Greetings! I hope you are all doing well. Things are going well here as summer has moved into fall. I have welcomed the change toward cooler temperatures, rain, and fog with open arms. I don’t know about you, but the fall is one of my favorite times of the year. After the busyness and sometimes outright crazy of the summer, the fall trends toward a more introspective time of getting back to more normal rhythms. That being said, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly rhythms can both stop and start. As you may recall, earlier this spring, we went into lockdown when the pandemic made it here. The case counts went down and normal-ish life resumed. Then at the start of September due to rising case numbers, we had to resume many of the lockdown changes again. Among the changes, we have had to make going back to our previous precautions is lifestreaming to small groupings of our community again to avoid large gatherings.
Here we are in the middle of the week transition in-between the 3rd and 4th quarters of the year. The first week happens after the outgoing students have left. We use this time to turn over the base and prepare everything for the next 3-months as well as do major projects that are impractical when the base is full.
I was looking back over some of the updates I have sent out over the last year and realized that I haven’t given a good explanation or overview of the YWAM base as a whole. Founded in 1969, the YWAM base in Lausanne is the very first one ever. The campus serves as a training facility, base of operations for various global missions initiatives, and the headquarters for YWAM’s university, The University of the Nations. Our training courses are the largest segment of our ministry. We run a variety of programs ranging from 3 to 12 months in length. These programs have different focuses including, in-depth Bible study, English learning, Christian counseling, spiritual development, leadership, and much more. Most of the programs are a mix of traditional college-style lecture-driven studies here in Lausanne, with a practical application of what they have learned through outreach to another country. This last quarter that just came to a close had 5 programs running. 3 of them are intensive Bible courses, and the other 2 are Discipleship Training Schools.
With the end of the quarter, we commissioned and sent out 4 outreach teams. 3 of them are going to Europe and 1 is going to Northern Africa. It is really exciting to have outreach teams able to be sent out after the pandemic put that part of our ministry on hold for the last few months.
You might recall a few months ago, I spoke about the large online course I was involved in producing. Well, we are now in preproduction on 2 more that will be coming in the next several months. One of them is a sequel to the first course, designed to help debrief and help DTS students with what comes after the 6-month course. The second and the one I am most excited about is an in-depth Bible overview course. The course will be designed to provide an approachable and engaging way to dive deeper into God’s word. I will keep you updated and share links when new courses go live.
On the more personal side of things, I am turning 21 this month. I have been reflecting over the past year and what a year it has been. This year more than any before it, has been defined by taking leaps of faith and seeing God’s faithfulness in turn. Things have not always gone according to the way I anticipated but His faithfulness has been a constant I have been learning to lean on more and more. Personally, I am very much a planner. So much so that I cringe a bit inside when I hear the word spontaneous. Thus this has been a hard lesson to learn. I had planned to come home for a visit this fall, but a pandemic and canceled flight altered that plan. This happened a few months ago, and at the time I just shrugged it off. As the time moved forward toward the date I had previously planned to travel, the reality of not returning this fall set in more, and I began to feel the emotional effects of it more so. As I was looking back over the last year of journal entries, I began to see just how much in the last year has not gone according to plan but God worked things together in amazing ways regardless. I was brought back to Proverbs 16:9 where it says “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” This year has been one of learning how to walk the tension between planning my way and letting the Lord establish my steps.
As always, thank you for coming along with me in this adventure of faith,
Ben