My DTS and Outreach

My DTS (Discipleship Training School) was an incredible life changing experience. Both the staff and students were amazing people and I have made a lot of lifetime friends from all over the world.

We all lived on a farm together for 3 months over the lecture phase where we all grew very close. We had a different speaker each week all teaching us on different topics such as; the character and nature of God, relationships, submission and authority and many more. 

On the weekends we do different things depending on which stream we chose at the start. Our choices were; surfers, outdoor pursuits, music and worship and revival. I originally chose OP because getting out and adventuring sounded fun. But when I prayed about it something didn’t feel right so I asked God and got answered with a question, “Why are you here?” My reply was to learn more about you and be pushed outside of my comfort zone. I quickly realised what that meant so I changed to the revival stream where we went out doing street evangelism, worked with churches, helped out families in need, etc.

Each student was assigned a 1-on-1 to talk and pray with. My 1-on-1 was an awesome guy named Aaron from Papua New Guinea. I also had the chance to get baptised in the creek along with a few others where Aaron and two of my close friends (Simon and Cameron) along with the speaker for the week (Mark Parker) baptised me.

Over the 3 month lecture phase we had 2 free weekends where we were all free to roam around the area. On one of these weekends me and 9 others rented a van and headed north. One of the girls had the name Russell in her head for a while so we decided to go there. When we got there on the Saturday night, we drove past a small white church with a red door. It turned out that one of the other girls had a vision a few days earlier of a church fitting that description with a group of people standing around it and she had even drawn a picture of it. We decided that God obviously wanted us to go to that church on Sunday morning. The people were so happy to have us there and we doubled the congregation. We felt like God wanted to do some healings so we asked if anyone needed healing. A man stood up who had been in a tractor accident several years earlier and was still in a lot of pain and had limited movement. A few of us prayed for him and he had no more pain and most of the movement back. There were several other healings that God did through us that morning and everyone left the church really excited and praising God.

After the 3 month lecture phase we go on what we call “Outreach” where we were put into groups of 9 or 10 people and sent out to different areas of the world for 2 months. We sent teams to India, the Philippines, two teams in Fiji and one stayed in New Zealand. I got to go to Fiji with this crazy bunch.

While in Fiji our time was split between the two main islands in the towns/cities of Labasa, Lautoka and Suva. The weather was really hot and sunny being summer and was about 35-40°C with the occasional tropical rainstorm with raindrops the size of golf balls that nearly knock you out. We spent most of our time doing street evangelism and door knocking spreading the gospel and showing God’s love. I was so surprised at how open and inviting Fijian’s are (whether Indian or Fijian), nearly every person we talked to was happy to speak with us about Jesus. We had some really encouraging conversations with a lot of Muslims and Hindus.

This family that we spent some time with use to be Hindu but are now Christian and a few hours before we showed up one of the ladies had been crying and praying because she didn’t feel like God was doing much in her life and needed something to show that he was there. She was so excited when we showed up saying we were the answer to her prayer. We prayed with them and they gave us an amazing lunch to thank us for coming.

We also spent some time at a prison and at two different hospitals which for obvious reasons we weren’t allowed to take photos. It was definitely daunting with the 10 of us being in a small room with about 30 prisoners and one guard but they were very open and interested with what we had to share. The skit we did especially impacted them when it was linked to the testimony given by one of the guys. They were very interactive with us shaking all our hands and singing us songs and some even cried.

Our time at the hospitals was my favourite part of the whole outreach. We visited about 5 or so times during visiting hours and talked to and prayed for everyone and anyone who wanted to see us. There were several healings that we got to witness and outpourings of God’s love on everyone. It never ceases to amaze me how strong God’s love is for all of his children regardless of them even acknowledging him; he just loves to love people. Whether there were healings or not I always walked away from the hospitals on a high. There’s just so much hunger and for God when people are put into a situation that they might not live through that they open right up and bare everything. People quickly realise the truth when they finally reach out to God in true desperation. When they do he’s always there for them whether that is in the form of a physical encounter with him or through answered prayers by someone like me being there when they need them most. One particular time I went and talked to a Hindu man who it turned out had been praying to Jesus because his god’s hadn’t answered him after months of prayer. He finally prayed to Jesus and I turned up a few minutes later to pray with him.

There is a lot more that happened on outreach but this post is getting a bit long so I’ll just bullet point the rest with a few photos.

• We worked with churches giving sermons and leading worship.

• We ran a fun day for about 250 kids between the age of about 4 and 12

• Spent some time at two assisted living homes

• Helped run a youth camp for about 60 teenagers

• Spent new years eve in the capital (Suva) preaching and performing in a park in town 

To end this post I’ll leave you with this. God is there whether you realise or even like it or not, he is always there. He is doing amazing things everywhere all the time and is giving me the privilege to both witness and participate in it and if you ask him he will use you too. God isn’t bias towards anyone, he doesn’t show favouritism or use some more than others. In fact all it comes down to is if we are willing to step out when he asks us to do or say something. The point I’m trying to get across is that although some people are called to it, the mission field isn’t just in far off places or third world countries. It’s everywhere, including right on your doorstep, in line at the supermarket or even in churches. There are people everywhere who need to hear the gospel and be shown God’s love. I really want to encourage you to reach out to your community if you aren’t already.

Mark 16; 15

And Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”