Wow. We made it. Our day lasted nearly 24 hours yesterday with flying from Birmingham, UK, to Newark, NJ, to Houston, TX, to Northwest Arkansas and six hours of time zone difference. But, we were able to crash into our own beds last night after being gone for over five months. Our three-year old, Regan, asked “What is this place?” and none of our children wanted to sleep in their own rooms. Five months of a family sleeping all together in one room can greatly impact the notion of privacy, particularly for children ages 3, 6, and 8! This morning at 5:00 a.m. I awakened to having Regan flopping around on me and the sounds of our two boys playing in their bedroom because the jet lag woke them at 4 a.m.!
You know things have improved when you hear delight and fun coming from brothers’ bedroom in the middle of night, the oldest reading a book and teaching the middle child! What a blessing! As I am typing this, they are now playing a game of Sorry!, all self-initiated. They also were overwhelmed with the choices for their breakfast foods (because grandparents made sure there was lots of variety and things they couldn’t have while out of the country). It took them a loooooooong time just to figure out what they were going to eat.
Anyway, all of that to say that as I was going through my email from yesterday I had received a great question from a fellow blogger, Joe Kennedy, about what we had done in the Philippines and about YWAM generally. He wrote:
You were only in the Philippines for a short time. Was that always the plan, or were there reasons for your departure? Maybe that’s how YWAM works, but I’m pretty unfamiliar with the organization. So if that’s an off-limits question, I apologize.
So, Joe, yes, we were in the Philippines for only 8 weeks. That is a short time in missions. But, yes, that was always the plan and that is one of the ways in which YWAM works. Our 8 weeks in the Philippines was the hands on portion of our training through The King’s Lodge in England. YWAM was borne almost 50 years ago when God laid a vision on Loren Cunningham’s heart. That vision was for Loren to start a missionary organization that would mobilize young people from all over the world into missions by organization short-term mission outreaches to every Nation of the earth.
If you go to one of the main YWAM websites, you will read this:
Youth With A Mission is an international movement of Christians from many denominations dedicated to serving Jesus throughout the world. Also known as YWAM (pronounced “WYE-wam”), our calling is to know God and to make Him known. Back when we began in 1960, our main focus was to get youth into short-term mission work and to give them opportunities to reach out in Jesus’ name. Today, we still focus on youth, and we also involve people of almost every age (even many people who choose to spend their “retirement” in active service). Our many ministries fit into three main categories: evangelism, training and mercy ministry. We are currently operating in more than 1000 locations in over 149 countries, with a staff of nearly 16,000.
YWAM is a phenomenal missions organization that impacts Nations by carrying the gospel of Jesus. They do so with preaching, teaching and with good works. They do it using short term outreaches and going long term. We have been greatly blessed to be a part of it. And, although they do focus on youth, they even let “old folks” like us join in the adventure of a Kingdom life.
We don’t know what our next step is. We could go somewhere long term. We could do further training and more short term trips. We could train others. We know we want to continue to show others how they can participate in missions, especially families. We also want to work on reconciliation and unity, particularly within family units and within churches.
I was just thinking about great questions, given Joe’s question and the question Regan asked us last night. She also asked me this memorable one: “Can I put this in here?” The “this” was toilet paper. The “here” was the toilet. You see, in the Philippines, when we had toilet paper we had to throw our toilet paper in the trash because you could never put it down a Filipino toilet. If there was a flushable toilet, it was not built to handle anything but what comes out of the human body. It’s a lot of fun seeing a three-year old process all that we have done. 🙂