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“What is ‘outreach’?”, you say. Well, the school that began back on September 1st, finishes on February 23rd. But…before it’s over, the culmination of what we’ve all learned and lived about being Godly families in ministry must be given a practical try. That “practical try” is outreach. So, for the last weeks of our school we are “taking the show on the road”, so to speak. Our mission…and we HAVE chosen to accept it…is to travel away from our base and, in the motto of Youth With A Mission, “Know God And Make Him Known”. Our first outreach miracle occurred before we left. Several families needed funds to pay their school fees and to pay for outreach. We had a prayer and blessing time where, among us giving to each other, we raised over £6000 (about $9000) and every family got their fees paid and were able to go on outreach! God is indeed good! We’ve commenced our journey en masse, though we will later split into multiple teams. We arrived yesterday in Wooler, England, a town in the northeast of England very near to a place called Lindisfarne. Lindisfarne, a.k.a. “Holy Island”, is a significant location in the history of the spread of Christianity in England and Europe. We are here for 3 days to learn about the ancient paths of how our faith spread, and endeavor to walk in them. This is alluded to in Jeremiah 6:16… Thus says the Lord, “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you shall find rest for your souls. So, we’re spending our time in these first three days asking God for those ancient pathways. On Friday, we will split into several smaller teams (traveling as 12 families is QUITE impractical…as you might imagine). All together, we will participate in Evangelism, Intercession, Service, Encouraging/Building up Christians, Worship, Laying Foundations for New Ministries, etc. This will take place in England and France and China. There is a sense that we are in a time/situation much like the church in Antioch as referred to in the beginning of Acts 13. January 17th, 2002 Yesterday we visited Lindisfarne and learned about the origins of Celtic Christianity and how, from Jesus, through the apostle John, and a succession of disciples, the Gospel was carried through the ages into Europe and the British Isles. This was fabulous to understand the original path of the Gospel through the very lands that we wish to reach with the same Gospel today. Today, we visited a modern-day “monastic” community to hear how they are carrying on in the same traditions. We then took a short pilgrimage walk in the lovely Northumbrian hills to St. Cuthbert’s cave. St. Cuthbert was a famous missionary from Lindisfarne. It was quite brisk and windy but finally the clouds were gone and a beautiful countryside opened before us. It was interesting to imagine ancient missionary monks walking the same paths. We want to walk in their same spiritual steps, just as we walked in their physical steps. Tomorrow, we split into our separate teams. Our “France” team (just 2 of the 9 vehicles thankfully!), heads towards Coldstream to spend the day and night and then onto Leeds, England for a week before moving on to France. I’ll probably send our next report just after the DTS ends. Jan. 21, 2002 We’re now in Leeds, England. We’ll be participating in a conference called “Sowing the Seeds for Revival”. In this week, our focus is serving the church and community of Leeds. We got a confirmation that we’re in the right place at the right time yesterday, when our car got broken into at church yesterday and my camera was stolen as well as our home-schooling books and some books on prayer for France. The devil is not too happy about our presence…which makes me glad! The busted window of our car will be fixed tomorrow hopefully and we’ll be back to normal. We were blessed by gifts of £110 immediately after it happened. God knows how to provide! ——————————————————————————– ——————————————————————————– — Exciting News — ——————————————————————————– ——————————————————————————– The efforts at gathering a circle of prayer around us for each day are going well. We now have have of the month covered. If you would like to sign-up for a day a month to pray for us, please let us know and we’ll let you know which day to pray. Bless you all and we’ll let you know more next time! David and Angela and Rachel and Noah and Olivia |