Day of Prayer for Zimbabwe

A desperate cry from the hearts of Zimbabwe screams across the world. It calls upon all Christians of every denomination in every nation to focus their prayers on the critical situation in a nation experiencing dire distress and teetering on the brink of human disaster. Let the cry for help touch your heart and mind. Let it move you to do what You can immediately to ensure this DAY OF PRAYER takes place in your country and neighborhood, whether in churches, halls, homes or elsewhere: Sunday 27th April, 2008.

LatinCom

This week Martial and Miranda are attending YWAM's communication consultation, otherwise known as CRIT: communication, research & information technology. It's an annual gathering for anyone involved in these areas within Youth With A Mission and was initiated 4 or 5 years ago when YWAM realised it had to get serious about strengthening its communication infrastructure. There's a strong international contingent - people are here from as far away as South Korea - but each year there is a particular focus on the host region. Next year we will be hosting CRIT in Africa, which is very exciting.

South America has a pretty good track record when it comes to the communications sphere. There have been some great video and graphics initiatives, as well as training courses being run by teams around the region. In spite of that there has been too little focus on communication within the organisation, leaving a great need to facilitate stronger connections between YWAM teams. This is especially the case between those teams in Brazil, which is Portuguese-speaking, and those in the rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America.

There are various working groups taking place throughout the consultation, helping to make progress and build momentum in the main focus areas.
Miranda writes: The group I am helping to facilitate is working to launch a Communication Team for Latin America. Having been a part of starting AfriCom it's fun to work at the process - it's a lot more noisy than I remember our first meetings, with a dozen Latinos all making their voices heard! Things came together pretty well today and it seems that by the end of the week we'll have leadership in place and some initial goals and projects for the team.

Some of the EuroCom team are also at the consultation. The various individuals are all part of different working groups, so not officially meeting together. Having said that, they're a bit stuck and feel that leadership issues have prevented them making progress in Europe, so there have been some extra meetings with them to look at those issues. After working so hard Martial and Miranda will have to come back to the office for a holiday!

Pray for Africa

The Prayer Guide for 2008 is ready! We are thrilled with the result of months of research, writing, design and translation: this year's guide to praying for issues affecting Africa sees some great developments from our 4 previous editions. The biggest change is that the guide is more issues-based than YWAM focused, with lots of information that will help churches and Christians around the world pray for the continent. Facts and figures are listed alongside personal stories, and there are ideas about how to get involved as well as pointers for prayer. This guide is not limited to specific dates so that although YWAM Africa will designate a month for concerted prayer, anyone can use the guide at any time. We hope to see many more people get excited about praying for our beloved continent as we offer them this excellent tool and encourage them to use it!

For copies of the Prayer Guide please email us at: ywamafricom@gmail.com

Field Service

The sign on this truck tickled me. As you know, our Communication Team is part of the wider Field Service Team for YWAM Africa. Waste disposal is not normally part of our remit ... but you never know what you might get asked to do in the name of service;-)

Ministering 'Connection' starts at home!

As a Comm Team for YWAM a part of our ministry is to bring a greater sense of connection to our staff members and teams - connection with other teams in Africa, and with the YWAM leaders for the continent as well as connection with what's happening in other parts of the world and with our global leaders. Not so long ago we felt challenged as a team that we can only minister that sort of connection to the extent to which we are living it and experiencing it among us. It's obvious really: we'll have no authority in this area is we're not 'walking the talk', as they say.

Since that time we've continued to make an effort to foster a strong sense of belonging among us as a team of very different individuals, all with different experiences, cultural backgrounds, genders, ages and personalities. We get together often to hang out or share a meal and we try to really listen to one another. It's all pretty simple, really ... it's just amazing how quickly we lose our sense of connection when we get busy and start focusing on what we have to do instead of the people we're here to serve with! Incidentally, we have a GREAT team and love what each person brings to the mix :-)

Leadership Workshop

Last week AfriCom was hosting a Leadership Workshop at YWAM Muizenberg, a great opportunity to develop more partnership with our local training base. Our trainers for the week were Tania West and Julie Hodge, visitors from the UK home church of Tim and Miranda.

The week started with teaching and application aimed at helping individuals to know themselves better. Of the 14 YWAM staff members attending the workshop many had already done some sort of personality or gifts test ... but the way Tania and Jules led us through the process and the solid bible teaching that went alongside meant each one of us learned something new.

We progressed to looking at team dynamics. This was a great process for AfriCom as most of our team was there; we learned more about how the individuals in our team function instinctively, what each brings to the team and how we can help one another to work best. Later we moved on to skills of leadership, including managing people through change and other topics that are very helpful in the YWAM context.

It was great to have trainers from outside the mission who connected so well and so quickly with our group and offered a helpful, observer's perspective. The teaching was excellent and we hope to be able to multiply this kind of training opportunity in the future, perhaps in other parts of Africa. These kind of partnerships enable us to meet more of the needs of YWAM than we could do alone: Thanks Tania & Jules!