Spring SOE 2009

It was late one evening and the street artist had just finished his painting presentation of the Gospel. I quickly struck up a conversation with an older man who I had spotted watching intently as the picture was painted. At first, he seemed hesitant to speak to me, a total stranger. But as I allowed him to share his faith with me and his Lebanese origin, he started to warm up to the conversation.

The man made it clear that he was a Muslim. As a Muslim, he believed that Jesus did exist, but not that he died and rose again. I continued to listen and ask probing questions meant to make him think about what he believed.

During the conversation, God prompted me to ask the gentleman if he believed dreams were from God. He responded, “Sure, about ninety percent come from God.” I immediately followed that question by asking him if I could pray with him and ask Jesus to appear and reveal the truth to him in a dream.

I did this, knowing that many Muslims around the world come to salvation after a dream. This dream consists of Jesus appearing and revealing that He is indeed the Son of God who died and rose again for their sins. This would be an awesome opportunity!

The Lebanese man agreed to pray with me. So right there, in the middle of the busy Montreal sidewalk, I prayed with him and asked Jesus to appear to him in a dream!

This is exactly the type of story that drives my passion and desire to be in ministry with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Multiple stories like this are told by students who complete our Discipleship Training School.

My desire is to see more students have the opportunity to be discipled and become passionate about their belief in Christ. This is my goal and therefore I have committed to serve in Orlando the next two years.

It is my hope to staff the upcoming fall quarter Discipleship Training School here in Orlando.

-Chad, Spring SOE Graduate and Recently accepted Staff at YWAM Orlando.

Hey Everyone! Forgive me for not posting anything for a while.
We arrived in Chicago on Monday July 20th; and we´ve been going ever since. We´re staying at the YWAM base here; And man do they have a lot going on. 
Each one of the staff have a ministry/or part of town that they are working in. We´ve had the opportunity to work with almost all of them.
Chicago´s an extremely diverse city so it´s almost like we are in a foreign country. Outside of the downtown area you will find different neighborhoods with different people groups. So far the different places we´ve worked in have been Little India, Little Pakistan, A South Asian Nursing Home, Alternative district, and the Business district downtown courthouse. 
The team has been doing great! We keep meeting people new people and connecting with the surrounding communities. We´ve been able to pray for over 100 people and hand out more than 50 Jesus films! 
It´s unbelievable how fast this trip has gone; We´re in our 6th week already. It´s weird that there is only 2 more weeks to go. Tomorrow we are cleaning and packing up to head to Montreal and we leave on Thursday morning.
We had a prayer time for Montreal this morning and it really pumped us up to see how God´s going to use us. 
God has been so awesome to use us on this trip so far. The students have grown a lot with pushing themselves out of their comfort zone to reach out to the people around them. 
I´ll post more when we get to Montreal. We´ll be traveling a lot over the next couple days, our upcoming van ride will be around 16 hours; pray for sanity in the van HAHA! (Just kidding we´ve done much longer trips before)
Also, please be praying for our team´s health. We´ve had a couple of people sick recently.

We miss you and love you all, thanks for all your prayers! See you soon!!! 

Alright, Alright... well here we are in the Twin Cities and boy have we had a jam packed week. The whole week we worked down in the Phillips Neighborhood in South Minneapolis with the kids. There is an urban Native American reservation in the neighborhood. We did a lot of VBS stuff, and took the kids on a couple field trips.

On Monday we scouted out the area to see what kind of ministry was available. We made some connections with people in the community for the organization we were partnering with, Union Gospel Mission.

Tuesday, each one of us buddied up with a kid or 2 and took a field trip to the library and Taco Bell. The kids loved it! The Minneapolis library is humungous! The kids had a great time looking at and reading different books. They were also able to play on the computers and sign up for their very own library cards. 

Wednesday, the kids met in East Phillips park in the morning and we spent the morning playing games, learning Bible verses and picking up trash around their neighborhood. We decided to pick up trash to teach the kids how to take responsibility over their own neighborhood. Shockingly enough, they really liked it! The community was so grateful. 

Thursday, we felt like God was asking us to share the creation story with them. So to go along with that, they created tie-dyed shirts. It was a creative way to share with them how God created; and how God has given us the ability to create, because we are created in His image. 
That evening we helped out at Hope Presbyterian, Karl´s church, with an outdoor worship service.

Friday, we took the kids to a wave pool water park. We were there all day! It was a blast! The kids never really get to do things like that; so they were in heaven. Then, that night we had a cookout in the neighborhood. Every Friday night the Union Gospel Mission does a free meal; and anyone in the community is welcome. Even after a long day the students had great conversations and were able to pray for a couple people.

The week was great! The kids became so dear to us. Oh yeah, we wrote "You Are Loved" on each one of the tie-dyed t-shirts the kids made for them to always know God loves them and so do we. 

Please check out all the pictures!! We love you and miss you all!!! 

Oh man! So after an exhausting week we headed to north Minnesota for a couple days of rest & 36 hour prayer for our next stop; The Twin Cities!!! 
While we were up North, it was COLD!! We hung out for a day & a half, got some rest & reconnected as a team. When we were at the kids camp we were split up & spread out in with the other volunteer counselors. 
The next day & a half we prayed for the Twin Cities to get God´s heart for what He wanted us to do in the cities. The prayer time was awesome! We definitely feel more prepared about what we are going to do here in the cities.
Our first ministry location is with a organization called "Union Gospel Mission". We´ll be working in an Urban First Nation Reservation, called "Little Earth". We took 10 kids down to a WNBA game, the Minneapolis Lynx. We had so much fun with the kids! By the looks of it we´ll be spending a lot of time with those kids. Please be praying for lots of opportunities to share Jesus with them. We´ll be working with them for the next week for sure!

Hey Everyone! Welcome to our SOE outreach! We hit the road on Sat June 20th and after a long 21 hour drive we arrived at our first stop in Rockton, Illinois on June 21st. We partnered with a ministry called “Outdoor Outreach”. It’s a week long kids day camp that reaches out to inner city kids. There were a total of 87 elementary kids & 40 middle school kids. The camp was amazing! The kids were able to do all the normal camp activities, such as; Canoeing, Zip lining, Rock climbing, Archery... etc. Plus hear about Jesus and His love for them. The week’s theme was Extreme Week! Each activity focused around the “Extreme” teaching topic of that day and the way we should be as people wanting to be “Extremely’ transformed to be like Jesus. The kids were a little rough at first but definitely warmed up to us and by the end of the week some cried when they had to leave. 4 kids came to know Jesus for the first time :) The whole week was intense, we got dirty, sweaty, and even made to go into a dunk tank, but we had a blast and were able to share the love of Christ with each kid that we encountered.