, if we need to forgive someone who played, or plays, an important role in our lives, we should so that we can move forward. We are unable to change others but we can make a conscious effort to change ourselves with the help of God. This week’s teaching has definitely challenged me to explore my own family relationships and to do what I need to, to ensure I am a positive influence. Serena talked about dating too, and how important it is for two people in a relationship to respect each other and put the other person first, before themselves. She re-iterated the biblical fact that sex before marriage is wrong and to avoid falling into this sin you should put practical boundaries in place that both can abide by. I feel like my eyes have been opened to so many new things this week, and I really enjoyed our lectures on relationships.

By Megan Giesler-USA

This week was full of suprises on a personal and community level. The character of this week’s teaching inevitable created us to have to be vulnerable with each other. By taking a close-up view of the heart of our earthly father we were able to begin to identify the distorted view we have made of our heavenly father. Claude used the week to help us to begin to embrace and be embraced by the parent God wants to be to each of us His children. We were enlightened on the Fahter’s repsonsibility, blessed with a true understanding of the genuine, unconditional, pure love of God. Ultimately, unforgiveness of wrongs done to us in thie type of relationship keep us from lasting joy of intimacy with our father. Claude thus led us thru steps from unforgiveness to freedom in forgiveness.

As I stated this week was full of unexpected turns. Many of the things I anticipated to be response for personal pain, doubt, or question were not sources of grievances at all but rather incidence I did not forsee.

Claude was the perfect bearer of the Father heart of God. His humility allowed God to work thru him in great proportions. He helped to continue our growth as a school as well by helping us see the picture we display of children, all of one Amazing Father!

By Kelly Ribeiro-USA
How much God has helped our group thus far. We’ve grown so much in our faith and as a unit, we’re like family. I personally have grown so much in my freedom to be myself, because for the first time I feel accepted by my peers.

It’s just so exciting waking up in the morning and knowing that you are about to learn something new that you can apply to your Christian walk with God.

This week we had some really great teaching done by Philip Powell and Don Price. Philip Powell taught us that we must understand the world view of wherever God will send us to do missions. We also learned that each person has their own personal world view which is affected by variables such as the person’s culture and heritage. A worldview is someone’s perspective of the world. We then had Don Price come and lecture us on God’s character and the nature of God. He taught us that God will never give you so much guidance that you won’t need faith. Don also taught us about different fears people can have.

One I really have struggled with, myself, is a fear of the future, i.e. fearing the unknown. I struggle with this because I like to know everything that’s going to happen ahead of time so I can plan things in advance.

His lecture, however, just taught us to take things one day at a time. In other words, we need to learn to trust God. We also learned that the more we know God the more we can trust him. It is also important to have a relationship with the whole Trinity and not just one aspect of it. Among many things we were taught is that we are to love ourselves before we can love others. To many of us this is probably the hardest lesson we’ve learnt this week. It’s so hard to love yourself when most of the time we are our own worst critics. We can many times see things that are wrong with ourselves that we are able to hide from others and etc. The thing that is most prominent in my mind when reflecting on this past week is that we learned that with love comes unity. That might be at the root of why the DTS is so united.

By Tripp Prince-USA

As I sit and write, I am overwhelmed with such a sense of excitement and anticipation. From the first moment we arrived at the base, there has been as sense among us as a school that this was going to be a time that God was going to reveal himself to us in a powerful way and use us to impact many peoples lives. In these first few weeks we have enjoyed getting to know one another, spending time with God, and reflecting on the beauty of His creation.

We have an amazing group of people in this DTS and God has given us all a real sense of unity and purpose, despite our different personal and cultural backgrounds. With the nations of Korea, New Zealand, Ecuador, Brazil, Holland, England, Canada, and America represented, it’s clear that we have a very diverse group.

A few highlights of the first few weeks included having the International Chairman of Youth With a Mission, Lynn Green, share with us a bit of the history of YWAM as an organization and specifically how YWAM England came to be. It is an amazing story of hearing and obeying God’s voice and is exciting to hear of the many ways in which God has provided for and guided these men and women over the years. We were also freshly challenged by Trent Shepherd to see the Bible as a narrative and that it is an amazing story of God’s plan to bring us into a love relationship with Him. Outstanding teaching on additional topics such as prayer, hearing God’s voice, and hospitality has further challenged us this week to become more like Jesus in all areas of our lives.

Please pray for us as a school that we will continue to learn from one another and treat each other with love and respect. We know God has amazing plans for all of us during the coming months and we are all so excited to see where He leads and directs us as individuals and as a team.