The Three Night Movie

This week we had a shift during the DTS, before we had been looking inwards at how we see God and His work within us. Now starting this week we are starting to look into how we can affect the world, with the topic of world missions. Speaking about different parts of the world and his personal world travels and missions is Andrew Meggs from the UK, though he has traveled around most of the world doing different forms of missions. We started the week off by talking about what our motivation for preaching the gospel is and what the Bible also says about it. Many of the missional books I’ve read in the last couple years, has talked about this topic in many different regards. Each person has their own desires for doing mission where ever they feel called to be. Though we all know that missions is something we are all called to in the great commission God gave right before being taken up to heaven at the end of His time on earth. But what we talked about this week and I’ve read in all of those books is that when you get too worked up in your role in missions and the work that your missions is doing, consumes you and becomes your most important thing in life, and becomes your first love, then there is an issue. My current read is a book by Brother Yun called “The Heavenly man”, in the book there are a couple of times where his missional work overtakes his love for God and in doing so God takes away part of his mission work and brings him back to his first love, that is Christ. I can agree with this motion, I know that many times I get consumed in what I’m going here and the mission work. I’ve been sick a couple times now being here and at times I’ve thought that it’s just God’s way of making me rest and having some down time and relaxing in Him. Each book has talked about how we need to remember that our main focus is not to live for the ministry that we do, but do ministry as a sign of our love for God, always keeping Him as our focus and reason for doing all things.

On Thursday we talked about the different ways of being a leader and how they worked. It was interesting to see how different the ways of leader can be and how the outcome on the people can drastically be different as well. I have seen both ways of leadership over my life and can see how each one has influenced me. The positive type of leadership, transformational Leadership, is fully focused on the other person and has their best interest in mind. This is at times very difficult when trying to lead a team and knowing that certain things just need to be done, but in doing so also trying to make sure the person get’s as much out of it as possible. Part of the DTS is leading in this way; even during the working parts of the DTS (ex. cleaning the house) we encourage people to be seeking God and praying through it all, also trying to instil in them the manner of working with a cheerful heart, doing all things without complaining or grumbling as the bible talks about. This is one of the biggest things that stood out for me this week, knowing that I’m called to be a leader, wherever God wants that to be, I know I need to continually be praying that God is making me into a transformational leader. There are different parts of my life that I can see while leading here that I am currently doing one or the other way of leading and I pray that God can reveal to me how to change to be the best leader I can be.

This past weekend I really got to put some of my leadership skills into place as a small team and I went down to the south of Malawi to show the Jesus movie, kids ministry and some pastoral training. The speaker and his son(The Meggs), one of the other younger staff members, a student, a local over seeing pastor and I went down, with myself leading parts of the team, though Daniel had set much of it up already. The idea was that with a small, stronger team (people that had done this already minus the speaker/his son) it would be easier for me to lead. It was a blessing to have them all there with me and they made things easier as they were open to ideas while giving their own as well. Here is the story of the weekend and all the goodness that God gave to us.

We arrived there Friday afternoon at about 3 o’clock and were greeted by the pastors and some local people singing praises to God for our safe arrival. We gathered with the pastors and were just sitting around while Eknox (the overseeing pastor that came with us) talked with them. While sitting there talking with the Meggs a small gathering of children came and sat under the tree near us. I suddenly found myself sitting on a small bench with my other staff member (Charles) sitting beside me readily willing to translate for me. I sat down and started mentioning things that were the same with all of us, we slept last night, have a heartbeat, and each has legs. From there moved to areas of how we are different, stating the obvious with skin and age but also mentioned things like the gifts and talents God has given each one of us. The similarities between us were trying to make them realize that no one person is greater than the rest; I am not more special to God because of being white, or my age or anything else. Moving from there talked about how God made us all different and knows each one of us by name and made us perfect as we are in Him. I really hope that my point got across to them and they understood my point through Charles translating (he always does a wonderful job so I’m not overly worried about his translating) but more that they really felt God’s love for them through my words as I know God was speaking through me.

Within a short period of time we gathered our things and headed to the local soccer field to set up for our first night of showing the Jesus movie. The set up for the movie went incredible quickly despite having only a couple people and only some of them knowing what they were doing. Once we were set up I took the Meggs to go get some cold drinks for ourselves and the team since it wasn’t dark enough for the movie anyways. We came back and we started the movie, now the movie is long and always in a different language so every time I watch it I go and rest in the car, or sometimes I actually hop onto the car and rest on the nice soft case for the rooftop tent we have. I was lying up there half asleep and just thinking about life as I usually do, staring up and seeing the uncountable number of stars that were staring right back down on me. It’s interesting that had certain times of life you reality kicks in and you remember how small and insignificant you are in the world. Seeing all those stars so far away and how vast they must be in size. Then thinking about how God has made each and every one of them for a purpose, remember that even though He loves each and every one of those stars He loves each and every one of His children more and takes care of us so well. All three nights that I sat watching an un understandable movie I thought about life and the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, but also thinking about the future and the many plans that God has in store for me. Thinking about the past knowing that only God could have brought me to the places that I’ve been I know that He has great plans to take me into new and wonderful places that only He knows about. Though I don’t know what the next seasons of my life are going to be I know that God will show me in time and things will change as He leads me, as I feel like He is slowing showing me what the season will look like I’m already intrigued by the things that will happen.

We showed the Jesus movie three nights in a row and had many people come together each night and we saw many people come to Christ, 155 the first night, 94 the second and 97 the third night. Almost half the number of people at each movie came forward and received Christ into their which is amazing to be part of. It’s a blessing from God to be used in such a way, being part of the story of so many people’s life story and the start of their new life in Christ. I know that they may never remember me, and I don’t know any of them by name, but I won’t forget being there in those villages and being part of the night they came to Christ. Each night we also were part of many healings, seeing people released from years of pain but also got the opportunity to pray for people to me released from addictions. Though we may never know if those people are really set free from those things we trust that God will move mightily in their life. On the last night, Charles and I were praying for three ladies at a time as each one of them had stomach pains, we praying for a couple minutes and asked them how they were doing. God touched two of them and healed them, but of course we did not stop praying, but in praying for the last lady we had the other two ladies that were healed pray for her. In only a short moment the last of the three ladies was healed. In doing healings in the village we really try to emphasize that we are not the power behind the healings, but that God can use any one to heal other people, so it’s always fun to get other people to be praying for their friends and family.

Now I know that I didn’t ask for money from anyone before I left, as I have enough money to keep myself going for a while, but there are some needs from the base. There are many ideas in the air about different opportunities, but the two that stick out the most at the moment are the need for more beds/bunk beds and the hope to be buying a motorcycle. The bunk beds are kind of self explaining but so I’ll just say that we are expecting more people to be moving into the base in a couple weeks from a team down in south Africa and are currently limited in space and beds. So though we don’t know where we are going to put the beds we still really need to be making some more beds for the teams. Each bunk bed costs about $40; this is for the wood and also for the labour for our carpenter. The motorcycle desire is to be able to take a smaller team into the unreachable areas of Malawi region. The motorcycle would be much cheaper on gas and better for those that haven’t driven before as well. The motorcycle we are planning to buy is a special three wheel bike with a bed on the back two wheels (I’ll add pictures as soon as I can). The bike is going to be fairly expensive and we already have some money going towards it but we can always use more, the total cost is just over $3000, but know that any amount that is giving is important and will be a blessing to us and to God’s kingdom as well. If you feel that God is calling you to give please feel free to e-mail me (travis.vanroot@hotmail.com) and I can give you more details on how to do so.

Thank you again for reading the blog and also for your donations and thoughts as well.
Many blessings from the YWAM Blantyre Team.

A Holy Week.

It feels like I haven’t written anything in a couple weeks; though it has been about 10 days know since I last updated the blog. This past week was very different from other weeks for the DTS. We had a friendly face come and sweet this week, Stefaan hugo, who was the base leader down at Worcester where I did my DTS 2 years ago. He came to speak on the Holy Spirit, which he also spoke about during my DTS. What made the week so different was that we did our lectures at a church in town, the one that I normally try to go to on Sundays if I’m not sick and am around the area. The idea was that there would be people that would come from the church and the surrounding area for the teaching, though not many did sadly. But every day from 12-1 we had an interdenominational meeting for those who were on their lunch break which was a blessing.

In writing about this week I’m a little nervous as I know many people from the western world know little about the manifestations of Holy Spirit, and though we pray at times that Holy Spirit would come, we aren’t as open to its movements. I know that was very true to myself before I did my DTS and even after and something that I am still getting use to and getting more in tune with. But moving with the Spirit is incredible powerful and can lead to some amazing things and is a real blessing. So as you read this know that is all by the power of God that it is done, and the movements of the Spirit are all Biblical and I can give references as well to these things. But I don’t plan to try and you teach you at this moment in time, though I would love to be able to teach on the movement of the Spirit in the western world someday. (possibly something I’ll look into more when I come home)

The Gifts of the Spirit are listed in 1 Corinthians 12 if you are interested in reading about them. I’ll also try and give some passages as I go along.

The first two gifts of the Spirit that we talked about were the gift of wisdom and the gift of knowledge. The gift of wisdom is all about being able to apply the knowledge that you already have, and the gift of knowledge is knowing that’s about someone or a situation that you normally wouldn’t, here’s an example of my own. Last week Sunday a couple people I went to a church to preach and do some ministry, while one of my team members was preaching, in Chichewa so I didn’t understand, I was suddenly struck with the thought that there was someone in the local area that we had to pray for, as we always do healing calls where ever we go I knew that no one would come forward but that there was an older lady close by that we had to go pray for. So at the end of the service before we left I got up front and mentioned this to everyone at the church (only about 10 people or so) and they knew of a lady about 5 minutes away that was sick. So we went and prayed for her and then left, not exactly to my easement though as I was hoping to stay and keep praying for her but I was no longer “leading” the group and people were already leaving before I could say anything. I don’t know if that lady was ever healed or not, but I know that God was pleased with me as I walked in faith that day. You’ll see that many of the gifts of Spirit are like that, that they are all about taking a step of faith and trusting that if you do your part, God will do His part as well.

Next we talked about the gift of Prophecy, this is a gift that I know I have and am really starting to enjoy and getting stronger and stronger in stepping out in this area. Know Prophecy is basically just getting a “word”, as we would say, for someone. There are three things it could be, and has to fit into at least one or it’s not truly from God, they are as follows: To strengthen someone, to encourage, and to comfort. (1 Cor 14:3) As I said before the gifts are all about stepping out, in prophecy, you are just getting some random word or words to say to someone. It takes some faith to go and talk to them saying that you think God wants to say something to them, though you never said “God says this” you normally would start with “ I think, I believe, or I saw this picture/word for you” and so on. In the last week it has been really amazing being able to prophecy over people, on the day we were taught about it we had a time where we just go to meet up with some stranger we didn’t know and prophecy over them and then later during the interdenominational meeting we met in small groups and prophesied over people and it was moving to see how correct some of the words that people got were. Also how God can give multiple people the same word to one person just in a different way. When prophesied over, it’s always important to not let it change who you are, or where you are going. It’s something to pray over and also a good idea to talk to others about, but as an example we used, if someone prophesied over me the word China, I wouldn’t back up my whole life and move to China. But if over a couple months many people kept getting that word over me I’d really have to ask God what He wanted me to do.

After the gift of Prophecy we moved onto the gift of Tongues. This is something that I really struggled with during my DTS. I saw many people receive this gift and prayed that I would receive it myself but I didn’t fully understand it and couldn’t grasp how I could do it. But within a couple weeks of being here, and talking to Daniel about it some more and studying it, I was able to grow in this area and now feeling pray in tongues all the time. I’ve had days where I find myself praying in tongues through-out the whole day, as soon as I wasn’t doing anything my mind would go back to speaking in tongues. It was an incredible time and I really felt blessed through it, as the gift of tongues is something that is just between the person and God that only He can ever understand. Tongue’s is normally something that people get confused about as there are three different types of tongues. The first is Human tongues (Acts 2:4) this is when you are suddenly able to speak in another human language. (This still happens today but is pretty uncommon)Next is the gift of “church tongues”, this is when you speak in tongues that no understands but God speaks to someone and gives them an interpretation of what you are saying. (1 cor 14: 27) This is more common than human tongues today but only view Christians have the gift. Being able to give an interpretation of tongues is also another of the gifts of the Spirit as well. The last one is the personal tongues that I starting this topic with. It’s something that is just between you and God, normally we use it when we don’t know what to pray for or have lost words for our prayers. It also helps you pray longer and as you can just pray in tongues and never know what you’re saying or praying for. It was amazing to see people receiving this gift this past week, on Thursday Stefaan one other person and I went to the church (as the rest of the team was at the base) and we were praying for people to receive the gift of tongues and God’s presence just fell on each one of them and they all spoke in tongues within seconds of us starting to pray. It was miraculous just to see these people step out and open there mouths to be God’s presence.
There are many thoughts that run through our head when we think about this personal tongues manner. One is that we expect God to come and move our mouth and just speak through us, but a big part of it is just taking the first step and opening your own mouth and just letting any sound/noise come out and go with it. My personal tongue changed many times in the first two weeks till it became what it is today. Know that each and every follower of Christ is able to receive this gift, though some people don’t for some reason, but it is possible for all to receive it.

Most of my blogs are filled with the gift of healing so I’m not going to touch on that one at all and we didn’t really see much healing this week though we had some. But I know that during the rest of my time here this gift is just going to grow and grow and I’ll write more about it as time goes on.
Going with the gift of healing is the gift of Miracles. I personally have never seen an example but they are normally when something is replaced or made new with someone, for example someone has an amputated leg and it suddenly grows to normal length again, or broken bones are completely healed. I’m excited to see some miracles in my time here and am really trying to open myself up to see them and also putting myself out there to be used in doing them as well.

On Thursday afternoon we had a time of worshiping in a different manner them I’m sure you are all use to. It normally happens on the Holy Spirit week and we did it on my DTS as well. It’s a giving worship party, we all pray in the morning and ask God to show us something, or many things that we need to give away and then also to whom we need to give them to. It was moving to see how the Malawian who most of them have very little of their own where giving away so freely, people were giving away t-shirts and full suits to each other as well as a group of people pledging to give a total amount of $80ish dollars a month to one of the guys here. The whole idea of the party is to bless others but also to trust that God will bless us as we bless others and Him in our giving. We are not working towards blessings on this earth but are working towards rewards in heaven and our giving and trusting more and more in God is doing that. Though He normally blesses us here on earth later on in time but we must trust that God knows what is best and will provide even when we give our last cent of money to someone else.
One of the things I gave away was really hard for me as I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get another one while here in Malawi and something that I used almost every day (it’s not my computer as I’m own my own while writing this) and at first I was really holding onto it, thinking that I needed it during my time here but finally God did His work in me and I knew who I had to give it to and did so. The guy was so blessed and I know that he will enjoy it for many years; I also know that someday I’ll be able to get another one, whether God blesses me with someone giving one to me, or buying one myself.

As I said before, this week was very different from any other, but it was truly incredible. I know that God has started something wonderful within each one of us this week and hopefully this week will have started something powerful for our team and the way we work and minister to others.

Prayer:
This weekend one of your teams went down south to do some ministry and as while on their way home on Sunday the car broke down. So if you could pray that we can get the car fixed but also that God will show us what His plans are for this, as Daniel said, in these situations normally its God’s way of speaking to us and getting us to go His direction and now our own.

Thanks again for all your prayers and support,
Many blessings from the YWAM Blantyre Team.

A busy week and a late update.

A view days late, for a view days of God’s Glory being revealed. As you can tell I’m fairly late with this blog update. But I have good reasons as the last 4 days we were out at a soon-to-be orphanage doing some work and evangelism. But I will get into the details of that after talking about last week.

The lecture week last week was very strange for me. We were talking about Intercession and Spiritual warfare, and during my DTS Daniel and Suzy (base leaders here) came and spoke about this topic and did an incredible job. My expectations for the week were very high even though Daniel and Suzy were not teaching it on this DTS. Sadly my personal expectations were not meet, though not a bad thing as I know many of the students were very pleased about how the teaching went and what was spoken about. For me though, it was very different then what I had in mind that the week was going to be about, as this teacher went a completely different direction and in my point of view not necessarily the direction that we, as staff, saw fit for the time. Don’t take me wrong though it was still a great week and people were blessed by the teaching. She spoke of important things that are helpful and was very encouraging to each one of us. Even I became blessed by the teachings, once I put aside my own desires for the week. One of the real points that made impact in me was the area of praying the Bible. I know for a lot of people, especially myself, that praying can either get boring or you can’t think of words to say anymore. Along with that sometimes we may think that our prayers don’t have power or God won’t answer them, but when praying the Bible, they are prayers that have already been blessed, as they are from God already. It’s a powerful way to pray as we take the prayers from the Bible, reading them allowed, but also putting into our own words and into the certain situation we are praying for.

As the week’s speaker didn’t have intention of speaking on spiritual warfare as much as we wanted to, Daniel spoke about it in our weekly “community” meeting that we had on Wednesday evening. I’ve always loved the way Daniel teaches and how he always pulls part of his own life into the mix. We mostly talked about he came to know about that there is a spiritual word but then moved onto to talk about the different spiritual words and how we have authority over them, though most of the time we only have authority over the spiritual world around us (as in the human spiritual sense) and not necessarily the second level of the spiritual world (this is the spiritual area that hovers over different areas of the world, as in depression, addictions, etc). It was cool to really look into the spiritual world and talk about it with people; I came to realize that I know little about it, though I fully believe in it. It’s something that I’d be interested in reading more about it. I’d also be interested in hearing what other people back in Canada think about the Spiritual world. As I think it’s something we really push aside in western cultures, I know I did even coming home after my DTS and learning so much about it. So please e-mail me or write comments down below with your comments about it, if you disagree with things I’m saying or agree I’m still very interested in what you have to say about it.

After the busy week and much deliberation about the weekend and the outreach that we were planning we finally left for eastern Malawi, less than an hour from Mozambique, Saturday afternoon. It was a long bumpy drive as most drives through the villages are around here. Though it was such a crazy drive I had a blast doing it as the road was in the middle of construction so as times we were off the road and on dirt roads and others zipping across the paved roads. Along the way there were lots of bridges being built so we were always going up, down and around road blocks, but half the time they weren’t really necessary so we would just drive up the step bank from the dirt road back up onto the paved road. At one point we were going around a road block and my heart stopped as I was so scared that the truck was going to tip over as it was on such a crazy angle. Once we were about 20 minutes away we stopped in the closest trade post to buy some food and we realized that we had two punctured tires, one in either vehicle. Thankfully we just drove up the road and found some people who were able to fix both tires as we waited for out food to be. It was cool to see how they did it since I have done it many many times when I worked as a mechanic. They used some of the same tools and things we would use, though they don’t have the big machines that we use to take the tire off. I think that they even did it just as fast as I would have done it back home at the mechanics. The crazy thing was that they fixed both tires for less than 5 Canadian dollars.

The outreach itself was incredible, we got there late Saturday night so we couldn’t see any of the area that we were in, but in the morning it was so beautiful. We were more a less in field with very little around us. We started ministry right away on Sunday morning after a fairly decent night’s sleep. We lead most of the church service in the small building, having a drama, two testimonies, and some people lead us in some Malawian songs. Dave, our weekly speaker and friend of Daniel and Suzy from the UK, preached and spoke some powerful words. After Dave had preached Daniel went up and he spoke about the power in healing, both from witch craft and God’s healing hand. Talking about how both have power, though God’s is free and makes true healing within. Once we had spoken about different types of witch craft we invited people to come forward who wanted to repent for turning to witch craft and not God, but also repenting for sins of witch craft within the family line as well. When praying we really felt a burden being lifted off people, though once we started praying for people to be healed from physical things we had some difficulties. Still feeling the weight of witch craft possible or some other way that the enemy was trying to stop us, but God is all powerful and conquers all wars with the enemy.

The next two days where very similar in pattern as we started each morning with an hour of praying as a team and then jumped into Dave doing some pastoral teaching that the students sat in, just to make sure that we had enough teaching for this week as it is a requirement for YWAM to have a certain amount of teaching each week. After lunch Pastor Size (who lives with us and is our carpenter at the moment) kept going with the pastoral training, but the YWAM team separated into two different teams. One team staying around with the children and playing some games with them, taking them down to the local soccer field and playing some games with them there.(sadly the first day they broke the soccer ball that I had just bought the day before we left) The other team would leave mid afternoon and head out to a village nearby and show the Jesus movie. I was part of the Jesus movie both nights as it is something that I’m helping organize most of the time and it’s really where my heart lies, though I do love working with the kids as well. God really moved both nights, even though both nights had some small issues. Both nights we had over 100 people come forward and write down their names, meaning that they gave their live to Christ for the first time there and wanted to join the local church. Upon completing the movie we did our typical call for those who are sick to come forward and get healed. The first night was so hectic during the time of healing and after praying for about 5 people I was incredible exhausted and felt so claustrophobic and had to get out of the middle of the circle of people. It really reminded me of the fact that it’s not my power or might that is healing anyone during these times, but it’s truly God as I was very distant even while praying for people. The second night was incredible exciting for me though during the time of healing. I was really reminded of the time in the Bible when Jesus heals an old man who couldn’t walk and once he was healed the man jumped up and danced around for hours. This was very similar in that night, the very first person I prayed for was an old man who had some bad knees and could barely walk. Before I even finished praying he started jumping up and down, dancing around and rejoicing. For the next half an hour, every time I saw this elderly man he was jumping, dancing around telling people he has been healed, it was amazing to see how excited this man was about life now that God had healed him. It was a real blessing to be part of it, especially as many people who get healed her don’t act so excited they think that when they act excited they will have to pay more since that is how it is with the witch doctor. Though we always make sure to bring up the point that God’s healing is completely free and is a gift from Him.

As this is getting to be very long I’ll wrap up the rest of our time there quickly. The biggest reason we went there was that they had just finished putting in a well and we had some practical work to do with adding a water tank, putting in the pluming for a couple showers and bathrooms. Though we didn’t get as much of that work done as we wanted to, due to the builders not being done there part yet, we did get some of the pipes put in and the builders got a good amount of work done. We are planning to go back in a couple months to finish the water tank and the showers/bathroom.
The whole outreach was an incredible blessing both for us and for the people that we met. The biggest blessing was having such a great team to be part of. The students on this DTS are so great and really dove into the work we were doing. They also worked really well together as a team and though we had a couple small arguments we got through them and still have great united as a team.

Now back at the base we are doing two long days of teaching (Thursday/Friday) and then having a couple days off on the weekend. Though I know people are tired we are also really excited about what else Dave has to say to us in the next two days. He has really been a blessing and he has a great teaching style and is a really great guy to have around.
I don’t think I’ll be writing on Sunday again as this is so long, I’ll just leave it to next weekend especially since this weekend I won’t be doing much anyways.

One last thing that I just want to mention is that we have a couple needs here on the base. We are looking to expand the amount of sleeping space we have so we need to make some more beds and buy a couple other things for us to have more people on the base. It would be really great if you would be able to support us in that area both with your prayers and especially financially. If you are able to give, any amount at all, please let me know and I’ll give you more information on what you’re helping out in and also how you can send the money my way. We’d really appreciate any help that you’d be able to give.

Thanks for all the prayers and support.
Many blessings from the YWAM team here in Blantyre.

-Travis VR