By Cindy Hurtado-Ecuador

We started our outreach last Thursday, and for the first two weeks of the outreach we will be in Leicester. I’m a little bit sad because two of our classmates didn’t come with us. It was a hard moment for all the team, but we support and love them, although we miss them and it’s not the same without them, but I know that God has a purpose in all of these as He knows everything better than we do.

Well let me tell you about our first days of the outreach, we are staying in a house that belongs to a church where we are working with. Everything here is very different than Harpenden as here there are a lot of mosques, and Leicester is a very diverse place culturally. It’s very excited to be able to see and know other cultures and different people. It’s been a challenging time for all the team as we are now living in the same house and our character is being formed, but we are seeing the love and power of God. We have been working with children at church and sharing the gospel in the streets, which is a challenge to share and talk about Jesus in this area because there are a lot of different beliefs, but I know that God brought us here with a purpose and for Him nothing is impossible.!!

By Maria Attard-Malta

I have to say that being here in Harpenden doing a DTS is a great blessing. I’m enjoying myself, I’m being challenged and I’m in this for the challenge. It’s not easy for me to be away from my family and friends but it is such a great blessing to be with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

It’s amazing. We are all physically different, we come from different backgrounds, we have diverse perspectives and cultures and languages… but there is one thing that unites us all. It’s the love of Christ. We love each other because He first loved us. We value each other because Christ has affirmed our great value by His willingness to die for us all.

DTS is the beginning of a process of transformation. There is a great gulf between knowing things in the mind and experiencing them in the heart. In some way or another we are all being transformed, restored and renewed daily by the truth that is setting us free. We listened to so many different lectures but it is our one true teacher ‘the Holy Spirit’ who daily brings to our remembrance that which He knows we need most. It is only He who brings a deeper revelation of the truth in our hearts in a way that we can not only know it but also receive it, contain it and keep it in our hearts.

This weeks speaker is Reona Joly. I admire her because she is a woman of truth. She spoke to us about the importance of listening to God. Very often we say too much, but how do we give God time to speak? How sensitive are we to His voice? We cannot say that we love God if we do not love His word, and we cannot say that we love God if we do not love His word, and we cannot say we are thirsty for God if we are not thirsty for His word. As much as we need the food to sustain us physically, even much more we need God’s word to sustain us and build us up spiritually.

As Reona rightfully said, “Christian life is not a playground but a battle ground.” We are in the Kingdom of God through Christ and automatically without having a choice in the matter we are at war with the kingdom of Satan. If we want to have the overcoming of life and life in abundance in Christ we need to understand the nature of the war and how it works. All of this is found in the word of God.

As Reona also said, “We Christians are all called to be worshipers, witnesses and warriors.” This is the way and I am so encouraged to walk in it. I have a deep desire, by God’s grace, to be all that I can be in Christ and to walk in the victory and freedom that I already have in Him.

I am more than a conqueror in Christ. Alleluia. Thank you Jesus.

My God

All Holy, all loving and all good
I bless You and praise You and thank You.
I give You all the glory and honour that is due to You alone.

Father, thank You so much for Your love for us

You know us all individually and by name
We are so precious to You
You know our hearts as no one else does
And You understand us more than we understand ourselves.

Amen

by Jessica Smith-USA

Well, here we are in our final two weeks of letures!!! Wow! Our time here has gone so incredibly fast that it is so hard to believe that we are nearly on to our outreach. Christmas is just around the corner and we have 5 days of holiday before coming back to the base before heading out for 2 weeks of outreach in England. Then…South Africa here we come!!!
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By Simon Duerr-Switzerland

This was a very inspiring week for the DTS, where we had the privilege of having Patrick Dodson speaking. He shared about the different areas of influence in society, and what our part in that might be, so it started with alot of identity questions and moved on to opportunities and possibilites of going about the passions and dreams that are inside of us.

The style of the lectures was very appealing, for it involved alot of multimedia, but overall we were also challenged by the fact that many of us are quite tired and that there are so many things to process, but it’s definitely good, though it is hard at times.

On the weekend we helped out serving for a wedding held on the base, which was hard work but also great fun, especially since we could eat of the food served there, which was absolutely fantastic!

All in all a very interesting week, I am excited for what is to come next week…

Simon

By Aaron Strietzel-USA

We just finished up our sixth week of lecture phase! None of us can believe we are half way done with lectures already. Most of this weeks lectures where about relationship’s taught by John and Suzi Peachey and focused much on restoring broken or hurt relationships in the past. Needless to say there was a time of prayer with much repentance and forgiveness happening. God’s presence seemed to come closer and closer as we cried out for forgiveness of sin! I really do believe the Bible when it says that He is near to the broken and contrite heart. We are deifnately learning more the power of repentance.

Friday’s lecture, which has been probably my favorite so far, was on integrity by Lynn Green. I personally love it when speakers speak the truth in love, but in a very powerful way. You could just sense the authority in the room as the Holy Spirit brought conviction to our hearts. Oh how we need integrity in our generation! God just spoke to my heart during this time asking me where the men and women who will stand up with power and authorty brought about by humility and holiness are! We definately have them out there, but we need more desperately. So often we as Christians don’t even realize our sin until someone else comes along and speaks the truth in love. The key in all of this is love! Without love it is spoken out with condemnation and guilt instead of conviction. We need broken and humble men and women in our generation who will align themselves with God’s standards not the world’s. When they speak, they will speak not with there own authority, but with an authority brought about by the Spirit. I want to be one of these people and am willing to pay the price, are you?

By Natalie Fertig-USA

“Well this week has been probably the most intense to date… Dan Lake and Daniel Shannon taught this week, and the lectures were incredibly powerful. They talked about intimacy with God and fearing God, and I think that all of us have seen changes in our lives just in this week.
I know personally, it’s been so great… my idea of ‘quiet time with God’ has been COMPLETELY revolutionized. I’ve always kind of had a hard time just sitting down and reading the Bible for a certain length of time… it wasn’t that I didn’t like to read – actually, I LOVE to read! It was more that I felt that I had “better things to do”. I could never stay focused long enough to really get something out of it. Well this week has changed my way of meeting with God completely. I realized that it wasn’t about reading my Bible or praying… those were good things, but the point was spending time with God. So I did that, without reading my Bible. I took a walk and took pictures in the forest, looking at God’s creation. I played the piano. I sang worship songs while I cleaned. And as I did more things with God OTHER than reading the Bible, I started to have a hunger for God’s word that I have never had before. It was radical! I didn’t even notice it until the end of the week… and then I realized how many times I had read my Bible that week… I realized that I was reading my Bible in the morning when I could, after lecture, sometimes in the afternoon, and then at night before I went to bed! It was at LEAST once, and sometimes up to FOUR times per day! I couldn’t believe what God did…
On a larger scale, I think God has given our entire team a new appreciation for what He did for us… what He gave and sacrificed for US.

Often we think we deserve things in life… a car, a house, a family… just basically a comfortable life. But then we have to stop and think – do we really? What DO we deserve? What have we done that makes us deserve ANYTHING? Really, we deserve death. We deserve to go to hell. But Jesus paid the price for us – he sacrificed everything that HE deserved so we could come and spend eternity with Him. So that bridge between God and us could be gaped – so we could have a real relationship with Him. And let me tell you, it’s AWESOME! Growing in my relationship with God the past 4 weeks of DTS has been more than I imagined. But this week, realizing exactly what Jesus did for us, has caused me to grow SO much more. I have a new view of God - part of that came from the talks we had on fearing God - and I really do want to give all of my life to God… so he can use me in whatever way he wants to.

An example that was given this week that really took hold in my mind and heart came from Lord of the Rings. This might explain exactly how I felt this Friday, watching the Passion of the Christ and thinking about how I did NOT deserve Jesus to die for me… It’s when Pippin, the little Hobbit, comes before Denethor, the ruler of the biggest country in middle-earth – Gondor. Denethor’s son, the next in line for the throne, Boromir, sacrificed his life earlier in the story to save Pippin. So when Pippin comes before Denethor, he kneels before the ruler and pledges ALL his service, for life, to Denethor, since his son died for the hobbit.
This is how I feel… now that I actually UNDERSTAND what God did for me, I want to pledge MY life to serve Him, forever.

by Whitney Randall (USA)
These past couple weeks have been absolutely life changing for me. God is really messing me up in the most amazing way. Instead of just believing things that I’ve known since I was little…I’m beginning to ask myself if I truly believe it or if I just know the truth. There is a difference. Cause if I believed everything I know in my head, my life would look a lot different and my heart would see with different eyes. So I am asking the fundamental questions of Christianity and the whole thing of this relationship with God. How does it work? Why does it work? I mean why did God send Jesus to the cross to pay for my sins? How is that personal for me? How does the blood of Jesus work? What changes inside me that allows “Gods blood” to “wash away my sins”? He loved us so much “He died” for us….why? Trying to answer these questions in non Christian “ESE” terms seems impossible. I know there has to be an aspect of God that will be mysterious till the day we die but I think there’s so much that we don’t know but have answers to. And how am I supposed to tell someone else about my faith if it’s not even really something living in me?

Oh man, so many questions…but I can feel the excitement of the Holy Spirit even now as I’m writing about it. For example, I remember a boyfriend once said to me, “I want to know you Whitney, I want to know what every facial expression you make means…I want to know what every tone of your voice means…I want to be able to read your eyes and know what your feeling. I can’t wait till I know you like that.” And as some people feel guilty when they ask questions about God like I am…God reminded me of that time when my boyfriend said that to me, and how good that made me feels. It would seem silly for me to get angry at him for not knowing these things already. Instead I couldn’t wait to share my heart with him and answer the questions he didn’t understand about me. How much more excited is Jesus to revel Himself to us? The pure excitement of being in a relationship where you know the one you love so well, you COULDN’T dought them. I want that with God. And if I always have the answers and never ask them, then I’ll never receive the truth in my heart for myself…

So yeah it’s a journey…and I feel as though I’m beginning to know my pursuer…He is amazing though. I just want to know HOW amazing, and all the things that make up His character to MAKE Him so awesome. Because when I find THAT out is when I know what I’ll be striving after in my own heart. But without a clear vision of what I want to become, to say “I want to be like Jesus,” seems pretty silly to me…so the journey continues…