Everyone jokes that a baby changes everything but until you have a baby you really don’t quite understand what that means. For us, that has meant, slowed down communication and sadly our blog has been low on the priority list. Since it has been over a year since we posted anything. We will simply give some pictures to recap what we have been doing.

It is crucial that we spend time with our staff to communicate plans and expectations as well as just have fun and pray together. We try to have several days a year that we can set aside for just being together. Two days before Lance and I left, we had our staff day.

We could only squeeze in one day but it was a great day for communicating our plans for the future and to hear from everyone. We communicated our plan of having three months for staff togetherness and that everyone should be ready to participate and be present during that time.

We also wanted to hear from everyone what they thought our base vision was. This might seem simple but we have wanted to rework that for years and just have not felt ready for it so we want to slowly work into it and this was one way to start that process. We gave two teams random objects and asked each team to use the items in describing what they thought the vision was. This gave us some direction and understanding of where everyone was at in regards to the vision. It was fun, simple and informative.

And to end our time, we had a team craft that involved a world map and decoupage. Since our building is still fairly new we are ever so slowly decorating and making it homey. This was one way we could all participate in decorating the base while emphasizing missions. All the kids could join in too and now it is a permanent reminder of our time together.

Lance and I are quite often involved with the basic school of YWAM, called Discipleship Training School. This is a fundamental course for anyone wanting to work in YWAM which is why we also see the Equip school as just as important since it is for those that staff DTS schools!

Lance and I participated in this school in 2012 in Montana and then Lance has staffed it several times and we staffed together in Ternopil in 2014. We love being a part of this school because we love equipping leaders to be successful in what they do.

This year we had an awesome group of 11 students from 7 different countries working in 7 other different countries, some had years of experience, some had no experience. It was such a great time of learning from each other not just from a speaker or book.

The course itself is very intense, 6 weeks of classes that go all day and some evenings. Everyone needs to read 3 books, do multiple group projects, homework, journals, and an exam.

While we do invite speakers and teachers to come, we are also doing much of the teaching. Lance spoke on hearing God’s voice, preparing for an outreach, and one on ones and Megan taught on applications, evaluations, leading in the classroom, and outreach preparation.

All 11 students graduated and took the skills they learned back to their locations and will be putting them into practice in the schools that they staff.

Along with running our Equip school we hosted a 17 person team from the states for two months. They arrived shortly before we started the school and then left shortly after the school ended. They were busy the whole time!

We give each team a city orientation and cultural lesson at the start of their time here and then start them in ministry activities. This team did a wide variety of activities, they jumped into helping with a local English camp and a kids camp in another city. Everyday they did evangelism in the city center by singing and holding a sign that said “Come practice English With Me.” They ran our regular English club that happens once a week. They visited a kids shelter once a week and helped give out bread to elderly with a local church.

The team was full of joy and life and they loved building relationships with people on our facility as well as in the community. They showed love to every person they met. It is always a lot of work hosting a team but there are also so many rewards.

Since I never got around to publishing what we were up to this spring I will put a few pictures up from different activities.