Well friends… outreach is upon us once again! We’ve prayed, we’ve planned, and now we’ve divided up our 22 DTS students and 5 staff into 3 outreach teams. One team will have a youth focus in Northern Queensland (mostly country towns, or “outback” towns as Americans would like to say). Another team is headed to Papua New Guinea to join with our health care team for outreach into the villages of PNG. And the last team is headed to our neighbour New Zealand where they will be serving the Ship Tour that is about to launch in NZ.

Ryan will be co-leading the team to New Zealand where we will work with the ship ministry in various port cities. There will be a focus on evangelism as well as calling young people into missions. (It’s a medical missions ship called the Pacific Link, which is the same ship that is being given to YWAM Australia early next year for our work into PNG!)

New Zealand has a great heritage of Christianity. It was also the sending place of most of the first missionaries into the Pacific Islands. In recent years, NZ has seen a decline in Christianity, but we believe it’s time for a new waveof young people to be introduced to Jesus as well as to discover their place in the world!

The tour will largely focus on mobilizing youth into missions (not exclusively into YWAM, but into global missions in any capacity). As Ryan and I feel that mobilization is very much central to our calling, we are excited to be a part this team. In the place of prayer God has given us a real heart for this outreach, and a faith that some wonderful things are in store for us and those we will minister to as we step out in obedience to what God’s spoken.

I (Adriel) will not be leading the team with Ryan since it will be during my last trimester of pregnancy and we want to leave some room for flexibility for me (and for bubs). But we also don’t want to be separated for a long period of time! Therefore, I will be spending part of the outreach with Ryan’s team in NZ, and part of the time with the North Queensland team to support their team leader, Aaron, and connect with the girls on his team.

We are in process of raising our finances for this outreach, but at this point we’re still in need of about $5000 AUD (approximately $4200 USD). This is a fairly urgent need as we will require most of this amount within the next 3-4 weeks (2 of which we are “out bush” camping with the DTS for lectures and have no phone/internet access – big fundraising challenge!). If you are able to contribute, we’d be most grateful. (Please click here for information on donating.)

In closing, thanks for your prayers as we work to see all the details of the three outreach teams finalized – team budgets solidified, plane tickets sorted, visas obtained, finances raises, itineraries set, contacts confirmed, ministry planned, leaders equipped, students prepared, etc. etc. etc!

We appreciate you standing with us for another exciting outreach in our now 8th/9th year of serving with YWAM.

Our work is yours.

Much love,
The Booker Three