Outreach Looming!

Less than a week now until outreach starts. The students are getting antsy and last minute preparations are starting to kick in. This morning, we went to a local church to share about DTS and our outreach coming up. It was cool to do something as a team.

Just so everyone is on the same page about what our outreach is going to look like...

Dnipropetrovsk

We leave this upcoming Saturday (the 17) by train for Dnipropetrovsk, a city farther south in Ukraine. It's one of the larger cities in Ukraine, with a million people. We'll be working with a large church there, where we'll have opportunities like rehab centers, orphanage work, youth work, and street evangelism to help out with. We won't be sure exactly what our schedule will be until we get down there and discuss it with the church leaders. All 10 of us will be in a four room apartment, which is good and bad news at once. I had imagined we might be in one big room together, so it's cool that Torben and I will have our own room, but 10 people with one bathroom? Good times. My DTS outreach was in Romania and we had 14 people in two rooms, so I think we'll be okay :) After three weeks in Dnipropetrovsk...

Kiev Youth Festival

We'll come back up here to Kiev for a youth festival which is put together by 20-something youth organizations here in Ukraine. YWAM is one of those organizations, so the staff is all working with practical aspects of making the festival work smoothly. It will be around 8,000 Christian and non-Christian young people from all over Ukraine, so there will be a lot for us to do. We'll be here from the 11th of July to the 16th of July. After that...

Dnipropetrovsk, take two

We'll be back in Dnipropetrovsk from the 16th of July until the 26th of July to continue the work we will have been doing there.

Moldova

Our visas for Moldova start on the 26th of July, so we can head down to Chisinau, the capital, from Dnipropetrovsk. We are still working out the details of exactly what we will be doing in Moldova. The goal of YWAM Kiev and YWAM Iasi in Romania is to start permanent YWAM work in Moldova, which is one of the only Eastern European countries that doesn't have a YWAM base. We're hoping to have a DTS running there by the end of next year. Both YWAM bases have been sending DTS outreaches there for a few years. So, one of our main goals there is to spread the word of what a DTS is. Don't get me wrong, we'll be doing more than advertising, but we're still talking back and forth with our contact there to find out what else we can do ministry-wise.

And then...

We need to leave Moldova by the 24th of August (my birthday!), so we'll come back here to Kiev. Debrief week does not start until the 4th of September, so we're still working on what exactly we can do here in the city or in one of the surrounding villages. There's a lot going on here at the base that we can possibly help out with. My detail mind is about to go crazy with not knowing exactly everything we will be doing, but I know we are doing our best to get everything together. It looks like it will be a very exciting, mobile outreach experience for all of us with a variety of ministry opportunities for the students to be exposed to, which is the point of a DTS outreach.

So, with all of that looming, we're entering into our last short week of lectures. Teaching on evangelism Monday, picking up our Moldovan visas Tuesday, Torben is doing his follow-up relationships teaching on Wednesday, a pep talk from the base leader on Thursday, cleaning day on Friday, then we're off!! I've got that terrified excited feeling I get every time I start something new! It really is amazing that God has put me in this missionary life. I'm the girl who threw a fit when my parents moved the Christmas tree five feet to the left one year. No changes!!! Nothing can ever change!! Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?