THE SHIP
I know I've made mention of "the ship" quite a lot, but never really explained what I meant by that. A lot of people have asked about this, and I keep forgetting to elaborate. So here's the rundown.
YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission, it is a non-denominational ministry that was founded by Loren Cunningham in 1960. Loren's vision for the ministry was to see young people doing missions work overseas. As the ministry grew it became a two-part ministry. The first part - called a DTS or Discipleship Training School is a 5-6 month course. There are 3 months of lectures and school time. These 12 weeks are spent learning about God, who He is, and why He matters in a person's life. It's a very hands-on school, in that it's not a knowledge-based curriculum, but about what's going on in your heart. The 2nd part of a DTS is the 8-12 weeks of outreach time. It's a short-term ministry excursion, usually overseas (but not necessarily).
The second part of YWAM is the outreach bases. There are bases all over the world, in more than 150 countries. These bases do everything from ministry to families to drug rehabilitation to mercy ministries.
Marine Reach is one of YWAM's mercy ministries. Their vision is to take small ships with shallow drafts (not much ship under the water) into the islands offering free medical, dental, and optometric care in places that do not have these services available to them.
At present Marine Reach has two ships, and they're hoping to have another in the water by the end of 2008.
About 5 or 6 years ago when Marine Reach first purchased the Pacific Link, the refurbish was being done in Tauranga Harbor - just an hour from our house here at Waihi Beach. My dad was pastoring full-time then, but went down once a week to help. In 2005 he and my mom did a CDTS (designed for people over 35) and then did their outreach time on the ship.
They've been directors on the ship since then. Directors means they are "mom and dad". They keep track of everything that goes on, and work very closely with the captain. When we (Matt, me, and Oceana) moved to New Zealand in 2006, we got to visit them down on the ship a lot. Matt took a trip with my Dad into Fiji that year, and got excited about the idea of working on the ship. We can't work on the ship presently, because Oceana and water isn't a great idea. So instead we started working with the MR office. Matt made a trip into Fiji in 2007 to organize some things ahead of time for the ship. I've been writing some things for their publications, and hopefully I'll get to do more of that this year.
Because of our situation this year we haven't done as much as we'd like to have done. But we do try to help out a lot on the ship - Matt does work projects, I help out with cleaning and stuff like that.
And that's "the ship".
I know I've made mention of "the ship" quite a lot, but never really explained what I meant by that. A lot of people have asked about this, and I keep forgetting to elaborate. So here's the rundown.
YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission, it is a non-denominational ministry that was founded by Loren Cunningham in 1960. Loren's vision for the ministry was to see young people doing missions work overseas. As the ministry grew it became a two-part ministry. The first part - called a DTS or Discipleship Training School is a 5-6 month course. There are 3 months of lectures and school time. These 12 weeks are spent learning about God, who He is, and why He matters in a person's life. It's a very hands-on school, in that it's not a knowledge-based curriculum, but about what's going on in your heart. The 2nd part of a DTS is the 8-12 weeks of outreach time. It's a short-term ministry excursion, usually overseas (but not necessarily).
The second part of YWAM is the outreach bases. There are bases all over the world, in more than 150 countries. These bases do everything from ministry to families to drug rehabilitation to mercy ministries.
Marine Reach is one of YWAM's mercy ministries. Their vision is to take small ships with shallow drafts (not much ship under the water) into the islands offering free medical, dental, and optometric care in places that do not have these services available to them.
At present Marine Reach has two ships, and they're hoping to have another in the water by the end of 2008.
About 5 or 6 years ago when Marine Reach first purchased the Pacific Link, the refurbish was being done in Tauranga Harbor - just an hour from our house here at Waihi Beach. My dad was pastoring full-time then, but went down once a week to help. In 2005 he and my mom did a CDTS (designed for people over 35) and then did their outreach time on the ship.
They've been directors on the ship since then. Directors means they are "mom and dad". They keep track of everything that goes on, and work very closely with the captain. When we (Matt, me, and Oceana) moved to New Zealand in 2006, we got to visit them down on the ship a lot. Matt took a trip with my Dad into Fiji that year, and got excited about the idea of working on the ship. We can't work on the ship presently, because Oceana and water isn't a great idea. So instead we started working with the MR office. Matt made a trip into Fiji in 2007 to organize some things ahead of time for the ship. I've been writing some things for their publications, and hopefully I'll get to do more of that this year.
Because of our situation this year we haven't done as much as we'd like to have done. But we do try to help out a lot on the ship - Matt does work projects, I help out with cleaning and stuff like that.
And that's "the ship".
Susie,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like such an exciting ministry to be a part of. What was it like transitioning from USA to NZ? Do you feel at home there?
Tell us more, this sounds like a really great thing.
Jennifer in FL
Happy 4 week birhday to Joshua!! Love you all,
ReplyDeleteAunt Heather