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.
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