Last week of Community Development

I can't believe how fast time has gone. I officially have only one more week of my first school at YWAM Denver, studying Community Development for Missions (CDFM). For an overview about what I'm doing this year, check out this post. 

 

It has been a pretty challenging school, but I've learnt so much and I'm looking forward to putting it into practice at some point in the near future. I feature in this video below where I talk about a stove that I made out of tin cans! 

These photos are of the finished product :)

I think the most impactful things that I've learnt in this school were summaries really well in the book "When Helping Hurts" which I wrote a book report on here. I'd really encourage you to read it if you are interested in Missions or Community Development of any form. In Missions and Community Development we so often end up going into a community thinking that in just a few weeks or months we can 'fix' them and make them like us. Obviously most of us don't consciously think that way, but it very often ends up being the underlying attitude that the community receives during our time there. We go in and build them houses, paint their schools, plant trees, teach them about God or abstinence or about health and HIV, without taking the time to really understand their culture. 

All people are created in God's image and have incredible potential to do amazing things. On Friday night I went to a thing called the Resound: One Night Conference with Ray Hughes from Circuit Riders as the speaker. It was a really amazing time of worship and teaching. The church where the conference was held, VineLife, is situated in the middle of the country with huge windows on either side of the stage that overlooked the fields and Rocky Mountains. Instead of standing facing the band, we were encouraged to stand on the side of the stage and look out over God's creation as we worshiped Him. It was a really incredible experience to watch the sun set over such amazing beauty and try to comprehend that the God who made all of that loves ME and created me to be in relationship with him. It blew my mind and I just wept! 

One thing that Ray said that really stood out to me was that "God created everything to be creative". Such a simple yet so profound a concept! Every cell in our body recreates many times a second. All creation creates and grows with God all the time. How much more should we! I also love the concept of the universe being described as "uni" = one, "verse" = song. The universe is one song, every part of creation singing it's part in harmony. It reminds me of this mashup that Louie Giglio made of stars and whales singing together. So amazing! 

So coming back to how that applies to what I learnt in the CDFM school, God has put amazing potential and strengths and talents in each one of us and we just need to harness them. So when we go into communities where we want to help bring about change, we need to see them the same way. I've learnt that when we go into a community we need to help them recognise their own strengths and identify the potential that each other have. From this we can help to empower them to bring about the change that they want to see in their community. 


There are some really amazing stories of what has happened in communities when the local people have been empowered and have hope again to reach for their dreams and create a better life for their families. Obviously alongside this we need to help through educating the people in the areas that they want to develop in and helping them come up with sustainable solutions to their identified needs. So that may be teaching them how to build a well or a water catchment system, but not simply building it for them. The most important thing is to make sure that when we leave the community, the people are empowered to continue bringing about change and developing further from the work that has been done. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday I'm going to be sharing some of what I've learnt with the Compassion Discipleship Training School (DTS) that is running at YWAM Denver Arvada campus (Paul is doing that school) and with Boarders DTS that is running up at the Eagle Rock campus. I'm kinda nervous about it and would really appreciate some prayers. I haven't had much time to prepare yet, so I need to spend most of the next two days planning and preparing. Tomorrow (Monday) night is also the last time that our school will be working with the Koren refugees who we have been teaching English. I'm pretty sad to be leaving them because I've really enjoyed working with them, but I hope that I might be able to visit them again next when I'm doing School of Worship next quarter. But I think I'll write more about that in a different post :)

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First two ministry days in Mthatha

At the moment I'm in Mthatha, a rural area in South Africa, the traditional homeland of the Xhosa people. I'm here with my church on a missions trip, doing some community development, running a holiday club for kids and a discipleship program for youth. The rest of this post is an extract from my prayer request to my prayer partners. Feel free to read it and pray if God leads you to.

Our ministry times have been going quite well, without too many issues. Yesterday it took a while go gather some of the kids from the community, because word hadn't spread that we were coming. We took the time to walk around the village, praying and greeting the people as we went. Within about an hour we had a whole group of kids and were able to play games, do sport, sing songs, chat and run our holiday club program of worship, Bible story, memory verse and craft activity.

After the memory verse, I went out with the teenage girls and some of the leaders to chat. We did an icebreaker to get to know each other and explained why we were there and what we wanted to do. I gave them paper, and we asked them to write down questions that they wanted us to answer during the course of the week. Some of the questions broke my heart, like "what do I do when I'm in deep trouble?" and "what should I do if I have HIV?".

Today Emily spoke about healthy eating and how to look after your body well and focused on what to do if you have HIV. There is a shortage of Antiretrivirals in the area, and since the government officials take preference, the poorer clinics never receive any antiret supplies. There is no way for people here who have HIV to prevent it's development into AIDS and thus it is still a death sentence. The most heartbreaking question we got today, aside from "how do I help my friend with HIV?" and "is it ok for me to have sex with my boyfriend on a Sunday?", was "what can I do if my parents are forcing me to have sex for money?" I nearly cried when I read it! We cannot change the culture here in one week. We can't change the parents minds, the boys actions or the government presence. Trying to tell these girls that they have worth and purpose and are created in God's image and are loved by him just doesn't seem enough.

Please pray for incredible wisdom for us all. The teenage boys are also having a ministry time now during the kids program, and they asked questions about evolution and creation, because the school syllabus teachers such contradictions from the Bible.

The weather is also another concern. It has been VERY cold and the rain today prevented us from being able to do practical work this afternoon. Part of this time was going to be for water distribution, like we did yesterday, but obviously people didn't need water from us because of the rain. It's such a blessing to the nearby village that it's raining, as their water is off for the whole village. So I don't know if we should be praying for the rain to stop or not ;) Just pray that we will be able to be productive and find things to do to bless the missionaries here when we are not able to do the work that we had planned.

On a more personal note, I'm very grateful to have been able to wash my hair in warm water today as I havent been able to since Friday. I'm feeling very clean and happy! Praise God for another good nights sleep, and earplugs that enabled me to sleep through when some girls from the other team got up at 4:30am to shower! I've been able to rest get some much needed rest and personal space this afternoon and I'm feeling good. Please continue to pray for good sleep and good health :)