Welcome back! I realized looking back that there was not a lot of explaining about the order of things on outreach and even a lack of explaining about the program I was doing, so that’s what this post will be about!
I’m going to go through from week one of outreach and I’ll take pictures of where we were on maps so you can see and I’ll be posting videos from the places this time instead of pictures.
Before I start, I want to explain what a YWAM DTS is. YWAM (Youth With A Mission) is a Christian missions organization with bases all over the world. They are not a church, they’re an organization who train up young people to Know God and Make Him Known. They have all kinds of training programs for different missions and ministries in various bases around the world, but I chose to go to Perth, Australia to do a DTS or Discipleship Training School. These are the “prerequisites” for doing other missions and schools and ministries in YWAM.
A DTS is a six month accredited course that has two parts. The first part is 12 weeks of lecture. In this phase the students learn about God and how to cultivate a relationship with him. They are taught things like how to hear God’s voice, the importance of giving what God has given us back to Him and what his nature and character is. This is usually done on the base that you chose to go to, and at the end of the three months, the students will split into teams and go to different counties on outreach. This is the making God known part. Each team has specific countries they will go to to do ministry and serve others in different ways while sharing about God with the people there. Everyone prays individually about which team to join and then those teams head out for the last three months of the course overseas. The DTS I joined was called Young People DTS and it’s focus was on reaching young people as well as giving a cross-cultural experience being bilingual in English and Korean.
Now, I did my lecture phase in Perth and it was very challenging but I grew so much there. A few weeks in we were given our choices for outreach, team Asia and team Africa. I prayed about it and decided to go to Africa. Our plan was to go to Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, but then we ended up spending more time in Zimbabwe instead of going to the last country. Before we even got there though we had a layover in Tanzania and ended up staying in a hotel outside the airport so we got to see a bit of what the country looks like… and feels like. It was the most humid weather I have ever experienced in my life. The air was palpable.
We started off in Malawi and flew in to Blantyre which is at the southern tip of the country. We then drove an hour to the base which is where we spent our first week.
After a week of kids ministry and worship and door to door and prayer walks, we took a bus up to Dzaleka, the refugee camp about 8 hours north from Blantyre.
We spent two and a half weeks in the largest refugee camp in Malawi and were hosted by as well as met countless refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo and other surrounding countries.
After spending time in Dzaleka, we moved on to Lake Malawi in the Mangochi district and spent a week there!
After we spent a day swimming and jumping off rocks we moved on back to the Blantyre base for another week where we finished off our time in Malawi!
That’s pretty much it for Malawi! I’m sure there are things I didn’t catch on camera, but these are the big moments. I hope this helps to make it easier to visualize and be in the shoes of our team while we were in Malawi!I’ll be making a separate post about our second half of outreach in Zimbabwe next! Until next time! Hugs from Pelham, AL.
Journey With Kaylee 