The life changing experience of DTS

For me the best part of DTS is the outreach! Outreach Phase is pretty much the reason why I did a DTS and why I am now a full time YWAMer.

For me the best part of DTS is the outreach! Outreach Phase is pretty much the reason why I did a DTS and why I am now a full time YWAMer. I love traveling and experiencing new people and cultures. Adventure, food, history, coming home with crazy stories....a DTS outreach has it all. And here’s the thing. I also LOVE Jesus and sharing my love for Him with the world has been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

One of my first outreaches as a YWAMer was to Brazil. Looking back, I know there were hard days but what I remember was the great times I had with my team. I remember holding a snake in the Amazon jungle. I remember packing ALL of us into a tiny vehicle to go do skits and testimonies at an elementary school. I remember the Brazilian families that we stayed with, their hospitality and broken English and broken Portuguese conversations. I remember sharing my favorite bible verse with a high school student, her tears, and our goodbye hug.

Outreach is where things get real. You are able to make a real difference in someone’s life and experience a real change in your own heart. You will return from outreach a different person. Being with God’s people around the world is life changing and brings perspective that can only come from leaving home.

Some might ask God, “Should I go?” This is based on the assumption that God wants you to stay put, keep doing what you are doing, don’t think about leaving the safety of your comfort zone. Is that really what we are called to as Christians? I think a better question is, “Should I stay?” Try it. Allow God to speak into your life and you may find yourself in the middle of the greatest adventure you have ever had.

written by Nina Pocoroba

The Gathering

Blog post written by Ben Richardson, The Gathering Worship Leader

The Gathering is a place of worship where you as an individual can come and worship our amazing God with people who want to do the same thing.

One thing I love so much about The Gathering is how we focus on God. The whole time we are just glorifying and listening to what He wants to say and where He wants to go. Sometimes the worship service is just to give God the glory He deserves. And sometimes God just wants to speak to His children.

The last worship night we had was one of my favorite times leading worship because it was all focused on what God wanted to do. God showed up and it was so amazing to feel that I was just singing in front of Him.

Something that I love about worship is it is something that God deserves so much of. We can only give Him so much, but when we do He shows up to speak to us. When we put everything else aside and focus on Him, He speaks more clearly. When we lift Him up, He brings us closer to Him. When we are closer to Him we feel our sin going away. There is less of the bad stuff that this world wants us to cling to, and there is more of Jesus that is filling us up with love, faith, hope, joy, and peace.

“I will extol You, my God, my King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Everyday I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praise; and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.

-Psalms 145:1-4
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Japan trip 2018

This year the Japan trip was full evangelism and street worship. We had 12 people on our team. A few came for only a few weeks, but they left an impact in the people that they where around. Five days out of the week we would do street worship and evangelism. We started doing it during the night time because we realized how many people go out during the night. This led to many great conversations about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. We talked with people of all different religions, and some who didn’t believe in anything. On Sunday we helped out with the church service at a church called LOMI. This summer the church had close to fifteen new people come to church and three of them gave the lives to Christ.

“I remember talking to this Muslim guy who was very closed off to talking about how Jesus was the son of God, but he and his friend had so much fun playing music with us they just wanted to stay. He said to me that this was the greatest night of his life and that he didn’t want it to end. I told him that this joy did not come from us, but came from Jesus and the joy did not have to end with us leaving, but that Jesus would go with him everywhere if he wanted Him too.”

Another thing we did this year was go to Sea of Trees which many of you might know as the suicide forest. As we walked through the area we thought would be scary and dark, we soon realized that it was a place of beauty and life. As we walked through it we could see God in this place. We could see Him speaking through His creation to us. At one point we stopped and just decided to have a worship service in the middle of the forest. This is possibly a place where God had never been worshiped before, and the crazy thing is that when we worship it seemed the forest started worshiping with us.