Training

Hi everyone,

Stefan here. I'm writing this to give a better idea of what training looked like for those who don't know.

YES (Youth Evangelism Service) is a program run by Eastern Mennonite Missions, in which the participants spend about 3 months in Discipleship training at the Harrisburg Discipleship Center, then go on outreach for 6-8 months.

Training is mainly focused on growing us in our personal relationships with Christ, but also has elements of preparing us for missions, inter-cultural experiences, and the language of the culture we'll be going to.

This year there were 31 participants going to Kenya, Spain, North Africa, Honduras, Guatemala, China, and India.

Our training started with team leader training week, where all us team leaders got together and got to know each other and learned about leadership, which was really helpful. Probably the most intense part of this week was when we fasted one day, and then we had a silent retreat in the night - where we didn't talk to anyone but spent the time with God, and prayed for our teams and whatever was on our hearts. It's hard to be silent for 5 hours and be with God.

Then our team members arrived and we had commissioning, where family members, church members, and other relations gathered to meet the teams, and hear more about what they were doing, and to pray for them and release them to do God's will.

Training was good. Our team learned the basics of Swahili and how to learn how to live in cultures different than our own, and living with less than we were used to. We were given lots of time to be alone with God, and asked leading questions about how willing we were to let God be a part of everything. We had sessions every day with very wise people who were stronger Christians than we were, about topics like hospitality, the holy spirit, prayer, the father heart of God, forgiveness, joy, and many other topics. We had team times where we had fun and bonded, and we had team times where we read the bible and prayed and worshiped together. We went out on the streets to serve the community by doing yardwork, and prayer walks, and such, and we had ministry nights where we worshiped and ministry nights where we sat and listened to what God was telling us. It was a time where we all were stretched in our own personal ways. The goal for the training was not to have us all come out as cookie-cutter EMM workers, but to grow in Christ in a way that was personal to us, and a way that we could own.

It was a good time of growth, for me individually and as a team.

And now it's time to go to Kenya. We fly out on the 4th. Pray for us as we're over there. We're going somewhere that might not be the safest in the eyes of the world, but living in God's will is the safest place to be. It's also the most exciting.

Kwaheri (goodbye) and see you back in America sometime.