Next School:
Sept. 12, 2005 - Feb. 10, 2006
Location:
Plzen, Czech Republic
Costs:
Lecture Phase: 1.900 EUR
Outreach Phase:
750 - 1.500 EUR
(depending on location)
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Learning to Overcome
Discipleship Training School 2003/2004
by: Becky Gibbons - DTS Staff
“The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life and power comes after we ‘get up and get going'. God does not give us overcoming life- He gives us life as we overcome.” --Oswald Chambers
September 2003 marked the beginning of our 3 rd Discipleship Training School (DTS) here at YWAM Plzen. The school consisted of a group of seven students, plus the wife of one of the students and their 1- year- old son, who was a real joy to have with us, even on outreach. Though it was a small group they represented 4 nations: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, and the United States. We felt strongly from the beginning that God wanted to have room and time to work with the students in order to see them overcome the big and small giants in their lives. It is amazing how many giants appear as we step out and get going with God…
 During the 3-month lecture phase, we were blessed each week by various teachers coming from across Europe and the United States, who managed to leave us with more than just full pages in our note books- they left us with a greater hunger for His Word, with glimpses of the Father's love, with a taste of the Kingdom life, with many questions to ask and many to find answers to, with the raw truth of how God sees us, with a challenge to be real and to dare to cross beyond our own personal borders, and a desire “to get up and get going”!
We spent most of these first three months in Plzen, but also had the opportunity to go away into nature for an Adventure and Survival week with our friends from up north in Sweden! During that week, we were given many challenges as a team: rocks to climb, windows to be lowered out of, dances to dance, and we faced the inner challenges of simply taking that first step. We also traveled to the mountains of northern Czech Republic, where we participated in an Evangelism / Apologetics seminar, hosted by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Though it was only a week, we were challenged in our thinking and left with a new perspective in approaching conversations with other people.
During the middle of the lecture phase we were given an opportunity to put into practice some of what we had been learning, by spending a long weekend at the refugee camp that YWAM Plzen has been working in for several years now. This was the first time that a team of ours actually stayed overnight at the camp and it proved to be a huge blessing, both for us, and also for those whom we went to bless.
During the first three months of the DTS, God proved Himself faithful and the “giants” started to lose their power. Before we knew it, we were on our way to Turkey. We had no idea that what lay ahead for us in the coming month there would prove to redefine overcoming in our lives. Because the majority of Turkey's population is Muslim, our ministry sometimes looked a bit different than it would in a country that is not primarily Muslim. We helped out with crafts for a summer camp, taught Sunday school, helped refugees learn English, and visited a city which had been destroyed during the earthquakes a few years ago. We ran a basketball camp and put on a children's day, with clowning and puppets in this, now, forgotten and still devastated neighborhood.
But most of our time in Turkey was spent in prayer and intercession. Through this, we experienced the power of God in new ways and learned more about intercession itself. Many of us battled with sickness but the hardest hit was Pavel, one of the DTS leaders, who ended up being hospitalized with sepsis, a very serious and sometimes fatal blood infection. He spent 14 days in the intensive care unit- we spent 14 nights in around-the-clock prayer. We were joined in prayer by hundreds of people from around the world and together we saw God's power demonstrated as Pavel slowly recovered and eventually returned to Plzen in order to continue recuperating in the comfort of his own country.
 In the mean time the rest of the team continued on to Bulgaria where we spent our second month. Our main ministry there was among the gypsies. We lived with gypsy families and experienced life as they experience it: 70% unemployment, not much money for food, an atmosphere of hopelessness and fear… We only experienced it for one month, but they live with it day-in and day-out. The conditions were not always comfortable: we were very cold, most of the time, but we learned that there is a joy and a contentment that appears when we stop focusing on what we don't have and start focusing on what we do have- a lesson learned from our brothers and sisters there who showed us the reality of James 2:5: “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?”
We were able to work a lot with youth in Bulgaria. We visited a children's home for mentally and physically challenged children and had the privilege of handing out Operation Christmas Child boxes to kids who would have otherwise received nothing. After the 100 boxes disappeared into their empty hands, we were left with smiles, hugs, and the love of Christ offer them. One lady invited some of our team to pray for her teenage niece who had been lying in bed for six months, unwilling to go outside or to even be with people because of fears resulting from an experience in her past. This girl gave her trust to one of our team members and after a few more visits decided to also place her trust in Jesus and give her life to Him. Her aunt commented that God must love them very much in order to bring a Serbian all the way from the Czech Republic to Bulgaria so that her niece might meet Jesus. We praise God that we can be a part of His plan, whatever it may look like- all we have to do is say “YES”!
Our “giants” looked different in Turkey than in Bulgaria and different again in each of our own individual lives, but God remained the same- faithful. We simply “got up and got going” and saw His power become evident in and through our lives. He didn't give us an “overcoming life”, but rather, He gave us life as we overcame. During our two-week debriefing time in Plzen following outreach, we were encouraged that this was not the end, but, rather, it is just the beginning. This life has been handed to us to be lived while we continue going with God.
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