22-year missions adventure

This month marks 22 years ago that we went into missions and started our Youth with a Mission adventure.

An incredible missionary adventure with God, an adventure in faith and trust, an adventure across borders, an adventure in being dependent on donations, an adventure in wonderful provision, blessings and testimonies. 22 years of missions made possible, in part, by you!

Help! We have a freshman and a middle-schooler!

Both of our girls, Lisa and Sarah, started new schools this Fall. Lisa is a Freshman in high school and Sarah started her first year of Middle School as a 6th-grader.

The terms Freshman, Homecoming week, Football games, Yearbook, Honor classes and Study Hall sound, for Dutchies, like something straight out of the movie “High School Musical”. Which is exactly what Jo sometimes feels when she picks up Lisa from school ha ha.

That we don’t bike to school and that all students are dropped off and picked up by car is also strange to Dutch ears. And considering that in The Netherlands you can’t even drive until you’re 18 years old the fact that those young ones go to school in their own cars and have their own reserved parking space is almost impossible for Dutch people to comprehend. (Is it just me, or are those drivers getting younger with each passing year?)

I, Rodney, enjoy helping Lisa with her homework (most of the time), the parents’ evenings and just reliving my whole High School experience.

A new, exciting challenge

Since February, Jolanda is officially a debriefer with the debriefing team Excelling Leaders.

Click here to read Jo’s short bio on the Excelling Leaders website.

The leaders, Kevin en Sue Prins, live in Michigan and Jolanda has seen them these last couple of years at “Missionary Care” consultations and courses here in the US. During the last training in February, they asked her and she agreed to join their team. It means that she will join them three or four times a year as a debriefer in a Debriefing Retreat for missionaries.

A debriefing during a “Radiant Life Retreat” is a relational process in which the realities of the past and their impact are expressed and understood for the purpose of release, renewal, and moving forward. Effective personal debriefing is, essentially, helping a person tell their story in an environment where they feel fully heard and understood. We, as debriefers use a timeline, also known as a “life path”, to help them tell their story.

Thankfully, Jolanda doesn’t always have to travel for her work. Last week, she was able to debrief to YWAM-ers from Denver. This couple works with YWAM as “mission builders” in countries like Guatemala and Costa Rica. Curious what mission builders do? www.missionbuilders.org

Skype Meetings

The debriefing team that Jolanda works with is international and they all have experience living and working in cross-cultural situations in missions. This gives a beautiful dimension to the team and enables them to all be ready to walk alongside and equip missionaries for their ministries.

Every other week, they meet together via Skype, going over their schedule, participant applications for retreats and divide up the responsibilities and tasks.

Kevin and Sue write:

Sue and I are thrilled to have Jolanda join us and our Excelling Leaders team. Excelling Leaders is a nonprofit Christian ministry that focus on encouraging and equipping missionaries and their families. We do this through coaching, debriefing and giving our missionaries tools so they can be more resilient and effective in the ministry that God has called them to.

If you know Jolanda you know that she brings passion and love, mixed with laughter and coffee to every conversation that she is part of. But she also brings many years of missions experience and most of all a love for God which so many of our missionaries need! Thank you for supporting her and her family as she works with us as we bring the love of the Father to many missionaries who need a special touch from him.

Online prayer guide

I, Rodney, mentioned in our previous update that I had finished a site for a ministry called Window International Network (WIN). It’s a site called WinReporter that focuses on mobilizing prayer for countries in the ¹⁰⁄₄₀ window.

These last couple of weeks, I have been working on the site again, preparing the launch of their yearly Pray Through the Window prayer initiative that beings October 1st. From the website: “Praying Through the Window is a worldwide prayer initiative focused on seeing a breakthrough in global terrorism and world religions. Together we can pierce the spiritual darkness that has oppressed this region and its people for so long.”