Category Archives: News

Dean Sherman in Denver Hospital with Cardiac Problems

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.

Stop Paying for Slavery Tour in Australia

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 Building a School in Angola

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

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”.

Lynn Green to Address YWAM Live On-Line

On April 28th at 5pm GMT (10am Pacific) Lynn Green will be addressing YWAM globally on an online video stream. Youth With A Mission has been streaming many of their GENESIS (video conferencing) meetings live to include as many people and YWAM locations as possible. So far there have been over 23,000 views of these different live recorded videos.

In addition to Lynn Green speaking on the live online video broadcast Shirley Brownhill will also be speaking. Shirley Brownhill is the director of YWAM Perth and will be sharing stories and video from Mexico City. YWAM Perth is currently engaged in a “Mega Cities” outreach in Mexico City and they have seen many people come to the Lord during their time there.

You can join into the live video address by clicking here at the time of the event.

To find out what time the event is in your time zone click here and then select your location.