Reflections on the First Third

Today marks the end of first quarter (SBS is three quarters long) and it’s hard to believe how fast it’s gone by! Last week the Titus Project teams returned from outreach with some great stories of God’s faithfulness as they taught pastors how to study the Bible. The DTS has left for outreach—teams are in Guatemala, Haiti, Turkey, Brazil, and Thailand. Today we had our last test of the quarter and an hour later half of our classmates had already jumped in their cars and started journeying home. We’ll be taking off tomorrow afternoon! It’s hard to believe we’re already one-third done!

This quarter we studied Philemon, Titus, Ephesians, Galatians, Acts, Mark, Luke, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philippians, Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Hebrews, Colossians, and 1&2 Timothy, and James. This past Monday we did our student teachings on the book of 2 Timothy. I wish I’d gotten some pictures; they went really well! We have a lot of strong teachers in our school and it’s really fun to get to hear our friends speak and share what God is teaching them.

In these three months God has been challenging me to trust him more—with our finances, with our future, and in trusting that he’ll use me in huge ways to bring people closer to him. In each case I know in my head that I can trust him, and I might say that I already do, but he’s teaching me more and more to truly put all of my trust in him.

Jesse’s been really struck by God’s power to use us for his glory—even in our weakness. ESEPCIALLY in our weaknesses. Paul wrote, “he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (1 Corinthians 12:9). As God’s been guiding us toward our future after SBS, it’s easy to get caught up in all the qualifications we don’t have; but God has been saying loud and clear that he’ll use us no matter how inadequate we feel.

It’s been an awesome three months. We’re looking forward to great Christmas break spent with family, then jumping right back into the studying!

Some random pictures of our last couple of weeks:

Getting the car stuck in the church parking lot (the day I brilliantly decided to wear slippers to church…AH!!)

The Titus Team in Mongolia

Our SBS Christmas party-- graham cracker house contest

My first experience making meringues

Teaching

In one of our posts we talked about Titus Project, which is one of the things we’re considering doing after SBS. As we’ve talked to people about our desire to do more teaching, we keep hearing about another school—the Biblical Teaching and Preaching School. This one is a 6-month school, which includes a combination of lecture and outreach/application weeks, part of which includes a church internship.

There are still a million unknowns in the future, and the possibilities of what we COULD do after SBS seem to keep multiplying. One way or another, though, we know teaching will be part of whatever we do…and our next opportunity to practice is in just two weeks! Each quarter of SBS (actually, each THIRD, but each third is a quarter of a year long) we’ll be preparing and presenting a teaching on one of the books we’ve been studying. If I remember correctly, this quarter’s teaching will be on 1^st or 2^nd Timothy, just before Christmas break. We’ll be sure to let you know how those go!

Holiday Weekend

The last couple of weeks were spent studying 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians, marking the end of our 9^th week in SBS. Thanksgiving was an incredibly welcome break from routine! Some things we’re thankful for:

Wednesday night we got to spend some of our extra free time playing cards with an awesome couple who are the closest thing we have to parents while we’re here. Over cards and pumpkin pie we got to talk about dreams of the future and hear their wisdom on the subject. He was a pastor at 21 years old and they’re now YWAMers who work to help this base stay connected to the churches in the community. They’re a huge blessing!

It’s been snowing for almost two straight weeks

We got to be in America, enjoying a big American Thanksgiving this year!

We got to decorate the house for Christmas this weekend! We caught the tail-end of some Black Friday deals (just before the stores closed for the night) to get some decorations, and spent Saturday decorating and making gingerbread men and skyping with the Shevenell side of the family while they decorated too!

Aaaaand last but not least, I (Amy) am especially thankful for a return to routine after four days off! This week we’re studying Hebrews and we'll have Ron Smith teaching us. He and his wife, Judy, founded the SBS back in '81 and now they live/work on this base. We’re super excited for the week! 

Good Memories!

The promotional video for DTS Equip is finally finished! (Note: We didn't make this video. The awesome YWAM Montana Video Production team did!) For those who need a little memory-jogging, DTS Equip was the 6-week leadership seminar we did over the summer. DTS stands for Discipleship Training School, which is the 5-month school that is the entry to all things YWAM. Equip has specific training for DTS staff and school leaders, but also had some super awesome all-around leadership pointers.
So, without further delay, check out the video! (Yes, we're in it!)

DTS Equip from YWAM Montana on Vimeo.

Studying, Learning, Growing…and Giving Back

Still chugging away like the little engine that could! Luke (last week) was our biggest week of the quarter in terms of homework, so from here it’s downhill until Christmas! This week we’re doing 1 & 2 Thessalonians and Philippians. The small books feel like a HUGE break! I even got to spend some extra time baking today! We’re enjoying every day and having the chance to study each book. We’re looking forward to the rest of these 9 months…it feels like it’s already going by so fast!

What about after SBS? After someone has spent 9 months studying the Bible full time…then what? God’s still clarifying our particular mission, but here’s something really cool that CAN happen: Titus Project! SBS was never meant to be ONLY personal enrichment. Having a solid biblical foundation is super awesome when you have a vision for changing the world through the word of God—Titus Project is run at only a few bases around the world, and is the outreach version of SBS. Here’s the team from our base that are out doing it RIGHT NOW:

So they were at the base here for about two weeks, working really hard to get as much information as they could about teaching cross-culturally, and putting together basic teachings to bring with them. Then they go to developing countries where pastors don’t have the opportunity to learn about the Bible, and they teach them basically what we’ve learned in SBS—how to study the Bible well. Often times they find that the pastor in a given village is only the pastor because he was the first one there to become a Christian. They know very little about the Bible, and have no idea how to study it properly (even simple things like looking at the context of what they are studying), and so they can be teaching some pretty messed-up stuff. Titus teams go in and teach inexperienced pastors like that to study the Bible and thus introduce whole villages to solid biblical teaching. It’s awesome!

Here’s a short video so you can get a better idea of how it works:

Titus is still one of our “maybe” options for post-SBS. There are a few others that we can explain over the next few weeks. We’d love for you to pray for us to have continued clarity over the next 8 months!

No Compromise

I finished reading No Compromise this week. I started it over a month ago but have had so little time to read that its taken a while to get through it. If you've never read it, GO GET IT NOW. It was that good.
It also came at a really perfect time. This week we were studying the Gospel of Mark, and God was definitely speaking through both. Even the message at Community Meeting on Thursday (which is pretty much like you'd expect any mid-week church service to be like) held a similar message. The base leader from the Taiwan base was speaking (he was also our speaker for Mark) about making decisions and trusting God to lead you AS you move, not so much BEFORE you move. Not saying that we shouldn't pray before we do things, but that often we stand still forever wondering when God will tell us what our next step is, but he simply wants us to just GET GOING, using the gifts and passions he's given us. He's a good God. When we need to know something, HE'LL TELL US. We often need to be willing to just step out and do something, knowing that if we're going in the wrong direction, he'll start closing doors and opening new ones.
Anyway, this is definitely a lesson I thought I'd learned before, but came as an incredibly well-timed reminder. During DTS Equip over the summer I felt some definite stress about what our long-term plans are. I could stand still and worry myself silly over it, or we can start dreaming and planning what our next step will be after SBS. This week, between lectures, studying, that teaching, and reading about Keith Green, God planted in us more dreams for the future--AND most importantly, the confidence that he will be in those plans, guiding us even when we feel like we don't have a clue what we're doing.
And if you haven't read the book of Mark lately, I suggest you do. Jesus is AMAZING!

Still Here!

It's been a little while since we updated-- we've studied three more books!

This week was our first week on "real" SBS scheduling-- class for three hours a day, only three days a week. The rest of our time is spent studying. Up until this point we were still in "seminar", which had twice as many people crammed into the classroom to learn the method and get the hang of studying on our own. We had class between four and six hours a day, five days a week. It's been a total relief to get used to the new schedule :)

Learning Acts this week we got some fun visuals-- like this awesome map of Paul's journeys that covered the white board when we arrived in class yesterday:

We've also been busy with work duties. Jesse collects the trash on the base a couple days a week, and Amy is the morning baker, baking all the bread that the cafeteria serves, along with granola for breakfast and croutons for the salad bar.

Class

When one sits in class all day, one has very few things to update friends and family on. But look!  Thanks to Erin (one of our staff who always seems to have a camera at opportune moments like this  exciting one) now you can visualize us sitting in class all day! YAY! 

Today we turned in our second completed book: Titus (the first being Philemon, which we handed in on Friday)

Back to School

 We've finished our first week of SBS! The week is spent learning the method that we'll be using to study for the next 9 months. Since Jesse and I already learned the method when we did the Bible Core Course in South Africa, it was an easy week for us. Easy does NOT mean boring, though! We made new friends (sorry, no pictures of them yet!), discovered that we have a vegetable garden with some awesome-looking broccoli, enjoyed mid-day fall-ish temperatures of a whopping 52 degrees (it was below freezing one morning when we left for class!) and I especially enjoyed the opportunity to be cooped up in my new kitchen baking delightful things like cinnamon swirl bread!

But don't worry, we're anticipating a LOT more studying in the weeks to come. They just like to ease us into it slowly (like boiling a frog, for example. The poor little guy will jump right out if you put him into water that's already boiling! They key is to turn the burner on once he's in the pot. Oh, how they ARE doing that. They're buttering us up with snacks and free time, but we know what's really coming!)

New Home!

After an hour on a bus, 4 hours in the air, and 13 hours on the road, we made it back to the base! We spent the day unpacking and getting settled in our new home--which is a HUGE surprise blessing thanks to a family spending the next year in Hawaii and letting us stay in their house!

Tomorrow is the first day of our 9-month School of Biblical studies!

Teaching

Today we took a trip to Amy’s high school to speak in a Junior/Senior elective class called Missions and World Religions. We were invited to talk to the students about what “missions” means to us, and about how we got involved.

          It was an awesome opportunity to share how God has taught us and led us over the past three years. It was especially fun because God has really been emphasizing to us lately that he has gifted us both in the area of teaching and he wants to use us more in it in the future. This was our first time actually getting to teach a group outside of YWAM.

Rapidly Approaching...

We’ve been home for almost five weeks now, hanging out with family, being involved in our usual church stuff, working a little, and looking forward to starting the School of Biblical Studies in a couple of weeks! If you haven’t already seen our video (which explains a little bit about the school), scroll down to the last post and check it out!

Our last few busy days:

Friday, August 17: Fly into Denver

Saturday, August 18: Drive to Lakeside, Montana

Sunday, August 19: Move-in day! We’ll post pictures of the house when we get there J

Monday, August 20: Classes Start!

Update on finances:

We’re still hoping for more monthly support (we’re aiming for about $1300 per month) in addition to the actual school fees, which are $2000 per each 3-month segment. Please contact is if you’re interested in giving! 

Home

We arrived home on Wednesday for our 5-week break, which we'll be spending resting, fundraising, and working a little. Here's our video update about what's next!


Jesse & Amy's Update August 2010 from Jesse Davies on Vimeo.

End of Equip

Jesse receiving his diploma from Jeremy (our school leader) at our graduation dessert

DTS Equip officially ended yesterday. Our exams were turned in, our classroom cleaned, and the dorms are already almost completely empty. We leave Monday morning to head home for a few weeks-- hurray!

Outreach Week

Last week was outreach week! We got to do a variety of things around Lakeside and Kalispell-- Jesse did construction projects for a few local churches; Amy helped with a VBS, did evangelism at some coffee shops, and did a door-to-door cookie delivery to have opportunities to pray for people who live in Lakeside.

One day that we didn't have a lot of time to drive out and do an all-day ministry, Jesse helped pick up trash along the road that the base is on.

Check out Jesse's facebook to see two videos-- Don't Litter and Trash Pick-up? made by our super awesome movie-making genius here at the base.

I Refuse to Believe that I am Part of a Lost Generation

Today was the beginning of outreach week! With our crazy schedule I'm thinking I'll just wait until the end of the week and post a couple of stories, rather than blabbering about them only one day in. BUT-- in a fellow student's presentation today, they showed this video, and I can't help but share. Be inspired!!

Looking to Week Five—Outreach Week!

As future DTS staff and leaders, part of our training is to pull together all of the practical things we are learning and implement them in our own mini-outreach week. We’ll start next Monday and keep things local—within about an hour from Lakeside. We’ll still have lectures Tuesday and Thursday, but all other times (including the weekend after) can be used for outreach.

As an exercise in listening to what God wants to do in any given place, the leaders of Equip did not plan our outreach for us. Instead, we’ve been spending our twice-a-week class intercession times to pray about what God wants us to do. At the end of each session today we all talked about what we heard God saying. Here’s a patched-together picture of what the white board looked like:



We connected the dots a little bit and split it into four major themes:
1. Local businesses/people—spending time talking & offering help
2. Local church—picnic, VBS, kids, balloons, etc
3. Local arts—coffee shops, music, art shows
4. Camping (at the hot springs nearby)

Between now and Monday we’ll be splitting into groups and researching and planning. Some groups (Church group and Art group) will be planning events, while the other two will be more spontaneous and will be asking God for specific people he wants us to talk to.

We’ll give more details as we know them and let you know how it goes!

Video to Check Out!

Click here to see a quick little video by YWAM Montana of all the summer programs running right now. We're in it!

The First Half of DTS Equip

We've been here at YWAM Montana for three weeks already and its FLOWN by. We're in the middle of a six-week seminar called DTS Equip. Here are some of the highlights!
Here we are on the 4th of July, making homemade fireworks! If you haven't already seen the video, check it out here!

Books we've read so far (top three are Amy's, bottom three are Jesse's).

Jesse and his buddy Chase doing their work duty-- dinner cleanup. Amy does breakfast prep, but no one is cheerful enough to be carrying around a camera at that hour!

We're trying to give short updates more often, so hopefully we'll have something new in about a week!

Feeling Less Purposeful

After five months of silence, I guess it's time to acknowledge that our months in Africa are over and we've been home for about six weeks. Settling into our much-missed home was easy in a lot of ways, but somehow its still taken this long for me to feel ready to blog again.

Last September, just before the DTS started, I wrote "For me these weeks have been slow—not only in the too-much-sleeping-in sense, but also in the sense that so little useful work leads to a dimming of vision." These past six weeks have been similar. Actually, we've had very little sleep this time around, but the general feeling is the same. We've settled back into home and healed from some of the not-so-pleasant things that happened the last few months. But I'm the to-do list type and check-marks keep me going...and right now its hard to say what our PURPOSE is. We're in this weird limbo stage between South Africa and Montana (where we'll be for about a year, starting at the end of June).

It's not that we aren't busy...we're actually doing a pretty cool assortment of things.

First, we're spending 60 hours a week with an old man who needs some one to help take care of him. Frank is absolutely adorable but dying of lung cancer, and we're making sure he gets his meds and doesn't forget to keep his oxygen in his nose.

Second, I'm helping coach the Jr High track & field team at PCA. And in my spare time (umm...maybe a window of 3 hours on Sundays?) training with my dearest sister to run a half marathon around lake Winnipesaukee on May 8th. So far, we're up to 11.5 miles of training.

On Sundays I help out in the Kindergarten Sunday School class, and in the evenings we have home group.

I clean houses a couple of times a week, and Jesse delivers mattresses and will be going back to his landscaping job if we can fit it in the schedule.

We're having doctor's appointments and filling out paperwork for Montana.

We've been reading quite a bit, too. Jesse's working on "Fool-proofing your life" by Jan Silvious, which I also read when we first got back. (I would totally recommend this one of you have some seriously foolish people in your life). Then I read "The Great Divorce" by CS Lewis and some novel that I can't remember the name of about a cult and a girl who sneaked in and uncovered the whole thing. Then I read "Surrendering to Marriage" by Iris Krasnow (which was quite refreshing and has made me remember to smile at my adorable husband more often) and since that went so well, I'm now working on Cosby's "Love & Marriage" book.

So, like I said, we're pretty busy. But sometimes this in-between stage feels pretty purposeless. A couple of months ago I could hardly wait to hop in the car and head to Montana. Today I want to clutch the front door, kiss the ground under my feet and beg the clock to stop ticking this time away from us. I run through all the reasons that we chose to go to Montana, and remind myself of the words God gave us to lead us there...and my heart just isn't convinced. I want to go. I know we will go. But part of me still isn't ready, and still isn't sure what we're doing here for this little blip of time. If there were every a moment I could label my emotions as "bittersweet" this is it. AH.

So in a little while I'll remember the vision we had/have for the future and I'll write about it, and we'll all blow up balloons and be excited about it together!