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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Community Development for Missions Update

Dear friends, family and prayer supporters

I am so sorry that it’s taken me so long to write a new update. A few of you may be aware that I got pink eye a little while ago and that set me back quite a bit with my homework (Click here for more details). Since then it’s been a mad rush to try and get on top of things again. This week is the 8^th week of my first 12 week school at YWAM Denver where I am studying Community Development for Missions.

So far we have covered a wide variety of very interesting topics including Worldviews, Community Development Principles, Water and Sanitation, Community Assessment, Project Management and Economic Development. This week we have Education, followed by Primary Healthcare, Agriculture and various other seminars. We have also read three really great books and I put my book reports up on this blog for two of them if you are interested in reading more about them. The first book is called Truth and Transformation and the second is When Helping Hurts.

I have learnt so much during this school! I didn’t come with very high expectations and I think that I learnt more in the first week than I expected to learn in the whole school! I’ve already finished filling an entire book with all the notes I’ve taken. The highlights of the teaching weeks for me thus far are the weeks on Worldview and Economic Development. Worldviews taught me that so often we want to go in and help fix the surface level problems, when actually these come from a much deeper worldview root that stems from what the people believe about themselves, God and the world. Unless the root of the problem is addressed, our community development attempts will be short lived at best.  

Last week’s teaching on Economic Development was also a highlight for me because it enabled me to see how God’s unique gifting in my life can be used to bring lasting change in the Kingdom of God. It is so easy to be caught up in the stereotypical missionary mindset where evangelism is all there is to it, but God has given me a unique skill set with a business degree and an IT specialization that he can use in many ways to bring his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. One of the main things that God has been showing me this school is that he does not want me to conform to what others say I should do, but that the most important thing is to follow him in obedience. He will direct my path. “Obedience is better than sacrifice” (Prov 21:3) is a phrase that I’ve heard a lot in my time here! I wrote a poem in response to the economic suffering of many people in the world which you can read by clicking here.

My CDFM class is very small with just five students. I am getting on really well with my classmates and building friendships that will hopefully last a lifetime. One big prayer request that I have is for our protection. We seem to be coming up against a lot of spiritual opposition in the past 7 weeks and there hasn’t been one week where we have all been in class every day. There have been various sicknesses going around, ranging from stomach bugs, to head injuries and other serious pains that the doctors could not identify. In addition, many of us have been struggling with various other spiritual attacks that have limited our ability to engage in class and get the most out of the school.

Spiritually I have been struggling quite a lot recently, which I know seems weird given that I am surrounded by Christians who are on fire for Jesus. I think it’s just the difference between the practical focus of this school and the spiritual depth of the other YWAM schools that I have done in the past which has thrown me off guard a bit. If you could pray for me to go deeper with God and to seek him on a daily basis, I would really appreciate that. In addition, if you get any words of encouragement for me while you pray, I would absolutely love it if you could send them to me.

Finally, if you would like to support me financially for my next school at YWAM Denver which starts 2 April, School of Worship, you can do so by going to www.ywamdenver.org, clicking on the “donate/pay” tab and selecting “Student Payment” from the list. If you have any questions or would like to organise an alternative method of payment, feel free to call the accounting office on 303-424-1144.

May God richly bless you in the coming days, weeks and months and may he give you a fresh revelation of his unconditional love for you.

Love Sarah

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So far so good :)

It's been two weeks, but it feels like so much longer than that! Being back at YWAM Denver is so amazing and I'm really really enjoying it so far. At first a I was a little nervous about coming back, because I knew that a lot would be different from my last time here in 2007, and also because of how much I have changed and grown since then. But it's only been a week and I already feel like I've known everyone for a few months and my room mates totally feel like family! It is especially awesome having Paul here and, even though we don't get to hang out that often, it's just great having him nearby and seeing the way that God is working in his life. 

Paul at the lake near the YWAM base. The YWAM base is directly behind him in the distance.

There are just five of us in my school, Community Development for Missions (CDFM). We are a really nice mix: Dante is our only guy and he is from the Bahamas. He is going to MIT in September to study Chemical Engineering. Kourtney is from Viginia and she went on her DTS outreach to South Africa and volunteered in Haiti for 9 months after the earthquake. She wants to study nursing after this school. Sarah G is a Missionary Kid who lived in Thailand and Burma for 4 years. She is now studying Renuable Energy for International Development in the States and taking a semester break to do this course. And finally there's Crissy who is originally from Colorado but has travelled a lot and is passionate about helping women caught in trafficking and prostitution.

My CDFM class: Crissy, Sarah G, Angie (staff), Keri (director), Jonathan, Kourtney, me, Jenna (staff and my small group leader), Dante and Kai (assistant director)

Our leaders are also really awesome people. Keri is originally from the UK and he has his Masters in Mechanical Engineering with a specialision in Community Development. His wife, Angie, is a nurse and they both have a huge heart for missions. They also have a really adorable 2 year old son called Jonathan who I am very quickly falling in love with, and another baby on the way :)

Angie and Jonathan

Last week we spent most of the time bonding and getting to know each other. We also went over the basic introductory things about being in YWAM and rules of the base etc. This week we are doing a video conference with a lady called Christine from the YWAM base in Khona, Hawaii. There have been quite a few issues with the technology, but they got stored out by Tuesday. 

The road outside the YWAM base, very often full of geese!

Thankfully God is able to work regardless and I have learnt so much about the lies that hold back cultures and societies and how we need to go to the root of these beliefs in order to bring about change, rather than just trying to bring change on higher level without looking at the reason for the lack of development in the area. Because so often the reason for the community being in that situation is rooted in a lie that they or someone else believes about them and until that lie has been replaced by God's truth. For example that we are ALL made in God's image and that he has given us dominion over the earth and we are not controlled by it. Through this truth God can bring about lasting change. I'm really looking forward to what else I am going to learn this week and I'm really excited for the rest of this training school!

The YWAM base covered in a fresh layer of snow :)

The weekly outreach that I'm involved in with the rest of my CDFM class is teaching English to Karen refugees from Burma who are now living in the States. We had EFL training on Sunday which was pretty interesting. Monday was our first outreach and I got to take the two hyper 10 year old twin boys, who were distracting the class, aside and teach them Maths, which I thoroughly enjoyed! They are such characters! I'm really looking forward to going back and working with them every week.

Ahtim and Ahtow

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 :)