YWAMSF!

One of our favorite aspects about YWAM Internationally is its decentralization. Because of this, there are tons of initiatives around the world, and across the States, doing so many awesome things for the Kingdom of God. Today, we take a moment to tell you about something happening in our ‘neighborhood’: the School of Supernatural Missions, hosted by YWAM Mendocino Coast. Check it out! Here’s a word from them:

“Do you long to experience the tangible love of God? Do you need more power in your ministry? School of Supernatural Missions (SSM) is an opportunity to experience supernatural breakthrough and learn principles for growing in a lifestyle of miracles. Join us on the spectacular Mendocino Coast, March 26-May 31, with an optional outreach to Nepal and Northern India. Check out this link and please share this with people you think would be interested! http://ywammendocino.org/?page_id=694”

“Nathan and Cindi Wagner who are hosting this school have years of experience working in missions in a restricted access nation as well as a continual pursuit to see God move supernaturally. I am always challenged in my thinking, in my spiritual life and in my ministry whenever I am around them. Beyond that the school is located in Mendocino on the Lord’s land which has a history of supernatural visitations! This is a school you wont want to miss…” -Tim Svoboda – YWAM San Francisco

Hey Friends! Again, I’ve been awful at this being a disciplined blogger thing, and for that I am sorry! So let’s just get right into it! I have two different weeks to tell you about. First is PLUMBLINE (get ready) and then there is “The Cross”!

Alright, I really hyped up Plumbline, and going back into my notes, that was very justifiable. Not only was there really good lectures, there was some really awesome “God Moments” as I like to call them.

So, some of you may be asking, “Nicole, what the heck is Plumbline?” Let me tell you! Plumbline, in the context of YWAM DTS is a life changing week full of forgiving others and asking for forgiveness. It’s known for the freedom received from God during the week.

But in general a plumb line is a tool builders use to make sure what they’re building is straight. Basically it’s just a string with a weight at the bottom.

So for us, what is straight and true is God’s love and truth. But in our fallen world, we easily swing one of two ways (or in my and many other people’s case, both ways): rejection or rebellion.

Behind that rejection or rebellion is some deep seeded pain and like my boldly scribbled notes say, “when you bury pain, you don’t bury it dead. It’s still alive and you’ve had to work your whole life around it. And if you don’t deal with your pain and issues they’ll deal with you.”

So, this week was very centered towards exposing our deep seeded pains and GIVING THEM TO GOD. Which let me tell you, is NOT easy, but once it’s done it’s so freeing.

And though it’s hard to give it up, it’s so important. This is the same mentality we had to have the second half of the week when we asked God for forgiveness. Though I did not get the opportunity to do this, I must commend my fellow DTSers because there was SO MUCH courage in getting up in front of 25 people and confessing your sins and asking for forgiveness.

Truly, seeing my brothers and sisters that vulnerable changed something in my heart and I’m sure that’s true for them too.

I also want to just commend our speaker, Jerry Peraetzel, for being FREAKING AWESOME. He was such an example of God to us and it blew my mind.

So to end, here are two awesome quotes from Jerry regarding forgiving and being forgiven:

“We can’t be bitter Christians. We are forgiven forgivers.” And “If you want Winnie the Pooh to show up, have lots of honey. If you want God to show up, have lots of humility.” BOOM.

This leads me to the next week, “The Cross” with Peter Iliyn. Peter has a PHENOMENAL story to tell about both his life and his father’s, and that’s what he did the first day. So many students left that day in tears because his dad’s story brings forth SO MUCH hope in God it’s..CRAZY (that’s the only word I can think of. I thought “I should come up with some big word to make them understand how crazy it was,” but alas, nothing; just crazy). Since there’s no way I could tell you the whole story in this blog post I’ll tell you to go get his book, Out of the Far Corners! Do it, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Other than the awesome story this week was full of amazing lectures (which sounds boring, but they never are). Peter talked mostly about living a repenting lifestyle, which isn’t always about asking for forgiveness, but really striving to turn your life around after doing so. The big thing I got this week was the difference between condemnation and conviction. Condemnation is general and doesn’t come from God and his love, but conviction is specific and very loving.

So, those were the past two weeks and we just finished another week that I didn’t mention. (I’m kinda behind! Whoops!) VERY SOON, I’ll do a post about this last week, which was rad because we had some speakers who are actually staff here on the base (Steve Binquist and Ruthie Kim). We all loved them and they’re great, so be excited!

Thank you for your time and please just keep praying for us students and all the leaders and staff here at YWAM! We love you and appreciate you so very much!

-Nicole

(Source: bodilygeography)

In light of the recent Earthquake and Tsunami aftermath effecting Japan and the Pacific, we here at YWAMSF want to do everything to communicate that everyone here is fine, and will be. Any aftermath set to effect the coast near San Francisco is said not to come any more than one mile inland. The only effected areas are supposed to be the coastal highway, and water may come over the retaining wall no more than about one foot. As we are six miles away from the coast, everyone at YWAMSF is fine. We’ve instructed everyone to call home to let everyone know they are okay.

But Japan is not. As the earthquake and subsequent tsunami have effected vastly Japan, and has swept out through the Pacific, please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters, as well as all people effected by the effects of these events. in Japan, the death count has already by confirmed at least 300, where 2000 people are effected, either being caught in the tsunami, or displaced because of safety reasons. Please pray for everyone effected, the loved ones of those lost, and the safety of those still caught in compromising situations. Thank you for all your love and support for those of us here, and around the world. Below are some links regarding happenings in Japan that I’ve been able to gather today. In limited time, I haven’t been able to get information on the effects on Hawaii or other Pacific Island, but search the web. It’s good to be informed. As followers of Christ, our prayers can move mountains. Thank you all for being wonderful, beloved sons and daughters of God.

-Jon Owen.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.nuclear/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031102415.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/tsunami.warning/index.html

So, I will admit to you how hard it is to right a blog when you are going through “Plumbline.” But you’ll hear all about that next post, so GET READY!

For now, let me talk about the one and only Art Collins. What a guy! His topic last week was ‘The Bible.’ Pretty generic, eh? Well if anyone can make a boring topic, beyond epic, it’s Art Collins.

Alright, I love the bible. I mean, THE LIVING WORD?! Who wouldn’t love that? But really sitting down and being able to study the word and get into it and gain things from it has always been a difficult aspect of my walk with Christ. But Art’s approach is so phenomenal. On the first day we got a packet full of easy ways to really dive into the word and effectively study it.

Our assignment for the next two weeks was to study the book of Jonah using his preferred method, the synthetic approach, which when you first look at it, it looks tedious and boring, but in reality it’s SO helpful. I’ve read the story of Jonah before, but this method helped me to really UNDERSTAND the point of the story and how I can apply it to my life. RAD.

Usually, for each speaker I write about 20 pages of notes, but I didn’t have many this week because we were working out of the packet, but looking in my notes I got one really good quote: “God does not grant revelation of himself to the casual inquirer, but rather the diligent seeker.”

This week I really gained a hunger to know God more through his word and I would challenge you all to do the same because it’s amazing (:

Thanks for your time and support, and get ready for next week’s post because it’ll be intense!

Hey friends! Nicole here. Wanna know what the Winter DTS learned this week? YEAH YA DO! Just kidding, I don’t know if you do, but I figure since that’s my job I’ll be enthusiastic about it (:

Well you see, this week, our speaker was Dawn Masucci and she talked about Spiritual Warfare.

When I read ‘Spiritual Warfare’ in our manual, I’m not going to lie, I was not looking forward to it. The only experience I’ve had with spiritual warfare was not a very good one, mostly because I was a ‘baby Christian’ and I didn’t really know much about the enemy and it was more enemy focused than Christ focused.

Which brings me to my favorite part of the week: Dawn’s most stressed point is to make Christ our focus and keep the enemy on our peripherals. There was a cool hand motion, but I don’t really know how to explain it.

As well as cool hand motions, every day we went over what spiritual warfare is.

1. Knowing who God is.

2. Knowing what He’s done for us.

3. Knowing who we are in Christ.

4. Walking Godly.

5. Praying.

6. Persevering.

7. Proclaiming the gospel.

This really surprised me, and most students, because this was definitely not the way I viewed spiritual warfare. It was a very eye opening experience knowing that combating our enemy is all about knowing/being with/proclaiming Jesus.

Another really cool thing we did during that week was write down lies the enemy has told us throughout our lives through different experiences and identify them as lies, and then combat that with truths that we know and received from God. This was a very emotional and AWESOME experience for so many, if not all of the students. Dawn encouraged us to keep going back to those truths whenever the lies creep in because “The lies didn’t come in overnight, they won’t leave overnight.” And I think that is brilliant. We have this folder full of truths from God and our brothers and sisters to combat the enemy. RAD.

So, that was definitely a good week.

This week, Art Collins is our speaker. I was a little skeptical of his ‘awesomeness’ because everybody was hyping him up big time but, truth be told, he lives up to what everyone says. But I’ll talk more about him in the next post. And hopefully, I’ll have more pictures to share soon!

Please keep praying for health, and open hearts (:

Thanks so much for your support and time!

Our first week we had a speaker named Karri Manning here speaking on ‘The Character and Nature of God.’ Karri is, to say the least, very outgoing and VERY loud, but boy did we love her. I think she was the perfect speaker to have our first week. She pushed us all to come out of our shells and speak up, and she exceeded all our expectations of what the first week was going to look like. (Side note: in high school, I HATED taking notes, and I took about 20 pages of notes in one week with Karri. She’s AWESOME.)

Here are a few things from my notes that I think we all gleaned from the classes this week:

1. God is good! She pounded this into our heads all week.

2. God is our father! “God is not a reflection of our earthly fathers, he is a perfection of them.”

3. God is a God of unity! That’s a big one for us, considering we’re going to be living together for a good 5 months, and we’re learning how to live in unity and it’s awesome!

4. God is a Merciful God! A lot of points from this characteristic stuck out to me. But mostly “It’s not about being good enough, it’s about being who God made you to be.”

And the big one: 5. God Disciplines! Yikes! I know for me, and others, this was a hard thing to hear about. No one LIKES being disciplined, but we definitely learned a lot about why it’s important to be disciplined. Karri shared an analogy that really resonated with me and a lot of other students. She told us about her dog, who was a great dog, but always wanted to be free and run in the streets and such. One night the dog got hit by a car, but thankfully survived perfectly fine. After that Karri decided to get the dog a shock collar and when it was used on the dog, he got really confused. When God disciplines us we get confused and ask “Why would you do that, or let the happen to me God?” But it’s because God wants to protect us and keep us safe and seeing that is a beautiful thing.

Overall, I think we all learned so much from Karri and it was such a great first week.

Following a great first week came an equally great second week! Our second teacher was Dow Saunders, and his topic was ‘Hearing God’s Voice.’ Now Dow, in comparison to Karri, is very soft spoken but just as outgoing. The first day he was here he blew us all away by sharing words that he received from God for every single one of us! They were all so encouraging and it was really cool for all of us to have this guy, who didn’t even know us, come and have something to share with us from God. It was a very good preface to what was going to happen during the week.

Something that stood out to me the most was Dow’s great knowledge of the bible. I just counted in my notes and he gave us over 57 verse references to all the things he talked about this week. Things we discussed include: Steps to hearing God (Submit to God, Resist the enemy, Expect an answer), How knowing his character helps us hear him, Obstacles to hearing God, Heart conditions to hearing God, Guidance, Prophecies and Promises, and Intercession.

Every night he would give us an assignment that in retrospect has really helped us all grow. We had a lot of time to just sit with God and ask him questions like “What are you revealing to me about yourself?” “Where have I heard you speak to me before but I didn’t know it?” “Where have you been active in my life?” and “How do you see me?” (This one prompted a letter from God, which turned out pretty successful for most of us). Today was his last day and at the end of the class we decided to go outside and have some worship time and it turned into a good 2 hours of worship/prayer/intercession, which was a perfect way to end his topic.

Even with our awesome speakers, YWAM San Fran as a base, and all of us as a DTS have been experiencing some crazy stuff! A lot of people around the base are sick and a few have even had to go to the hospital (we’re all back at the base now, and getting better! [Praise God (:]). So if you all could be praying for health that would mean the world. And a few students and staff have received not the best of news about loved ones back home and we’re all dealing with that together. So also be praying for strength and comfort in these hard times.

You are all so great! Thank you for taking the time to take interest in what we’re doing here at YWAM and supporting us in all the ways that you do! Will write again soon! (:

Meet the New Blogger!

The Winter Cities DTS has begun here at YWAM San Francisco, and we’re proud to announce that we will be having a guest blogger to keep everyone updated about all the good news of this DTS: Nicole Hannah!

Here’s a bit from Nicole:

“Hey friends! The name’s nicole and I’m the new blogger! I suppose this is where I say a little bit about myself. I’m 17, which makes me the baby of the group but I’m used to it. I’m from Boise, Idaho and contrary to popular belief we’re not all potato farmers. I love Jesus a whole lot, but I’m a fairly new christian! Hmm.. what else? I’m obsessed with ‘The Office’ and I hate mushrooms. Those are just some simple things about me but I’m sure more will surface in the coming weeks. Goodbye for now! Write to you soon (:”

We are excited to see Nicole become a part of the YWAMSF Comm Team #1, and we hope you’re equally excited to hear about all the awesome adventures that all these great warriors of the faith will share.

Tune in next time for more action!

Hello brave and loyal friends of far flung places. So, you may or may not have noticed that since we posted out Borders partnership blog, something had gone a little awry: Our website has been down.

As of now, we’re not sure the source of the problem, so! Heres what we’re doing: You can get your coupons to shop at Borders right here! Clicking the button below will download you the pdf file you need to either shop in store anywhere in San Francisco, or online from anywhere in the world and support YWAM SF with a portion of your purchase!

This is a perfect chance to help out your favorite SF frontline missionary friends, and get some Christmas shopping done too! Thank you all so much for your dedication to what we do; God bless you and keep you all this Holiday Season.

File opens in Google docs. Pull down tab “File” to print or save.

Reblog this and spread the news!!

YWAM San Francisco is proud to announce that Borders has decided to partner with us this up coming weekend on Saturday the 11th and Sunday the 12th to raise support for our work here in San Francisco!

If you go to the link bellow, you can print out coupons to shop at Borders this weekend. As people shop, and increased proportion of purchases will go towards out work here in the city of San Francisco, and in the ministries that God has put on our hearts.

Now’s the perfect time to get your Christmas shopping done, and support your favorite San Fran missionaries at the same time! Shop in store with the coupon, or online with the coupon code.

Thank all you Tumblrarians for your loving support and love for our beautiful city of San Francisco and our ministries here.

Now buy some books!!

YWAMSF!

Fine Folk

YWAM Abroad: School of Super Natural Missions

We Are Fine.

DTS Lecture Week 1+2 Update!

Borders Update.

Borders is Partnering with YWAM SF to Raise Support!