The Tamar Center in Pattaya Thailand, a ministry birthed out of Youth With a Mission (YWAM), is providing women caught up in the Thailand Prostitution a way out.
Many women in Thailand enter into prostitution not by choice, but by being sold into it, forced into it or because they can’t see another way to survive. The Tamara Center provides these women with another way to survive through a three-month program that focuses on:
Christian Teachings
Learning English
Learning new skills (baking, hairdressing, etc)
About 80% of the women who go through the program offered by the centre manage to avoid returning to prostitution.
You can read more about one woman’s journey from a prostitute to running the training at the Tamara Center here.
I debated long and hard about adding a video to this site, but I really liked this video that was put together by the YWAM Creative Discipleship Training School from Aalesund in Norway. It was made as a creative application of 2 weeks of teaching on their YWAM DTS.
I wonder which two weeks of teaching this was after.
You can read more about the Creative YWAM DTS in Aalesund Norway here.
YWAM is becoming a common destination among Christians wanting to embark on a Gap Year. Whether it is the year between high school and college, or college / university and a career, short term missions work is a fantastic option that I reckon any Christian should look at doing.
Although the effectiveness of short term missions work has been debated, and will continue to be debated, probably until Christ’s return, I believe that it is an important part of God’s plan for the Church. Short Term Missions not only reach out to people in the outreach locations, it also opens the eyes and hearts of the people taking part in the short term outreach.
Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and make disciples of nations. The more people that get doing this, long term or short term, the closer we are getting to doing what God has called us to do.
You can read about one man’s plan for his Gap Year after university here.
With cases of the swine flu being discovered all over the world YWAM and Church Outreach locations are being reconsidered. Cases of Swine Flu are continuing to be found in all areas of the world.
Various church outreaches around the world have been cancelled or redirected to other areas that are not as affected by the disease. As more cases are discovered we will probably be seeing more changes to outreach and possibly see outreach teams staying closer to home.
So far I have not heard of any cases of YWAM Missionaries catching swine flu. With the spread of the disease, and the amount that YWAMers travel though we will keep an eye on it.
You can read about a few outreaches that have been changed because of the swine flu here.
YWAMers from around the world are meeting together in Jinja, Uganda this week for “Communication, Research and Information Technology” (CRIT – have to love those YWAM acronyms) consultations.
CRIT is one of the tools that has been developed to help to restore and build communication within the mission and also from the mission to the rest of the world. That is what I am currently looking at helping with working the YWAM International Chairman’s Team so I have a huge interest in what’s happening there. I also have a few friends there right now, and hope to get to a YWAM CRIT consultation some year, but probably not less than a month after moving to a new country …
