I remember the way it felt: walking out of the airport into the humid Houston, TX air after flying halfway around the world, heart racing at the excitement of being back in the United States. I remember embracing familiar faces I hadn’t seen in years that were waiting there to pick us up. I remember the car ride from the airport to my cousins’ house. I’d look out the car window in awe. “Look how green it is here!” “Everything is written in English!” “Everyone is wearing shorts!”

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!

The School of Worship has been a blessing in my life. It has been full of moments where I laughed too much, moments where I wanted to go home, and moments that stretched me to become more than what I was. As my SOW comes to a close, I get an awesome opportunity to reflect on what I’ve learned.

From recent outreaches with YWAM TYLER, we put together some great advice you must take to heart when traveling with your school. Of course this is not by any means an exhaustive list; stay tuned for more amazing outreach stories, but this will definitely help you remain sane while living in community with your peers.

“Are you insane?” is what you may be thinking, and I do have to confess that we’ve felt that ourselves as we look to the future. To give a little background, our last three years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding times of our lives. We’ve walked through joy, grief, hopelessness, and anticipation. After serving two years in Jordan, we returned to America in  May 2015 

With tears in my eyes, I pulled down the door of the Budget rental truck, said goodbye to my apartment, and heard God say to me one more time, “Will you give up all I’ve given you to receive all I have for you?” At 26 years old God was calling me to a Discipleship Training School. I had no idea what to expect other than God was getting ready to stretch me in a way I have never been stretched before. I sold most of my furniture, stored the rest of my belongings, and headed to YWAM Tyler. In faith, I stepped out believing that God is the author of my life and to expect the unexpected from this point on.

Globally there are 25,000 full-time YWAM missionaries right now, and every one of them has completed a Discipleship Training School. DTS is remarkable training that is intended to bring you into a more intimate relationship with God. While igniting your passions, you discover your part in God's purposes for the world and learn to follow Jesus in new ways with a different perspective. 

It is intended to challenge us through teachings, community living, practical training, AND that's just the lecture phase. These are just a few of the truths I learned during my DTS Lecture Phase:

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.

“Nah, I don’t need to do that!” I emphatically told God one day after being asked by our ministry leaders to do a YWAM DTS. At the age of 34, my husband and I had already been serving the Lord in full-time ministry for years. We had worked as youth pastors in Kansas, while attending school. Then we planted a church in South Carolina. Missions was nothing new for us because we had led numerous teams around the world. Why would we need to do a Discipleship Training School?