Jumping into 2023

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It's a new year and we have jumped right into some new ministries. This blog is more ministry news than personal news but we are excited to share what is happening! So let's get to it...

Team to Romania

In the first week of January, we sent our DTS students to Romania for their outreach. They have been cooking every day for a group of Ukrainian women who have had to flee their country. Cooking and eating with them has provided opportunities for them to connect, build relationships, and minister to them. The team has also started to minister to the Roma people (colloquially "gypsies"). It has been exciting to watch (and be a bit jealous) from afar but we feel honored to be a part of it as YWAM Minneapolis.

Ministry in Minneapolis

Minneapolis has a rich history of Native American and Scandinavian settlers. However, as time has gone by it has added large populations of Somali, Hmong, and Latin Americans to name a few. It continues to add many refugee populations, currently, there is an influx of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. While the students are in Romania, the base has scheduled weekly staff training and outreaches to begin to reach out to many of these communities!

Refugee Ministry

I have been working on making connections with Afghan refugees in the area. The first several attempts didn't lead to any long-term connections. However, I recently connected with a local ministry/social services agency called Arrive Ministries. They are contracted to help settle newly arrived refugees. They receive government funding to help settle refugee families for the first 90 days. After 90 days the funding is finished, leaving the families to fend for themselves. Arrive Ministries has a brilliant strategy to continue helping these families. They recruit small teams of church people to "adopt" a family for a year. These teams continue to help the families with language learning, figuring out transportation, registering for school, finding doctors, etc. This provides great opportunities to build friendships with these precious families, which can last more than the committed year.

I have recruited some fellow YWAMers to form a team and will be adopting an Afghan family soon. (Above, Akram our Arrive Ministries contact giving us orientation. I first met Akram back in 2016 while doing refugee work in Greece.)

Feed My Starving Children

Last Saturday, I participated in a local outreach with Mercy Hill Church (the church we have joined here). We took part in a food packing session with Feed My Starving Children. The organization packs and sends food to starving children all over the world. In this session, we packed food for children in Somalia. They have created a product called MannaPack filled with rice, soy, vegetables, and vitamin supplements. Probably not an ideal meal for most of us, but it is a valuable high-nutritional meal for those who are starving. The Mannapacks are then shipped to partner mission organizations around the world to be distributed. The packing sessions are family events where children are invited to join in. The end result of this session: 14,472 meals for starving children in Somalia!

Discipleship Bible School

Another ministry that is starting to pick up is the Discipleship Bible School (the main reason we are here). We have been busy promoting the school. Dori created an image for the school (left) based on Psalms 1:2-3 which represents my heart for what this school will be for the students.

We have a couple of applicants now and still hoping some of our current DTS students will come back to do the Bible school. The base is still very committed to seeing this school get off the ground, even if it is a smaller school for the first one.

Travel Plans

In the first half of February, I will be headed to Mexico to attend a training seminar and conference connected to the Discipleship Bible School. Its main purpose is to train up more Bible teachers around the world. I've been teaching for over a decade now but it will be a great opportunity to refine my teaching skills and gain more creative ideas. Another important aspect of the conference is connecting with other DBS school leaders and staff from around the world. It gives us an opportunity to share experiences to strengthen the Bible schools. We are hoping it will build a network of teachers we can use to support our schools and provide the nations with more Bible teachers! I am in need of some extra funds to attend this event, if you would like to help you can do that here.

While I am away in Mexico, Dori and Nolan will fly in the other direction to go visit "Oma und Opa" in Germany!

After our trips to Mexico and Germany, we will have two weeks back in Minneapolis to participate in the graduation of our DTS students and do some more local ministry before our next trip to ... Florida!

We will be in Florida for about 3 weeks in mid-March to reconnect with our sending churches, supporters, friends, and family. As we have been honest about it before, we still don't really have enough monthly support to pay all the basic bills life throws at us. So we are hoping to make some new connections to better fund our ministry.

Thanks for reading!