“It was hot. It was dirty and humid. We had to squat to use the makeshift bathrooms in the bush camp. And it was one of the best weeks of my life." Ben, DTS Graduate.

Our team partnered up with a local church to do evangelism in our city. I was paired with a couple and their eight year old son.

Sometimes it can be difficult in East Texas to share the gospel or pray with people because they give responses like, “No thanks, I don’t want prayer. I prayed on Sunday.” But today was different!

I believe in heroes, and I have had many in my lifetime. Brother Andrew, known as God's Smuggler, is undoubtedly one of those. He has impacted my life very much.

When I went to The Flood, I was expecting breakthrough, but little did I know what it would entail.

The Flood was a week long event preceding the Send missions movement, held in Kansas City, Missouri. During The Flood and The Send, there were lots of worship times, speakers such as Francis Chan and Lou Engle, as well as outreaches each afternoon of The Flood. Before going to the Flood, I was not completely sure what to expect. I knew it was going to be incredible, but what would that look like?

The Cost of Following Jesus Anywhere and Everywhere.

We shouldn't be upset when God moves us and scatters us into the world. Even if we are somewhat in our home culture, we need to remind ourselves that we are outlanders.

A lot of us feel even more disconnected because the world seems so weird now. There is so much turmoil and change. We feel uncertain.

As believers, we should be certain of who we are because as we own our identity, we transform the cultures and places where we are planted. Yet, we remain different from them.

How do we operate among the lost? How do we reach them?

SHARING THE GOSPEL ISN'T COMPLICATED

"I don’t know the first thing about talking to people⏤much less to someone who believes differently than me," I thought to myself.

My mind was racing as we stepped out into the neighborhood for the first time to talk to Muslims about Jesus. My first thoughts were, “What will I say? What if I don’t know the answer?

Like many of our communities in America, a once very vibrant neighborhood has experienced un-welcomed change. When we first released the following story of Enchanted Lakes, many generalizations were made about this community, which we realized shouldn't have been made. 

We reach out to communities all over the world, bringing the hope and light of Jesus. Enchanted Lakes is a community we love and care about and will continue to encourage through ongoing service.

During my School Of Evangelism (SOE), we traveled to Greece and Kosovo for outreach. It was a night to evanglize in the City of Thessaloniki. Evangelism is a time to freely allow the Lord to guide and direct our steps in a time and place. So as I was walking in the square with a group of people, I felt the Lord tell me to go to the other side of the square to a bench with two men sitting on it. Knowing the Lord was directing me there and not wanting fear to hold me back, I quickly crossed the square to sit with them and started a conversation.

I sat down in the living room after tuning the dial on our television set to the number my Dad requested. Before remote controls you actually had to get up and dial turn the selector to the station you desired. The picture showed a man standing on a platform with literally hundreds of thousands of people listening to what he was talking about. I was only five years old. The man speaking on the TV was Billy Graham.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center estimate, there are roughly 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today, and Islam is supposedly the world's fastest growing major religion. Many Christians have a heart to see Muslims reached with the good news of Jesus, but let's face it, the task can seem daunting. After all, Saudi Arabia isn't where most of us go on vacation, and Iraq isn't exactly in our neighborhood!

Recently, a group of us from YWAM Tyler went on an outreach to Enchanted Lakes to serve with mercy ministries. We cut hair, handed out food, and provided medicine for those in need. 

It doesn’t take an astute observer to realize that there are many things in the world today that are not as they should be. Modern society is like a piece of shattered plexiglass; it’s still intact, but its integrity is compromised. The entire framework of our human reality is filled with cracks and fissures, all of which can and should be fixed by focusing and investing into our vertical relationship with God, which in turn smooths out our horizontal relationships with others.