YWAM News that Bill finds Interesting

YWAM Calgary Team in Zambia

Bill Hutchison — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:21:44 +0000

Although my job has me tied in with the YWAM International Chairman’s Team in Harpenden, UK I also connect with the local Youth With A Mission Centre here in Calgary. At the moment they have brought a team to Zambia from Calgary.

Since the team have been in Zambia they have:

Machetti`ed the clearing for the medical clinic. It was hard work clearing the land but very satisfying.
Been busy helping Vinjelu and Kathryn finish building their home.
Visited a the rural village to pray for the people and learn about Zambian culture.
Hosted two afternoons of the Cherish girls program where girls come for an afternoon of love, encouragement and fun times.
Visited a Vineyard house church with the vision to minister to community in creative ways and bringing the kingdom to West Lusaka.

The YWAM community the Calgary team is staying with has 25 people, which includes the staff and students. It’s been a wonderful cultural exchange and sharing of work duties, food and laughter. They are enjoying n^shima, which is like corn based thick potatoes which is eaten with their fingers.

The YWAM centre is a very entrepreneurial centre… there are the ladies who are being taught to sew, a fellow making jewellery and hiring people to build, teaching a few trades along the way… as Vinjelu explained, “Zambians are creative and make what they need as best they can, with the supplies that are here.’”.

There have been many God encounters as they have shared lives with the people there, and everyone is very excited to see what is next. The team has been struck by the perseverance and joy of the people. Life is simple, yet full, and the team is realising the “necessities” of life like internet, phones, and television really aren’t as important as they thought.

The medical clinic that the team is clearing land for is to serve a community in desperate need for additional help with HIV treatment, ante-natal care and nutrition. There are funds and people to continue the work, and there will always be need to keep it going.

There are many stories of how kids cannot go to school and how food is not available as there is no money. The team is working to find a way they can continue to support the vision of this centre to care for those in need and to bring the love of God people.

The team is asking for continued prayer.

For good health, safety, following God`s will in the many areas they can serve
That Vinj and Kathryn could move into their home soon
Health for Vinj and Kathryn’s family
Continued good connections with the YWAM staff and students

Next week will be spent clearing more of the land for the medical clinic and finishing the house. They will also be connecting in the village and experiencing Zambian dancing in the community church times.

YWAM Working to Provide Clean Water

Bill Hutchison — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:59:20 +0000

I remember first hearing about some of the work YWAM was doing to provide clean water when I was in Kenya in 2001 for the University of the Nations (U of N) Workshop. Howard Malmstadt demonstrated a new water filtration and purification device that he developed with Rolf Englehard. 30 of the units were given away, which was to be the start of a larger distribution of the water filtration and purification devices to provide clean water around the world.

Youth With A Mission has been active around the world over it’s 50-year history in bringing clean potable water to the nations it’s worked in.

Some of the things that Youth With A Mission is currently doing to help provide clean water are:

Repairing damaged wells and pumps in Haiti after the earth quake
Proving clean water along with education and health care to the Aluwawe People of the Zambezi Delta in Mozambique (here)
Building concrete rain water collection tanks in Vanuatu where they have already built nine water tanks in the Northern villages of Efate, where I did my YWAM DTS outreach(here).
Building and improving wells in southern Sudan (see video below)
Running a Community Water Technology Seminar through the University of the Nations (U of N) in at least two locations in the world (here),
Water for Life & Platypus Go-Teams out of YWAM Tasmania to help provide access to safe water through seminars, training and short term missions trips (here).
Water for Life ministry in Kona, Hawaii as part of the University of the Nations (U of N) which currently has projects to help people develop safe and sustainable water sources in Kiribati, Indonesia, Brazil, Kosovo and Rwanda. (here)

YWAM work continues to help provide clean water for the estimated 2 billion people around the world who are lacking adequate water supplies and sanitation.

Dean Sherman in Denver Hospital with Cardiac Problems

Bill Hutchison — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:42:39 +0000

While travelling through Denver on his way to teach in Cimmaron, Colorado, Dean Sherman fell ill with severe chest pains. He was taken from the airport directly to the hospital after having terrible chest and stomach pains.

At the hospital they discovered that his gallbladder is shot and that he has several stomach ulcers. The problems that they found need surgery to repair. The first surgery was a little more complicated than expected so they had to schedule a second surgery.

They were unable to do the second surgery because they found some cardiac problems. The heart pumps aren’t working together as they should. Dean Sherman is currently in a lot of pain, is feeling weak and is very tired.

After meeting with the Cardiac Consultant they found that he has severe aortic stenosis that will require open heart surgery with valve replacement sometime in the next few days. He still also requires the follow up gallstone surgery.

Dean’s wife, Michelle Sherman is now in Denver with Dean. He is currently having to change his next five-weeks teaching schedule and is expected to be in hospital for an extended period of time.

The best place to follow the news on Dean Sherman seems to be his Facebook Page here.

YWAM Outreach at the Festival of Life in Lebanon

Bill Hutchison — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:51:00 +0000

YWAM Lebanon participated in the "Festival of Life" on the 26th of June at Lebanon’s Monument Park

The Festival of Live was put on by the Lebanon Pastors Prayer Network. Between 75,000 and 100,000 pounds of free groceries and health-care products are estimated to have been distributed at the event.

YWAM was one of many organisations to participate in the festival. Some of the other organisations included Youth for Christ, Teen Challenge, Career Link, YMCA, and many more.

The goal of the event was to minister to the “Whole Person” and to show the people Jesus and help with other areas of need.

You can read more about the festival and the YWAM Outreach here, and you can find out more about YWAM Lebanon here.

YWAM Next Wave Refit Complete, Sicily Evangelism Outreach has Begun

Bill Hutchison — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:15:00 +0000

The YWAM Ship the s/y Next Wave has completed its recent refit.

During the refit the ship was placed in dry dock to enable the cleaning and repainting the hull, anchor and chains. They also did major work on the engine room, inspections on the generators, recertification of all safety devices and some very heavy duty cleaning jobs.

Not everything was completed and they are having to plan for a further more extensive refit period in the next year to finish items that were postponed and upgrades that had to be cancelled during this last refit.

Now that the refit of the vessel is complete the Marine Reach team has started on their evangelism tour of Sicily, Italy. They are currently hosting two DTS teams, one from Kings Lodge in the UK and the other from Quebec in Canada.

You can find out more about Marine Reach and their ministry on their web-site, www.marinereachministries.com.

Stop Paying for Slavery Tour in Australia

Bill Hutchison — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:00:22 +0000

The Not for Sale Campaign is bringing the “Stop Paying for Slavery” tour to Australia this month. Here are the dates and location for the tour:

Adelaide June 29 and 30
Melbourne from July 1 – 3
Townsville July 4 – 6
Brisbane July 7 – 9
Canberra July 9 – 11
Wollongong July 12 – 13
Perth July 14 – 16
Newcastle July 17
Sydney July 18 – 19

The tour aims to bring together people from education, law enforcement, faith communities, corporations, consumers and justice seeks to help bring an end to modern day slavery.

At many of the locations the people from the Not for Sale Campaign will be partnering with the location Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Centre for the events. I know that in Townsville the event will be held at the YWAM Centre there, and that appears to be the case in many other centres around Australia.

Faces of Slavery from David Hepburn on Vimeo.

You can read more about what the tour is about, and where it will be visiting after Australia, on their web-site at www.notforsalecampaign.org.

YWAM Ship Tour – Next Stop in Adelaide, South Australia

YWAM Building a School in Angola

Bill Hutchison — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:28:32 +0000

YWAM Angola is looking at building a school in the nation. The area that they are looking at is so undeveloped the government has no plans to address basic needs in the area like literacy and primary education. YWAM has already started up three literacy groups in the area and will be working with the tribal leaders to develop the school. There has already been land set aside and they are now waiting for approval from the local authorities.

Funds have been raised for the building supplies needed for the school but there is still a need for a vehicle to transport the supplies to the location of the school. The materials need to be moved piece by piece from Huambo, where the YWAM Centre is located, to the region of Kamakoyo. After the school has been built the off-road vehicle will be used to transport outreach teams into the region.

You can read more and find out how to donate on the YWAM International web-site, here.

Voluntourism and YWAM

Bill Hutchison — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:17:27 +0000

CNN had an interesting article about something called “Voluntourism”. Voluntourism is defined by Wikipedia as:

Volunteer travel, volunteer vacations or voluntourism is travel which includes volunteering for a charitable cause. In recent years, "bite-sized" volunteer vacations have grown in popularity. The types of volunteer vacations are diverse, from low-skill work cleaning up local wildlife areas to providing high-skill medical aid in a foreign country. Volunteer vacations participants are diverse but typically share a desire to “do something good” while also experiencing new places and challenges in locales they might not otherwise visit.

I find it kind of entertaining that they are saying that it is something that has started in recent years. YWAM has been involved in voluntourism almost since it’s inception 50-years ago and has been sending people to the ends of the earth to experience new cultures, undertake new challenges and tell others about God.

What they call voluntourism Youth With A Mission and the Church calls “Short Term Outreach”.

YWAM World Cup Outreach

Bill Hutchison — Wed, 12 May 2010 03:57:08 +0000

YWAM Kickoff 2010 is the upcoming outreach for the Football (soccer) world cup coming up in June and July of 2010 in South Africa.

Football (soccer) has already been declared the official sport of YWAM, so there is much anticipation for the world cup. It’s estimated that about 350,000 soccer fans will be visiting South Africa during the world cup, with literally billions of people expected to tune in to watch it on television.

YWAM still has room for volunteers in the areas of fundraising, publicity, web-design, administration, hospitality and outreach / evangelism teams. The plan is to have YWAM teams in each of the host cities for the world cup, with a focus on outreaching to the visitors and locals during the world cup.

If you aren’t excited about it yet, then check out this video:

Unfortunately my mother country of Canada did not make the World Cup (no real surprise), but my adopted country of Australia did make it. So our family will no doubt be following the Socceroos during the tournament. It’s almost enough to make me want to get cable …

You can find out how to get involved in the YWAM World Cup Outreach here.

Upcoming Support and Friendraising Workshop

Bill Hutchison — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:28:14 +0000

On May 31- June 4, 2010 Terry Sherman will be hosting the “Train the Trainers in Friendraising Workshop”.

The workshop is a four day workshop on friendraising and support raising for people in YWAM. It will be hosted at the YWAM Heidebeek centre in Heerde, the Netherlands.Terry has been developing training in the area of support raising and friendraising for the last 8-years and has run these workshops successfully in previous years.

The first three days will be spent learning about how to raise support. The fourth day will be dedicated to looking at how the participants can multiply that teaching on their own YWAM Centre.

The training is very interactive and includes homework before the workshop, lots of group discussion and assignments during the workshop.

If you are after more information about the friendraising and support raising workshop you can contact Terry Sherman through her Facebook page here.

Watch the YWAM UofN Workshop Live Online