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Youth With A MissionR e s t e n ä s
To know God and make Him known
Restenäs Monthly Update via email
*subscribe: [email protected]
*un-subscribe: [email protected]
*Comments, questions or suggestions? Send a message to:
Youth With A Mission / Restenäs 239 / 459 93 Ljungskile / Sweden *Tel +46 522 210 20 *Fax +46 522 202 45 *http://www.ywamrestenas.se *[email protected] *Plusgiro 89 61 56-7 *Organisation 858500 5633
Youth With A Mission, Restenäs, is one of six
University of the Nations cam-puses, internationally.
Make Missions Happen!
Being involved in missions doesn’t necessarily mean quit-ting your job and leaving your home and family behind. There are other ways to support the work to which God has called us all. YWAM Restenäs de-pends partly on the support of “volunteers” and “supporters” who know the importance of supporting missions through their gifts, talents and resourc-es. Will you pray and consider how you might be able to join us in making missions hap-pen?
Visit our ‘Get Involved’ page on our website.
reetings to you from Restenäs. The win-ter darkness has ar-
rived, but we are filled with the light of God as we cel-ebrate another Christmas season. Although some of you may receive this news-letter a bit late, we still want to wish you all God’s best during this season. May your new year be filled with hope and promise.
Your friends at Restenäs
PraiseThank you God for a year filled with your goodness.
Thank you God for helping us set a clear purpose and goals for our work at Rest-enäs.
Thank you God for giving us so many opportunities to do missions, right here in Sweden, among the immi-grants in our communities.
PrayerFor the DTS teams that just went to India, Cambodia/Thailand, Ethiopia and Ti-bet.
For us to be able to put our new goals into practice.
For believers in Sweden, That God would give us boldness to step out and get to know our immigrant neighbours.
Our tour bus, filled with students from the “Swedish For Immigrants” language program, as well as several tour industry students, who came along as our tour guides for the day.
Try Missions
Whether you’re a YWAM veteran or you’ve just heard about us, why not ‘Try Mis-sions’? Visit our web site for information on schools or staff
opportunities:
Visit the link at the bottom of our front page
www.ywamrestenas.se
Välkommen till Klubblagret
Klubblagret är ett företag som ligger i Småland. Från början var
vår huvudinriktning innebandy som det hörs på namnet, men idag
är vi relativt heltäckande med att bistå skolor och företag med
sportartiklar och idrottsmaterial.
Bra produkter, bra kundkontakter och bra priser är vårt ledmotiv,
och våra kunder uppskattar detta.
Discipleship Training School: 7 Sept 2006 - 23 Feb 2007 “I am incredibly satisfied with the top quality of my DTS. Wonder-ful teaching and the lecture phase was really powerful. It worked deeply in my life and I loved it”. Former student
Korean Discipleship training School: 6 Mar - 18 Aug 2006 Restenäs has had the pleasure of hosting a large number of Korean students, and we run a Korean/English DTS for this reason. The Korean Christian culture has had a strong positive influence in the world, especially in the area of intercession.
School of Biblical Studies Core Course: 17 Apr - 7 Jul 2006 “SBSCC gave me tools to study and dig into the Bible. It equipped me not only to learn but also to give it away through teaching, preaching and small group Bible study. This school has given me hunger to study the Bible more.” Niklas Bidås (Sweden)
School of Live Production: Tentative - 6 March - Mid-May 2006 “I am not called to preach or sing, but God told me if I used my hands and heart, people would get saved.” Jacques v.d. Ploeg
Welcome to being a part of Live Production crews around the globe! Building the stage God stands on
Upcoming Schools
We’re selling our old theatre chairs!
We want to buy new, portable and linkable chairs. If you are inter-
sted in bringing home a piece of Restenäs history, we are selling our theatre chairs from 250Kr to 450Kr
per chair (30% discount for an entire row of seven.)
[email protected]:0522 210 20
Next summer’s inTouch Renewal
Gathering at Restenäs, July 16-22
Gatherings are for anyone who has been involved in YWAM, and also offer a taste of our Mission to some who have not yet
experienced [email protected]
tel:0522 210 20
If you have a company, service or website that you would like to advertise in our newsletters, updates or website, we can help you. Contact us today!
[email protected]:0522 210 20
G
may never fully understand what it means to leave my own country of Sweden for good and call a completely foreign country my own. But recently I accepted the invitiation to step into the shoes of an im-migrant for a day. My husband, Rob, who is an American, studies in the “Swedish For Immigrants” program. His teachers had planned a
field trip to a nearby town, and I was invited to come along.
Both of us were looking forward to getting to know some of the other immi-grants a bit better. Maybe we could strike up some meaningful conversations over lunch or while walking down a shopping street together. But it didn’t happen that way. As it turned out, most of Rob’s closest aquaintances decided not to come along on the journey. And the ones that did come seemed more interested in shopping for presents for their familes as soon as the bus arrived in the town. We invited one acquaintance of Rob’s to join us for lunch, but we were unashamedly turned down. “Jag vill köppa jacka för min barn!” Why was it so difficult to simply hang out with these seemingly friendly foreigners? Perhaps, according to their standards, they didn’t perceive us, an American and a Swede, as part of their group.
I was shocked when I realised that this specially arranged, guided tour for immigrants was performed in high-speed Swedish. How were we immigrants expected to learn our new language when it wasn’t at all adjusted to our level of understanding? I also noticed most of the young Swedes, who were sup-posed to provide assistance to their tour guests, simply mingled amongst their peers, not once reaching out a friendly hand of service. Nothing to fuss about if it had only been a one-time thing. Unfortunately, this wasn’t just a one-time thing. It’s the norm in our country.
Youth With A MissionR e s t e n ä s
To know God and make Him known
Immigrant for a day
Youth With A Mission / Restenäs 239 / 459 93 Ljungskile / Sweden *Tel +46 522 210 20 *Fax +46 522 202 45 *http://www.ywamrestenas.se *[email protected] *Plusgiro 89 61 56-7 *Organisation 858500 5633
This woman sits on the steps outside a mosque in one of our outreach locations in Asia. She may never experience the kinds of freedom many female immigrants have in Sweden. Yet, many of Sweden’s immigrants feel invisible in their new culture.
Please understand. I’m the first one to uphold the necessity for immigrants to learn our national language, to understand our culture and to put aside their prejudices. But this day showed me how unreasona-bly high our expectations can be. What do immigrants do when their efforts are not enough? We have a wonderful country full of wonderful people, but do we actu-ally help our new ‘Swedes’ to reach these expectations? I think it’s safe to assume that some of Rob’s classmates may have never once stepped foot into a Swedish home, even though some of them have lived here many years. It seems most immigrants are treated in a way that confirms their beliefs, that the Swedes would rather they just ‘go back home’! I’m sure many of them feel invisible. I sure did as I stood in immigrant’s shoes that day.
As I stepped back into my own Swedish shoes again, I consid-ered how easy it is for me to create excuses for not reaching out. My reasons may be totally valid. But when I toy with the thought that we are called to be missionaries right where we are, my excuses all of the sudden get weak and their reasons, toothless. Is there someone near me that I can invite into my little Sweden? Is there someone I can tell that “Sweden wants you”? Maybe there’s someone not too far away who would welcome my hand of friendship. I imagine it’s unnecessary to
arrange a complete “smorgasbord” for the entire street. But, maybe even having the pizza baker and his family over at our
house would make a vast difference. What an effect we could have if we actually started to become missionaries to the unreached people in our own commu-nities! Maybe we could strike up one of those meaningful conversations so many of us are longing to have with people needing Jesus. I believe it can only happen if we dare to step out of our little Sweden, and act a bit un-Swedish, and begin to speak with the strangers in our town.
Veronica has lived at Restenäs since 2000. She has served as translator, DTS staff and leadership team and board member. Her vision is to disciple young women into becoming history makers. She studied journalism in university.
Immigrant for a day
Both of us were looking forward to getting to know some of the other immigrants a bit better.
This little boy in Srinagar has probably never met a Christian. The photo was taken
in Kashmir in 2004 by one of our staff during her outreach.
India
Thailand /
cambodia
China/Tibet EthiopiaPlease pray! for our 2005 DTS outreach teams dur-
ing their three months of ministry
To Sweden and Beyond...
F
Two DTS team members, in 2005, pray for a Nepali believer who, through earlier prayers,
was healed of his heart condition.
rom time to time we offer a week-long leader-ship training programme to our students and staff. Most of the training takes place outdoors
and involves a variety of different activities. The purpose of one particular activity requires that each
participant guide his or her small team, on foot, several kilometres from point A to point B. All you’re given are a few verbal directions and a map. You may explain the directions to your team-mates, but you’re the only one al-lowed to look at the map. So far, no team has ever failed to eventually ‘reach point B’. Although, for some, this activity can be rather challenging, no-one has ever failed to under-stand the unmistakably clear purpose of this exercise.
Several months back Restenäs decided it was time to estab-lish its own unmistakably clear purpose. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that purpose:
Our purpose - To mobilise, train and send missionaries in order to build God’s kingdom among the unreached.
We believe that if we’re going to change our world, we need a clear purpose that has the ca-pacity to motivate and guide us, a purpose that is unique to Youth With A Mission, Restenäs. This purpose does just that.
It’s not surprising, real-ly, that we’ve written it this way. We’ve pretty
much been doing it all along. The only difference is that, now, our purpose has been recognised, confirmed and established. By making it public, Restenäs is in effect saying, “We are in-tentional about this. We mean business!”
When we started the process of choosing a purpose statement, we felt we should do three things in particular: 1) Review the history of Restenäs from it’s beginnings up to the present; 2) Evaluate our present situation; and 3) Consider our future as a mission training campus in Sweden. In October, after we felt we had exhausted our research efforts, the Leadership Team
went away for three days to pray about all that had been discovered. Then
they asked God what He was saying to Restenäs, and they waited for Him to answer. After those three days, a small team was assembled to condense those answers into one clear pur-pose statement.
Along with our purpose, we’ve also established some new goals for our staff in order to help us keep in line with our pur-pose. In a nutshell, our goals focus on the following: Learn-ing the Swedish language (or at least English as a second lan-guage), connecting with our community, choosing focus areas to establish front-line mission work, and applying our school outreaches to accommodate those focus areas.
Philip McCurley, chairman of our Leadership Team said, “Having a purpose and goals give us a clarity we haven’t had in a long time. It gives us God’s heart for this place”.
We believe that what has come out of our research, prayer and hard work is truly God’s heart and purpose for Restenäs. We invite you to continue to pray for Restenäs and the people who work here, that God will indeed cause us to bear much fruit as we embark on the next step of the journey.
To Sweden, and Beyond…
