We talk about:

• Tell Me A Story
• Special Delivery – A Lesson in Listening to God
• Free Running, Films and Faith – my DTS Outreach Adventure
• An Eventful Night!
• A Moment in YWAM – Recording Music in Uganda in the 1980s

Romance. Mystery. Drama. Comedy. Unusual characters, funny dialogue and twisting plots -YWAM stories have it all.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a story about their YWAM experience to the 50^th anniversary story contest! We had a great time reading about happy reunions, transformed lives, discouraging events that turned out to have surprising rewards and slightly embarrassing moments. There are so many experiences we share as a YWAM tribe, and we found three good ones for our winners in the three age categories. Congratulations to Lara, Breanna and Christine and thank you again to everyone else who entered!

It was gratifying to see the feedback section buzzing at the IY’s new website – www.internationalywamer.org – after our launch last issue. Please visit the site to comment on any of our articles, subscribe to receive the IY in one of several languages or read past issues.

Our October issue is also in its planning stages, and in a twist on our 50^th anniversary focus, we are going to be looking at places YWAM is NOT! Our celebrations are as much about looking forward as they are about looking back, so we want to hear the ambitions God has given you for new initiatives to be pioneered in YWAM – things that have never been done, people who have never been reached, needs that have never been met. Contact us to tell us what you are praying to see happen next, and maybe we can help you find others who share your hope.

But for now, enjoy reading the adventures of our story contest winners (or listening to them on our podcast) from three age categories – of course, they all have a happy ending!

Stories:

• Listen to the August 2010 International YWAMer Podcast
• Special Delivery – A Lesson in Listening to God
• Free Running, Films and Faith – my DTS Outreach Adventure
• An Eventful Night!
• A Moment in YWAM – Recording Music in Uganda in the 1980s

I was born into a YWAM family. For several years, I lived at the YWAM training centre in Harpenden, England. Some of the staff were running a youth group called “Wildfire” that I was a part of, and in 2009 we decided it was time to have an outreach! Many months of praying and preparation took place before we decided we would go to Spain, along with the Discipleship Training School, which was running that summer.

Everyone on our team was looking forward to the outreach. Months before departure we were learning dances, planning our daily schedule and making lists of things we needed to take, do and see while we were there. It really was a lot of fun.

Soon we were all set and ready to go. Off we went to Spain with heads held high and hearts pumping fast with excitement at what the future held. We travelled by plane and then by bus and very quickly we were there. It was late at night and so we all headed straight off to bed so we were ready to face the people of Spain the next day.

The first night was thrilling! There were a lot of people and we were right where they would be able to see us so we could get our message across. We performed a number of different dances and we shared some messages, all about God’s love. We used parachutes, juggling balls, face paints and other activities that made it easier to interact with the kids and get the adults involved. We would stay out past midnight and then we would have a chance to swim in the ocean, which was wonderful to cool off after a night of dancing!

After about a week in Malaga we went off to Motril where we performed one night in the city centre. Before we got there we prayed and asked for God to give us a message for someone who would be there that evening. God spoke to me clearly and said that I needed to speak to a mother who was wearing a pair of black trousers and a white t-shirt.

About half way through the night I saw the lady God was talking about. I asked someone who spoke Spanish to come with me so that I could tell her the message God had given me for her, which was that God loved her and was watching over her and was looking after her. Half way through telling her these things tears started forming in her eyes. She told me thank you and went on her way.

I often pray for that lady. I pray that through me something was started and that I was able to portray some of God’s love and mercy. This was a big moment for me because I often doubt that I can hear from God, but this was a time where I know God spoke to me and told me that I heard from Him and I had done the right thing in responding.

I loved my YWAM summer outreach in Spain and all that happened there. I really grew from this experience and I’m grateful to all those who made it possible.

By Breanna Robertson (16-30 years age category winner)

My name is Breanna Robertson and I’m a 20-year-old Australian. I did my Discipleship Training School in 2009 with Island Breeze Sydney! Our DTS went to France and Morocco for outreach, which was absolutely amazing.

One of the boys on our team of 7 was a hip-hop dancer and could do all sorts of awesome back flips and tricks. One night as we were walking down the street we saw a group of young boys running and flipping off walls and park benches, so we stopped and Brian joined in.

It was easy to make friends with them – we soon found out that some of them were quite well known in Morocco. They called themselves the “Speed Boys” and their lives consisted of school and free running – a type of street acrobatics that involves jumping and flipping over everything in sight! We spent some time with them that night on the side of the street watching them perform – they were excited to have foreigners watching them and so they didn’t mind showing off for us!

Before we left that night, the Speed Boys invited us to join them in the morning to help film some of their performance. The next morning we discovered that they weren’t merely filming themselves for fun…this was a serious deal! A film-maker from Germany was working with a producer in Tangier to submit the film to the Tangier Film Festival with the hope of winning and being shown at the Cannes film festival! The film was a story about a man who was addicted to drugs and alcohol but was unhappy with his life. He meets a gang of free runners who have a passion and do something constructive with their time, which results in him deciding to let it all go and follow his own passions. It was a motivational story for young people.

So, we found ourselves watching a film being made, but soon enough we were pushed to be IN the film! WHAT!? Here I am doing ‘ministry’ and acting in a film! Needless to say, we had an amazing time and somewhere out there we are in a film that is posted on the internet and has been shown at various film festivals!

We continued to meet up with the ‘Speed Boys’ and it was a teary goodbye when our month in Morocco came to an end. We had had opportunities to share our faith with them and we continue to keep in touch. They became our good friends, even though we could barely communicate – it’s amazing how God can bond you to someone when you can’t even speak their language.

Those Speed Boys will come to know Jesus one day – they have a whole YWAM team praying for them – and then they’ll free run for Jesus!

December 21, 1986 was an eventful night at the YWAM base in Surigao City, Philippines. This YWAM location was involved in providing primary healthcare for the local islands. My colleague, Tony, and I were both healthcare workers.

It all started with a knock at the door. I opened the door and was surprised to see the lady who helped us with the laundry, and her very pregnant daughter. They were asking to stay for the night as Typhoon Aning was fast approaching. I asked when the baby was due and received the answer, “Tonight!”

We settled our guests into a large room usually used by outreach teams. Tony and I went away to our office/medical supply room to sort out what we were going to need for the birth. We were both excited about having a home birth that night.

As the evening progressed there were a few more knocks on the door: a man arrived saying that he was a dentist come to help with the birth, then later the husband of the pregnant women. We didn’t know what would happen next!

All throughout the night the wind howled through the hallways and blew rain in the windows. It was so loud at times you couldn’t hear yourself think. We moved the family to another smaller room that was not so affected by the typhoon. The expectant mother was still having slow but continued contractions. We left them alone for awhile as we both were tired and needed some rest.

While we were resting in our rooms there came a quick jolt that shook our beds and continued to shake the building for a few seconds that felt like minutes to me. This rather rattled me, but Tony next door gave a verbal shrug having grown up in shaky New Zealand. After the earthquake we got up and checked on the family. The contractions were getting closer together and we realised the baby, a second child, was on its way. The dentist seemed to know what he was doing during the delivery and soon a boy was born! We took the newborn aside and checked him over, then wrapped him up in a blanket and gave him back to the mother. The father was so happy to have another son. He told us that this day was his first son’s birthday. We also found out later that the dentist was also a midwife!

So there you have it – a typhoon, an earthquake and a baby all in one night. Oh, and one more thing – a lovely relationship began to grow out of that eventful night because three months later Tony asked me to marry him and I said, “Yes!” That was twenty-three years ago.

Overcoming many technical challenges, including power surges, and limited instruments, this “Creative DTS” from Uganda in the late 1980s created one of the first worship cassettes recorded in that nation. “The tape was distributed widely and blessed the lives of many by bringing a fresh wave of worship music to war torn Uganda,” says Belinda van de Loo (second from left), who sent us the photo and who wrote the popular song, “Jesus loves Uganda” which became nationally known. Most of these students are still serving with YWAM in East Africa.

We talk about:

• Extreme Neighbourliness
• Taking the Veil Off of Our Eyes
• Revisiting the Red Sea Covenant
• Links You Will Like
• YWAM 50th Celebration in Mongolia

By Lynn Combs

It was 2005 on a hot dusty day in a big Middle Eastern city. Several hundred YWAMers were gathered for the purpose of leadership training. One of our international leaders was speaking to us that day. He had waited on the Lord for weeks for a clear word to those of us working in the region. It was a message that would change the course of our hearts in this region almost entirely populated by Muslims.

He spoke from Isaiah 42:14-16, “I have kept silent for a long time, I have kept still and restrained Myself. Now like a woman in labour I will groan, I will both gasp and pant… I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, in paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, and I will not leave them undone.”

God was igniting our hearts with a deep passion to take His message to the people in our region – He was going to lead us in new ways. Our hearts were stirred, and we spent time asking God desperately to show us HOW to follow Him.

As our team returned to our own city, we began asking God that question – how do we join you in your heart for our Muslim friends? We had built many good works in the city: we were teaching English, running summer camps, doing sports ministries… but we were not seeing anyone respond to the Message of Jesus. We were sharing with people, but it was like our message was hitting a brick wall. God had to do a work in our own hearts before He would do the work in theirs.

Many of us grew up in Christian countries and for us, Christianity is the right way. It is the right religion. Our membership to a church had become equal to salvation. As we began to follow God into His heart for the Muslim World, we saw that Jesus never preached a religion, he preached the Kingdom of God. As we studied the Scriptures and interacted more deeply with our Muslim friends, we began to see them through God’s eyes. God began to remove our veil.

Many Muslims are devout followers of God who pray regularly, give to the poor, fast for God to reveal Himself and confess that there is only One God. As God showed us the gold in their hearts, and the need to share Christ and not Christianity, we began to really see. Our Muslim friends had the same enemies we had: Satan, shame and sin. They needed salvation, not from their culture or their socio-ethnic background, but from their shame – just like we do. It is not a matter of who’s right and who’s wrong – but a matter of God’s broken heart for the human race to be reconciled to Himself through the Messiah.

As God was busy with our own hearts, we met some precious brothers and sisters who were living in our region. They loved Muslim people, had many Muslim friends and were having fellowship with Muslims who had accepted the Message of the Kingdom of God and had found peace and salvation with God through Jesus. Wow – this was certainly a new thing! We invited them to teach us how to love our neighbours and to share our life-changing story with them. This began a six-month journey of wrestling with God, the Scriptures and our own hearts. 5 years later, we have welcomed many friends into the Kingdom of God, and seen more travel further on their journey of faith, leading to transformation in our community!

What happened? What changed?

Well, almost everything. As we explored the scripture and learned more of the beliefs of our neighbours, we understood more clearly how the message of God is revealed in the lives of the Prophets. Sharing this with our Muslim friends, we were able to show them the truth about Jesus (Isa – the Muslim word for Jesus), which is written in the Holy Books.

For example, our friend Rena is a Muslim who loves God with all of her heart. She had met Christians and had even prayed with them, but it was impossible for her to become a Christian. She is a Muslim, born and raised – if she changed her religion, she would be killed by her family. Besides, she loves her family, her way of life and God.

As we met with Rena to talk about our faith, she was moved by the stories of the prophets and wanted to know more. Together we studied the Quran and the Bible. Within a few months, she had grasped the saving message of Jesus revealed through her books, her understanding, her world-view and she decided to trust her salvation to God through the Messiah.

Rena keeps a copy of the Bible with her. She shares stories from it with her family. She has grown in her ability to understand God’s heart and she has ministered to us as foreigners and prays for us! She is a respected woman in her community. Through prayer in the Name of Jesus, her mother was recently healed of clogged arteries and saved from a major heart operation! God is moving through Rena to reach her mother and sisters and we believe that one day soon, the whole household will find peace with God through Jesus.

Rena is just one of a growing number that have come into the Kingdom in the last few years. All of the new believers are Muslims who now have a living relationship with God through the sacrifice of Isa ilmasiih (Christ the Messiah). They have copies of the Bible and many are sharing with their friends and families.

As we have continually studied the Scriptures and particularly the Book of Acts in these times, we have realised that Paul allowed Greek pagans to become Greek followers of Jesus. In Acts 10 Peter was astonished when the Holy Spirit fell on Gentiles! In Acts 15, the Jewish Church recognised that God was moving among Gentiles and was bringing people to Himself! Jesus Himself is appearing in dreams to Muslims all over the world revealing Himself as Isa and drawing people to Truth. This is a fulfilment of His own words in John 10:16 “I have other sheep which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”

We are living in a Book of Acts historical moment! God is breaking out once again from the constraint of a religion and we are seeing a new move of His Spirit from Asia to the Middle East and to all the corners of the earth! Millions of Muslims are becoming followers of the Messiah! God is not holding back, nor should we. We are called to preach Christ and His Kingdom, not Christianity.

Let’s join Jesus and see more of the “other sheep” brought into His fold!

It is a remarkable thing to be part of a missions family that holds hearing the voice of God as one of its foundational values. Because of this value many young people have gone to the ends of the earth carrying the message of Jesus. In YWAM, most of us have experienced the leading of the Holy Spirit in our individual lives in a way that has taken us to new depths of understanding where we see the world in a different way that we did previously.

In this environment many individuals hear and respond to the God’s guidance, but it isn’t very often that YWAM’s global leadership is so moved by what the Lord is saying that they make a covenant with Him that represents our whole family. In 1992 when the International Executive Committee (prior to the formation of the GLT) met in the Middle East, they understood clearly that God was directing to be more involved in the Muslim world. This came in such an unexpected way and with such a sense of God’s presence that as these leaders were gathered they felt they were to “drive a stake in the ground to claim what God had done in our hearts”.

As a result of this time the “30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World,” an annual prayer event focused on blessing the Muslim world, was birthed along with the Reconciliation Walk, a journey of reconciliation between Muslims and Christians. In addition, YWAM leaders believed that we needed to make a formal commitment to remember how the Lord met with them. This commitment has become known as the “Red Sea Covenant.” It states in part that:

We therefore do solemnly resolve before God that we will:

• Actively pursue the new level of anointing and enabling which God wants to pour out upon us.
• Submit to any spiritual discipline He might require of us, such as fasting, prayer and repentance.
• Gather at the times and in the places which He indicates in order to seek Him together toward these purposes.
• Be careful to keep our vision whole, seeing both Jews and Arabs as God’s beloved creation.
• Embrace the vast Muslim world in our hearts, seeking from God the anointing, wisdom, power and strategies needed to carry out our part of the His great plan of redemption for those under the influence of Islam.
• Believe God for the establishment of His Kingdom throughout the world of peoples under the influence of Islam, and be more impressed with God than the difficulties involved.
• Exercise leadership in calling and mobilising our organisation to receive God’s anointing and enabling power to reach the Muslim peoples of the world.

This covenant was made over 18 years ago. Is it still relevant? Have we been faithful and succeeded? Have we moved on to other things?

These are important questions that we need to be asking not out of any sense of guilt or condemnation but out of a desire to be fully aligned with “what the Father is doing”.

So, is this covenant still relevant? At no time in history have we known so much about the Muslim world. Are 1.5 billion people relevant? Should we have compassion for the world’s poor and needy where more than half are Muslim? Do Muslims need to know Jesus in the fullness of who He is? Yes, because of our calling to the Great Commission this covenant is still relevant.

Have we been faithful and succeeded? Yes, we have many who have been faithfully committing their lives that Muslims would know the love of Jesus. We have seen fruit. However, we have only seen a drop in the bucket of both workers committed to giving their lives to ministry among Muslims and of Muslims coming to faith in Jesus.

Have we moved on to other things? No, we haven’t moved on to other things because part of our calling as YWAM is to be involved in all of society and to all peoples. However, we do need to exercise leadership in calling and mobilising our YWAM family to walk in the anointing and enabling power to reach all Muslim peoples of the world.

There is no question that following a calling to share Jesus with Muslims is not easy but there is such reward in being able to walk with brothers and sisters that come from a Muslim background. This isn’t a covenant the Lord made with us, but a covenant we made with Him. We need to actively pursue our covenant with Him and live it to the best of our abilities.

What will this look like? Well for some of us it will mean committing to pray for Muslims, learning more about their cultures, and their needs. For others, it will mean taking bigger steps to serve in far-away Muslim communities. But the best starting place is for all of us to take time and read through this covenant, asking God how he wants to change our hearts and being open to how He may lead each of us.

“Muslims, Christians and Jesus” a book by Carl Medearis – an excellent introduction to loving Muslims

www.morethandreams.tv – testimonies of Muslims who have had dreams and come to Christ.

www.peace-catalyst.net – resources, blogs and programs related to reconciliation between Christians and Muslims