Hey everyone, so we're on week 4 of our Discipleship Training School and things are going well. In case you didn't know, we are not actually in Pittsburgh, we're about an hour south in a smaller town called Belle Vernon. It's the "country" (not like Ashville though ha) and incredibly hilly. We've already learned a TON and are in a constant state of absorbing information and applying it to our lives. We are the only married couple among the students but there is one other married couple on our staff, from South Korea. We have 3 students here with us from South Korea, 1 from London, 1 from South Africa, and 1 student from India. One of our staff members is from Peru as well so we are experiencing a lot of awesome diversity. We have had 4 speakers so far (Nick Savoca, Debi Tunney, Tim Burgan, and Lance O'Brien) and are on our 5th (Sam Dharam). Aside from these we have been spoken to by 2 local pastors and have had the opportunity to attend a local church weekly and one week we went to another Assemblies of God church. The church we've been to regularly is non-denominational, called Christian Center Church which is physically attached to the dormitories here. We are staying with a lady who attends this church, and has volunteered the upstairs of her condo for us so we could stay together :) She is awesome and the living arrangement is going great. For more information about YWAM itself and our class go here.
As far as what we've learned already, the information is really vast so I'm going to do my best to summarize.
-Relationship with the Lord/Worship
-Destiny-purpose
-Friendship, love, and acceptance
-Challenges and success
-Adventure
-Understanding (being known for who we are)
-Intimacy
-Identity, value, and uniqueness
-Joy and pleasure
-Purity and holiness (freedom from guilt)
*Jeremiah 29:11-14 "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile." God's plan for us is Himself and His fullness.
We learned that our hearts are thirsty for the water that only Jesus provides, water that will keep us from ever thirsting again. It's only in this water (Jesus Himself; John 4:13-14 "Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.'”) that we will get the stuff above ^ that we need. We also learned about the distorted view of God we usually have, and the truth about who He really is. God's character is not based on how our earthly fathers are, or how we have been treated by other people. He is intimate, with us, holy, loving. The problem is getting our hearts to believe what our heads already know is truth about Him.
We learned a lot about God being trustworthy and a provider. He doesn't hold out on His kids, He gives us what we need. (Psalm 103- He will fulfill and satisfy.) We also discovered that encouragement is "oxygen to the soul" and we spent a day writing deep encouragements to our classmates.
