Adding to the toolkit…

Prayer-Walking: We were also challenged to start prayer walking! This is something we did quite often in our neighbourhood in our first assignment. We didn’t yet have the language to engage in deep theological conversations but we could walk! And we could pray! At the same time. Usually 😉

The speaker challenged us to remember the following for our walk:

On location: Pray about which areas to focus in on, such as your own neighbourhood, business district, low-income housing, recreational areas or areas where there may be spiritual strongholds
With information: Use the information you know about the neighbourhood to pray for specific needs (e.g. businesses closed during COVID, neighbours with health problems, places of worship). Pray for your neighbours by name or the organizations you pass by specific need.
In cooperation: Have someone pray with you as you are walking or walk with someone else
Against spiritual opposition: Scripture is our most powerful tool when we pray so we were challenged to use scripture in our prayer
For glorification: This is to remember that we are praying for God’s name to be glorified in the community!

Sometimes, especially with COVID, it has felt like we cannot do much to invest in the spiritual lives of others here in our small town. Our pastor has suggested we pick the names of congregation members, pray for them during the week and let them know we are praying for them, so this is one more way to pray!

I was challenged to walk around my community and pray and maybe even do it with someone else whether via phone or in person. They also challenged us to have someone pray for us while we are doing it to combat distractions 🙂 Tune in to see if I’m brave enough to ask people to do this with me! Maybe I’ll start with my kids? My son (3 years old) was one of my first prayer walking buddies on our first assignment. During the session today we were challenged to pray for the Diaspora but what community members cannot benefit from your prayers? Oh. and they also challenged us to use scripture as we pray as the word of God is the MOST powerful spiritual weapon we have. I have to be honest with you guys, I’m not the greatest at memorizing scripture so we’ll see how this goes. (I know, I know I’m a missionary, shouldn’t this just be a given? It takes a lot of work for me….but so important!). Maybe I can download a verse on my phone, what do you think? What are your favorite ways to choose scripture to pray?

Virtual Mission Trip…

Today one of the leaders presented on the ministry he is involved with in Belgium, and we also heard from a leader of an Iranian church in Belgium (currently meeting over zoom!). As I said, I don’t know a lot about this area of the world! I didn’t realize that it is home to such a small percentage of Protestant Believers and a large percentage of Mu$lims, migrants and refugees. In 2019 alone there were 27,000 requests for asylum and 22,000 without legal status living on the streets, in centres or with family. They are from many different countries including El Salvador, Afghanistan, Palestinia & Iraq.

Virtual Prayer Walking: The leaders of one of the m!nistries in Belgium used a “street-view” map and will take us on a virtual prayer walk, highlighting specific requests along the way. We’re going to be given the links and can do it on our own time.

Four-Fields: This was fleshed out even further today, based on Mark 4:26-29. We will continue to be using this model so I won’t go into more detail in this blog…

What’sApp Group: We were all gathered up into a What’sApp group so we can check in with each other and encourage each other as we learn. So far there’s just a lot of notifications of who keeps joining but I can see a potential for encouragement and support!

Ignite Prayer Journal: We were provided with a journal that I believe is regularly used in this organization’s m!ssion trips! I think it would help to do it alongside this trip, I don’t have the extra time with adding the prayer walks, blogging and everyday life! To give you an idea of what it is, it leads you each day through scripture with the goal of helping you grow deeper in your prayer life! There is enough material to go through each day for a month. This is a great resource and I can’t wait to try it after the trip.

Virtual Mission Trip…

We’re continuing to learn about great ministry tools (see below) and learning about some of the needs and ministries in Belgium and Malta.

In both countries there is a high migrant and refugee population from all over Africa, putting themselves at risk to get there (travel is very dangerous) to try to make a better life for themselves. Many face racism, have difficulty finding jobs, end up in refugee camps (in very poor conditions) or in poor living situations. Many of the women become involved in trafficking. We were asked to pray for God to send more m workers and for those believers already in place to have the courage to reach out to these populations. It was so amazing to be able to break out into small groups to be able to pray together for these things! Today I met with another Canadian and a Ugandan Physiotherapist working with our company.

15 Second Testimony: What?! You can give your testimony in 15 seconds? You sure can!!! I’ve heard many methods of sharing your testimony but never this simple. We got to practice and I have to say it’s actually not that hard to put together, I didn’t feel too nervous sharing it in our group and I kind of like it! Obviously it’s a stepping stone to a deeper conversation & you can only highlight 1-2 points of your story but a great tool to use if you only have a short time! Here’s how it goes:

1. There was a time in my life when…… (pick two words or phrases that represent a time in your life before you became a Christian. IF you have been a Christian since you were little, pick a time in your life you struggled with something).
   Eg. “There was a time in my life when I felt all alone and that I could never measure up to other’s expectations.”
   2. How did you feel when you met Christ?
   E.g. I was introduced to this loving God who says He will never leave me, ever! I felt so loved and cherished knowing he could walk with me through what I struggled with. He knows I will make mistakes and if I give my life to Him He will forgive me! Then pick 1-2 talking points about life is like now.
   E.g. I still go through hard times but God walks beside me and helps me through it and He is constantly helping me to live like He wants me to. I will still make mistakes but I can go to God for forgiveness and try again.
   3. Ask “can you relate to that”? or “Have you ever felt that way?”
   *Note: this is very simplistic & just one example
   Here’s a great explanation video: Click here. 

Virtual Mission Trip…

Today we learned more about refugees and migrants in general but also in relation to Malta. Did you know that there are 79.5 million people in the world who have been forcibly displaced from their homes? (Source: UNHCR)  Last year there were 4,000 who applied for asylum in Malta, which has a population of 400,000 people (this doesn’t include those who entered the country but have not completed the paperwork. They come from all over but countries highlighted to day were Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, Libya, Cameroon and Syria.

We heard from a pastor who started the first church in Malta and is still living and working there. He said that originally migrants and refugees were welcomed with open arms by the church and the general population but with the increasing influx of people, the reception is getting cooler. There is a renewed interest amongst the churches and there are a few beginning to work together to reach out to this population.

Four-Fields: We mostly focused on the second field ( this is the sowing seed field) of the four fields strategy today, sneaking into the third field (growing) a tiny bit.

4 Responses to the Gospel: This is a traffic-light model guiding the user how to respond if someone:

1. Says “no” to hearing the gospel

2. Might be interested

3. Is definitely interested or

4. Is already a Christian.

We’ll likely get into each of these as we go so I won’t spend any more time on this one.

3 Circles: This is a quick strategy to share the gospel if you only have a short time, if done right you can do it in about three minutes! It uses a visual (3 circles!) and talks about how we’re in a broken world but it wasn’t meant to be that way! The world was created perfect and humanity walked side by side with a loving God who wanted to be in relationship with us. We turned to our own way and disobeyed God and sin entered the world. Now no matter what we do we cannot repair this broken world. Thankfully we have a loving God who wanted to restore the world and His relationship with us, so He sent his Son to die for us, to raise from the dead to break the power of sin. If we turn from our sin and believe in Jesus we can be forgiven and made new. And you ask where the listener sees themselves.  There is a fuller explanation here.

We learned a similar model on the Island called The Kingdom of Light and Darkness. I like the three circles as it’s a bit more concise, easier to remember and has a great diagram! The Kingdom of Light and Darkness does get into slightly deeper theology but the three circles is easily adaptable so you can add more detail if you’d like. What I did like is we had a chance to practice and the participants and the leaders are so patient, gracious and encouraging!

Virtual Mission Trip…

Today we learned a bit more about Belgium. We learned that there are a lot of nominal believers but the evangelical church is slowly growing. The interesting part is that most of the growth is coming from the migrant churches rather than in the original churches in Belgium.

As in Malta, initially, when migrants and refugees started to come to Belgium they were welcomed with open arms but this is changing as more and more people enter the country. Migrants come mainly from north-eastern Africa but will come from other areas too, seeking a better life in Europe.
The workers in Belgium are reaching out in a few ways, including (but not limited to):

1. Building relationships with people they meet everyday and through volunteering
2. Mentoring, networking with and providing training to a variety of local churches
3. Volunteering in practical ways, such as food distribution and helping new refugees and migrants find housing
4. Hosting short-term teams and vision Trips

It was great to get a bit more insight into the migrant & refugee situation in Belgium and what people are doing to help! I also enjoyed reviewing some of the tools that we learned on the assignment (see below). I felt a bit rusty practicing them with my group today (one Canadian and two participants from the UK) so was reminded that it’s important to keep practicing these strategies to remember how to use them!

Four-Fields:  We mostly focused on the third field (growing) of the four fields strategy today.

Three thirds: This was a strategy we used on the Islands and experienced quite a bit of success. Three Thirds is a way to structure meetings with seekers or new believers that is simple to facilitate or replicate:

1. Looking Back: Checking in with one another, worship, loving accountability and potential vision casting
   2. Looking Up: New lesson in DBS format (to explain later)
   3. Looking Forward: Commitment (I will…), prayer, commissioning

DBS: This stands for “Discovery Bible Study” and is a good way to start training others to lead. This is the type of study Daniel observed when a local believer stopped it in the middle and asked if he could lead. He now is an experienced leader and our former team member who was his mentor now takes a more supportive/backseat role! Basically you read a passage, practice repeating it in your own words and ask the following questions:
1. What does this passage tell us about God?
2. What does this teach us about people?
3. From this passage are we called to any type of commitment?
4. Who are you going to share this story with?
The goal is to eventually lead to development of house churches (which I’m told we learn more about tomorrow!).
I was able to share a bit in my group about how we went through this method on the Island and how Islanders are taking on leadership roles and studying on their own!
Finally, I did review the apps…personally I like the Discover the Bible app because of it’s simplicity, the languages available and the ability to listen to the story. The other ones follow more of the three thirds model, which is ok too!

Virtual Mission Trip…

Today was called a day of “commissioning”. We took time in breakout sessions to pray for each other, then an Ethiopian leader & missionary named Bekele Shanko prayed over us and gave a message of commissioning. I’d encourage you to check out his story as it is very powerful! (here’s one link, if you google there are longer videos too!) He is a passionate leader who has done amazing work with Campus Crusade in Ethiopia and a strong leader in a variety of other m!ssions organizations as well.

  As an aside I just want to say I was reminded this week how powerful it is to hear other people’s testimonies.

Four-Fields:  We mostly focused on the fourth field (gather) of the four fields strategy today.

Signs of a Healthy Church: We were shown a great visual as to how to determine if your new church is healthy and, if not, how to easily see where growth needs to happen. This was based on Acts 2:36-47. This will take time and not all the components will be present all at once but it is a great way to measure progress! I won’t get into detail here but if you want to know more…that’s right, you can ask me or there is a video of course! (right here – just an aside, E3 partners has a ton of amazing resources if you’re interested in outreach, church planting, etc. etc. etc.! ObeyChrist.com is also a great resource).

Virtual Mission Trip…

Today was very unique in that we all were able to worship together from around the world in many different time zones, countries and languages! I was so curious as to how this would work. Basically, any participant could request a favourite song or submit their own video recording of a song to contribute to the service. It was a blessing to experience worship from Uganda, India, Tanzania, Belgium, South Africa and North America. We also had one final prayer time for each other before we signed off. I really enjoyed the final song, called “Break our Hearts” – you can hear it here.

”Break our hearts with the things that break yours and send us out to shine in the darkness…”

This has been an amazing week and I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in missions: If you are actually travelling overseas, have been curious about what it’s like, if you have loved ones overseas, if you pray regularly for a missionary or even have an interest in a specific country or people group.

I liked that the tools we learned can be used on the mission field but also at home. Any feedback from the group on this was always positive and encouraging. Also, all of the leaders provided their contact information and are willing to answer questions and mentor participants after the trip as well. The What’sApp group is also still open.

I think this would be great to do as a small group or even get a group together from the church like you would if you were to actually travel for a mission trip.

If you do do one of these trips, it’s important to be able to set aside time outside of the sessions. I looked and thought 1.5 hours – that’s do-able for a stay-at-home mom working part-time. But really in order to get the most out of everything it would be ideal to be able to set aside an extra 2.5-3.5 (or more) hours. BUT I wouldn’t let this stop you! The sessions on their own are definitely worth participating in and looking at the website there are sessions that are as short as two days or as long as a week. I’d just suggest to try to find a way to be able to fully focus on the session. I was fortunate to have my husband watch the kids for the time I needed. The great thing is that the sessions are recorded so if you do get interrupted you can watch them again (but don’t miss the breakout sessions, they’re great!).

I really can’t think of anyone who couldn’t benefit from an experience like this! Singles, couples, families could do it together, missions board members, people who can’t travel overseas, mobilizers, or “missionaries-in-waiting” like us who want to “keep our head in the game”, so to speak!

Though nothing can ever replace on site, in-person experiences I don’t think that’s the goal of this type of trip. One unique factor that you get is to strip away a lot of the distractors (travel, tummy bugs, loneliness, strange food, markets, sightseeing) and truly focus on God’s heart for prayer, the people, and their needs. On the flip side, those things are part of the experience, and you’re only getting a limited perspective on the needs on site but I digress.

This is a unique, meaningful experience and I would definitely encourage you to try it! If you do, I strongly encourage you to tell someone so you have someone to process your experience with and even to pray for or with you as you go and when you “come home”.