Hello From Uganda. We are doing great as a team. We have shared the Lord with so many people and seen many come to the Lord as well. The team dynamics have been great and the team is doing well adjusting to cold showers, rice and beans, outdoor squaties, and much more. They are loving the people and we are doing our best to make an impact. We have been preaching in churches, prisons, university groups, going door to door, and doing open-airs. So good to be in Africa

The Ugandan Outreach Team

We took a deep breath over the weekend before the crazy schedule of Re-engage (www.reengage.net) began. I relaxed with friends until Saturday afternoon and it really felt like I was at home. We travelled to neighboring Luton to do some shopping in between the rain storms, and even stopped for some real English fish and chips on the way home. I’m from England and I thought it was just delightful!

Sunday marked the beginning of the Re-engage conference, which has been awesome (and we’re only half way through). The conference focuses on how we can live out God’s values in all areas of society. We’ve heard from some very influential people including James Featherby, a partner in a leading law firm, John Sutherland, a superintendent with the metropolitan police, and Tim Levell, the editor of the BBC television show Blue Peter. It has been incredible to hear from people of such influence about the way they live out their faith in such diverse sectors of society.

At Re-engage, I am involved in the Government and Politics track. I’ve been privileged to spend time with Charlie Hoare, the International Secretary of the humanitarian organization CARE, which provides resources and helps to bring Christian insight and experience to matters of public policy and practical caring initiatives. CARE is represented in the United Kingdom’s Parliaments and Assemblies, at the European Union in Brussels and at the United Nations in Geneva and New York. Charlie is involved on an international level with the United Nations and spent time sharing stories of his amazing experiences within such an incredibly influential sector. Tomorrow, I have the privilege of accompanying Charlie (with the rest of my fellow track members) on a political tour of London including the very exciting Houses of Parliament. I can’t wait!

The first week of Re-engage has been significant for me. One of the reasons I came to do the YWAM Discipleship Training School was to discover God’s heart for justice. I’m discovering that the more I know God the less of a distinction I see between His character and justice. A desire for justice is simply part of who God is and integral to what it means for us to follow him. Yesterday, Phillip Powell challenged us to say “yes” to God and be willing to go wherever He asks us to, in whatever sector of society, and to serve him with all we have. I knew that was one of the moments I had been waiting for in this journey…a commissioning of my hopes and dreams to be someone whom God could trust to help bring about justice. The exciting thing is, God has been speaking to me more directly and specifically than I’ve ever heard him speak before and I’m catching a clearer glimpse of my future.

As we continue with Re-engage for another week, I’m excited to hear more from some influential people and organisations…and to finally get a day off to process it all!
See you next week!
Kim

As I write there is silence in Number 9 (my house) as our first Discipleship Training School (DTS) assignment is due tomorrow morning. Not a sound can be heard except the clicking of fingers on laptop computers and the occasional sound of a page being turned scanning the contents for inspiration. Slight panic fills the air, but there is no doubt in my mind that we will all make the deadline (with at least seconds to spare!!)The quietness is a welcome change from the chaos of last weekend. The “React” training event brought in some 300 young people to the Oval, all preparing to take the Gospel throughout England and Europe in coming weeks.  It was amazing to see young people committing and recommitting their lives to God…leaving this place full of faith and ready to be bold for God. Though I wasn’t part of React, my friend Debbie was a leader involved in the event and we managed to see each other briefly… what a blessing for me, not to mention the white chocolate milkshake she bought for me from the brand new Oval Café (best milkshake I’ve ever had!).

Over the weekend I had the privilege of some home-cooked food. My friend Rachel has family that lives nearby so we spent Saturday afternoon eating, drinking and talking in the summer sunshine. It was lovely, and a real blessing to meet new friends. Later that evening back at the YWAM base we were watching a movie when suddenly a beautiful fireworks display began on the green outside our house. Before you knew it we were dancing on the grass to the sound of classic disco tunes from a nearby wedding and watching the glittering fireworks right above our heads. It was a great moment.

This week we’ve had a guest speaker with us, Leah from Switzerland. She came to talk about the different “spheres of society” and how we see God’s principles and values underpinning them all. The sphere of government and politics has been of particular interest to me. We looked at how the Israelites leaving Egypt and living in the desert were an uneducated, slave population. God gave them guidelines on how to set up a society that included everything they would need to live well– from good sanitation to equality in issues of justice. What before seemed to me like irrelevant and outdated Old Testament-era rules are in fact the very building blocks of a Godly society that we need in every community and nation today. This was a great revelation for me.

Last night we enjoyed the long awaited return of ‘spoons’, made even more hilarious when Leah joined us and ended up on top of the coffee table scrambling for a spoon with the rest of us. We followed the spoon action with a time of ‘name those 80’s tunes’ that included the likes of ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson…and all the dance moves that go with it! You can’t put a price on memories like that….

For the next two weeks my DTS group is joining a conference here at the Oval called Reengage (www.reengage.net) which will be focusing on how we can live out God’s values in all areas of society. This last week has been great preparation for the conference and I’m looking forward to some fantastic times of teaching and challenge as we learn together. The schedule will be insane, I’m sure….. but I can’t wait.

Well, back to my assignment. See you at the end of Week Five!

Kim

Week Three

As usual it has been another busy week here at the Oval! Trent Shepherd, a great speaker, came to share some of his wisdom with us along with some incredible stories. One involved him and another passer-by rolling a huge fish that had beached itself back into the sea as they shouting at it, “You gotta live, fish!” And it did! We spent one afternoon on the grass in the sunshine talking about our favorite stories of the man, Jesus, while Trent dug a small hole with his hands, spat into it, made mud and rubbed it on his eyes. That was a moment I will never forget. My concept of who Jesus really was has been completely revolutionized. It’s hard to believe a carpenter from Nazareth would ever mean so much to me. I came away from these lectures pondering what it means now that I know what I know about this man.

In the middle of that incredible time, we took a trip to London to see the sites. Armed with packed lunches, umbrellas and 13 cameras we descended on the unsuspecting tourist hot spots of…. St Paul’s Cathedral (we climbed to the very top…offering the best view of London by far), the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and briefly the Natural History museum!! Needless to say, by the end of the day we were SO tired!! Some of us stopped in at an Italian restaurant (where we ordered 5 cheese pizzas…the cheapest thing on the menu!!) and the rest saved even more money by frequenting the local McDonalds!! Even though we were blistered and aching like crazy by the time we got home, it was a brilliant day with some fantastic memories that we’ll share for years to come!!

On a sad note, our final school member Pendo is still yet to hear about her visa and the longer it takes to come through the further behind she gets with lectures etc. We are still hoping and praying she will get here soon…so remember her!!

I am so glad to report that the sun is finally shining here! And that is great news for the 120+ people that are flocking to the Oval this weekend for an evangelism conference. Myself and friends from the DTS now bear wounds marking this special event after erecting huge marquees and tents in preparation for their arrival…and getting flicked by giant toggles that are now holding there roofs on!! I am really looking forward to sharing time with so many people from all over the country. It will be great to have so many English people here at last – Hooray!!

This week we have been spending some time with John Peachey, the Base leader here in Harpenden, talking all about forgiveness and repentance. We have our last two sessions with him coming up these next few days and then I have a visit from my best friend from home this weekend, which is very exciting! In the meantime, I am going to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!! See you next week!!

A Week One report from a Discipleship Training School Student

Join us every week for the next five months as we check in on Kim Hart, a young woman from England doing her Discipleship Training School (DTS) at the Youth With A Mission training center in Harpenden, England. Kim will tell us about what she’s learning, what it’s like to live in a community with other young Christian missionaries, and how God is changing her.  Then we’ll “travel” with Kim and her classmates as they take what they’ve learned to another nation.

Week One

I arrived here at ‘The Oval’ on a wonderfully sunny Wednesday afternoon and was shown around a property that looks rather like an army barracks. With exercise class at 7am you may well believe that you have come to the wrong place! However, despite daunting first impressions, I instantly felt as though I was walking into my home. People who live and work here at Youth With A Mission-Highfield Oval are so welcoming and friendly and have an amazing capacity for remembering names and faces, so although the environment felt foreign to me at first, I felt I belonged here.

I share a room with two other girls, one from America and one from Rwanda, so I’m sure you can imagine the vast differences in our cultures, our habits…even our sock drawers! My concern in sharing a room was not the space or even the bunk beds. It was snoring! But, I’m glad to report that my roomies are silent sleepers!! Praise God for small mercies!

After a few days of orientation exercises, a trip to St. Albans and a “high tea” welcome, we began our first week of lectures. Oh my goodness! Talk about intense. Before I left my home church, a woman told me that during a prayer time, God had given her an impression of me as if I were on a very fast moving motorway. The speed of the cars was immense and the word from God for me was that I would be “fast-tracked” into what God had for me during this training (the DTS), and that I shouldn’t be scared that I wouldn’t keep up with Him but rather that I should prepare myself for new and exciting things. Well, it’s a good job she warned me because otherwise I think I would have been out of here! This week’s lectures have been all about how to hear God’s voice, that is, learning how to recognize when He’s speaking to me and then responding to Him. We’ve talked about the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, intercessory prayer, faith and obedience…and I don’t think that covers half of it! Lectures are great and the teaching we’re receiving is inspiring, yet it is so out of my everyday routine that I struggled to keep pace at first. But God has been faithful to get me here in the first place and He has promised to sustain me so I am excited to see what’s still to come as this adventure unfolds….

As part of our schedule each week, we each have assigned work duties, doing anything from cleaning toilets to mowing the grass on the Oval. My job? I work in hospitality making beds and vacuuming with Henry (the Hoover…yes, that’s what they call him) and I’m really enjoying it. Our free time as classmates and friends is special since we don’t have much of it… so it’s not uncommon to find students diving over the coffee table wrestling each other for a spoon during our infamous card games in the evening (I believe there was blood drawn last night!).

Tonight we have our first local “outreach” time in Harpenden and we have no idea what we’ll be doing, a challenge for a girl who’s a bit of a control freak. Right now, I’m off to write in my journal, do homework, shower (an interesting event here) and make tea…being the only English girl in the school I have to do the tea pot proud!

Stay tuned next week as Kim shares what takes place during Week Two of her Discipleship Training School experience.