Testimony – YWAM Seamill

A Trust in God

Written by: Debbie Phenix

Our journey to Scotland

My story might be a bit different from some, it is all about trust in God, so here it goes. Our journey started before 2014 but culminated in coming to Seamill to do the fall DTS in mid-September 2014. We knew we were supposed to be in Scotland at that time but in June of 2014 we still didn’t know how we were going to get there. Much less what we were going to do once we did!

In a series of miraculous events, we ended up finding out about YWAM, Seamill and the date of the DTS. It’s much more exciting than the way I just phrased this but I don’t have that much space! We applied in July and because we weren’t the normal “age” they questioned us several times. They asked if we wanted to do a Crossroads DTS. Honestly we didn’t know what a DTS was, we just wanted to get to Scotland. So we said no – “if you want us we’ll come, if you don’t we’re coming to Scotland anyway!”. I guess they knew we were serious and that’s exactly what they wanted to hear, so we came.

A change in pace

Through a lot more miraculous events, we got to YWAM Seamill and completed most of the DTS. With two weeks left to go on our outreach to Cyprus, I lost the use of my hands and feet. We had established some wonderful relationships with the local church in Larnaca and my friend took me to her doctor. That doctor then referred me to a neurologist. They did an MRI on my brain and found a tumour which was pressing on my brain stem. I had to go back to the States right away and have brain surgery.

You may think – this isn’t very uplifting – where is the Lord in all of this? I also had my own questions, “God, why did you tell us to be here and have all these miraculous things happen? What is the point, why don’t you heal me, why am I going through all this?”

Well I had the surgery, the tumour was benign and I began my recovery process. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t feed myself for awhile and went through depression, frustration, etc. But I came through it and 10 months later we finished up the last two weeks of our DTS in Louisville, Kentucky.

The call of God remains

You see as my husband and I came home from Cyprus, we just knew that God still wanted us to be in Scotland. We didn’t know what was ahead of us but we knew we had a word from the Lord. We needed to finish well so we could go back to Scotland when this was all over. I wasn’t sure if I could – the surgery changed things. Physically I wasn’t the same but I had a trust in God that I didn’t have before.

I thought I had a lot of trust in God before, I mean didn’t we change everything in our lives – quit our jobs, sell our house, move away from our family, blindly move to a new country without knowing anything about what we would be doing? But God remains so good and so trustworthy! When you are facing death and you have no fear, there is a trust there that is supernatural and I thank God for that. He is everything He says He is and He is worthy of our trust (and everything else we could possibly give Him).

An unshakeable trust

I wanted to tell this story because only God knows what He wants to do with our lives. Only He knows how He will lead us. Proverbs 16:9 “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.”

We’ve been here 4 years and the Lord is still directing us step by step. We still don’t know exactly why we had to be here when He said but we trust Him – now more than ever. None of us know the impact of the small or big things we do, but if we listen and have a trust in God, we can rest secure in His outcome.

March 3, 2022/0 Comments/by Amanda Benton

Outreach, Testimony

What Outreach Is

Written by: Rachel Armstrong

One of my favourite outreach stories does not sound all that spectacular on the surface. It was just a simple conversation with a church. But for me it sums up what outreach is.

I was in Nepal working with Titus Project. Titus Project is the outreach for the School of Biblical Studies. The main focus is teaching how to study the scriptures. This is so that pastors and church leaders who are unable to attend seminary can still study the word. They can also have access to solid biblical truths.

The Struggles

We had been teaching for almost 2 months at this point and we were tired. It was a struggle to figure out how to fit our western style teaching system into an eastern world view. We wanted to do this without compromising the content of what we were teaching. Which is no easy task. We were also a team of all introverts who were trying to connect with a group of extremely extroverted people. It was not going well and was rather discouraging. We were questioning the point of us even being there. Especially since we had not seen much fruit from anything we had done.

The location we were in was a church in a small village somewhere in the Himalayas. Honestly I still have no idea where we were exactly. We had been teaching all week, and as I said pretty exhausted.

A Surprising Moment

It so happened that our week of teaching landed on a Major Hindu holiday. The tradition was that the oldest son in the household would come around and bless each member of the family. He would then give each of the daughters the bindi (the red dot on their forehead).

The pastor of the church and his oldest son were both believers. The mother and rest of the household were Hindu.

In the middle of one of our worship and teaching sessions the mother walks in and tries to get her son to leave with her so that he could perform this ceremony. He refused and chaos ensued. I have never seen such an uproar. She was publicly shaming him, calling him a bad son and all sorts of other things. Immediately the pastor jumped in and started yelling, then all the other women got involved. It was a very noisy chaotic mess. In the midst of it all the son just sat there. He seemed so stoic and peaceful. He refused to leave with his mother and eventually the dust settled. We were able to finish our worship session in relative peace.

Once everything was over one of my teammates asked him what happened and why he responded the way he did. He said that the only reason he had been able to sit in the church and not respond out of anger is because of something that another YWAM team had told him a few weeks earlier. The rough translation of his answer was about Jesus being with us in the middle of our hardest moments.

The Ripples of Influence

What is important to know is that that team had no idea the influence they had on this boy’s life. In fact they were probably rather discouraged by the lack of response they had in the moment; we often don’t get to see the impact that we have on others. I was privileged to see how much this team had affected his walk with the Lord. Our team was also extremely encouraged by it at the time. But the team still have no idea.

God gave me the revelation that just because we hadn’t seen the impact we were having didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. There have been many outreach teams that come back discouraged because they didn’t have what we would consider “amazing stories”. There were no salvation stories or spectacular moments, no one broke down in tears or got miraculously healed. But we can all take this story as a living example of how God’s word never goes out without making a change in someone’s life. That is what outreach is.

March 3, 2022/0 Comments/by Amanda Benton

Missions, Outreach, Reflection, Testimony

With a Mission Always

Written by: Heidi

The beauty of being part of YWAM (in my case at YWAM Seamill) is the freedom to follow God’s leading when He speaks within the simple but profound context of “To know God and make Him known”. This leads to being with a mission always.

We are two single women of very different backgrounds who met doing our DTS in Hawaii – and not even on the same DTS. Going to do a DTS when the “youth” bit no longer applied, was a step of faith. However, I was following God’s lead (though it did not necessarily making sense in my own logic). He gave me a new friend with whom I could start dreaming out loud on sunny Sunday afternoons at the Kona Pier. The deep desire to be able to go to other lands and peoples and share God’s love was a shared dream and desire. It was great to be able to share dreams with someone and in turn hear her dreams.

God had His own plans

So it began. In early 2018 we went on our first short-term (2 & ½ months) mission trip. In this blog post I would like to write about our second, and hopefully not last, mission trip to South East Asia at the end of 2019. We had 3 locations planned, 2 in Vietnam and 1 in Cambodia. However, according to Prov. 16:9 “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps”. God indeed changed our plans to 1 location in Vietnam and 2 in Cambodia.

This change of plan was not in God’s quiet voice, but by the cancellation of our second location in Vietnam at the end of our first week. We were in the midst of acclimatising to the tropical climate and catching up (we live in different countries). “What now?” we thought. Through a wonderful lady we met on our previous trip to Central America, we connected with a long-time missionary who “just happened” to be not just in the same city as us, but in exactly the same guesthouse! At a 7:30am breakfast appointment on the day we were leaving we met up and she connected us to a young man in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Locals rising up

The absolute beauty of what we experienced and saw in all 3 locations was that all these ministries are pioneered and run by people in their home towns and villages. We foreigners join in as encouragement and support. I was so thrilled to see this. Because when I was younger and first started dreaming of missionary work, all the ministries I knew about in South East Asia were pioneered and run by people from the West. Big thanks to all those who gave their time and put their faith and energy into loving strange and foreign cultures to make Jesus known! Now their fruit is multiplying and new ministries are springing up and spreading the love of Jesus.

Our first location was in Northern Vietnam. A young single lady started this location only 4 years ago. It has already grown to 3 houses, many national staff and multiple international teams a year. We were only to be there for a short time. So we clearly knew from God that we were to offer to do exactly what she needed us to do. We first had a very fun day of orientation. This included learning about the history, present and culture which of course includes food. After this they kept us very busy. We loved every single minute of it (exception might be crossing roads with a continual flow of scooters!). It was a real privilege to be able to help in this vibrant work.

Growth everywhere!

The second location was the newly established connection in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Here we met a young man who was not YWAM, but had been part of another US based mission organisation. He was a youth on the streets before he was found and helped by Christians. After years of growing strong in his faith, God led him to go and live in a very poor community along a filthy subsidiary of the Mekong River. Two families live in container size homes built literally on top of each other. The community space and church he built only a few years ago is already too small. It cannot hold his Sunday and midweek meetings. We joined in where needed and played a lot with the roaming children, of which there are plenty.

Our third location was in Battambang, Cambodia. Here YWAM connected us to a man who is reaching his community by running an English Christian school. This is a school for children of all ages to attend when they are not at government school. The man is from this village and God used him to pioneer and run this ministry. And yet again, this school is expanding faster than the space available.

A blowing of God’s Spirit

Throughout our travels, I had the same impression and message while praying for the workers and their work. This is that God is blowing His Holy Spirit into these kindling, letting them erupt and shine forth.

I feel so privileged to be able to go, visit, and spend a short time with these amazing people who dare to step out and do what God is calling them to do.

March 2, 2022/0 Comments/by Amanda Benton