As the time draws near for us to leave for Budapest, we have finally set ourselves a date for when we want to leave, and the Final Countdown can begin…(cue synthesizers and electric guitars). We’ll share more about that at the end of the update.

YWAM 50th Celebration in Harpenden, England

Jolanda symbolically putting a "sticky" on Budapest with our names and ministries on it

As we wrote previously, YWAM is celebrating it’s 50th anniversary this year. Loren and Darlene Cunningham, the founders of YWAM, are traveling around the globe visiting various locations as they celebrate knowing God… His everlasting faithfulness, goodness, power and love.

From September 19th to the 21st, Jolanda, along with 70 other staff from Heidebeek attended the celebration at the YWAM base in Harpenden, England, just north of London. It was her turn to finally take a trip away from home and I stayed behind with the girls.

About 700 YWAMers from various Western European countries came together to thank God for what He has done and were challenged to hear His voice for the future and even symbolically place a sticky on a very large map on the place they think God is calling them to within the next 5 years. It was a blessed time and even the weather was great, which is saying a lot considering this was England!

New Staff!

Jolanda, along with the Staff Care and Development (SCAD) team (in collaboration with the personnel department of Heidebeek) welcomed 13 new staff people in September. Her team arranges accommodation, a host or hostess upon arrival and several orientation days for our new staff.

In September they had a whole day together with our new colleagues introducing them to the leadership team, acquainting them with the ins and outs of living and working within our community, teaching on culture shock, YWAM’s history and vision, giving a guided tour and introducing them to the rest of the staff. With the addition of these new staff members, Heidebeek now has more than 100 staff members that live and minister here!

The Heidebeek Staff

The pastoral team and the Staff Care and Development team meet together weekly. She also continues to have both official and unofficial “mentor talks” with staff and students.

Jolanda and I, Rodney, unfortunately can not mentor any students this fall from the DTS and the School of Biblical Studies, since we will be leaving for Budapest before their lecture phase has ended.

Global Communication Meetings

Rodney, Veronica (LatinCom) and Arun (SpiceCom, India)

Just a week-and-a-half later, I, Rodney got the chance to visit Harpenden as well. The occasion was the Global Communication Team (GCT) meeting called together by Lynn Green, YWAM’s International Chairman and the Effective Communication Workshop which we as EuroCom organized.

The GCT has been meeting together for several years now, but this time several new people, including myself were invited to join. That’s why most of the week was spent in hearing form each other what global initiatives there already are and how effective they have been.

We as a team (about 18 in total) are committed to global communications initiatives and that will be our focus in the future, both virtually and when we come together again. We are a group of people who, as stated in the invitation email: “have been nominated to attend because of your contributions and commitment to global communications efforts”.

Effective Communication Workshop

The Whole ECW Group

The Global Communication Team meeting ended on Friday afternoon, and we started the Effective Communication Workshop that evening.

We had 14 participants and 12 different nationalities representing 11 YWAM Locations around Europe. Most of the participants are involved locally in their communication departments, but there were a couple of base/ministry leaders and some of them are on the leadership team of their local base.

The purpose of the workshop was to introduce the participants to communication fundamentals such as writing, design, photography, etc. as well as help them get a historical and biblical understanding of communication. Communication is about heart, vision and skills, and we try to give the participants all three in this workshop.

We also made time for some fun

But the workshop can probably be best described in the words of some of the participants themselves:

“Attending the ECW workshop was the fulfillment of something that God has been laying in my heart for years. Sitting in that room and having input on COMMUNICATION, I just said ‘finally God, it is happening’. I was blessed out of my socks. I’m definitely not going to stop there, I will pursue what I felt the Lord is saying with communication, in my life, in my department, on the base and …who knows how far He will bring me.” – Florence (Cameroon), serving with YWAM Heidebeek, The Netherlands

For more testimonials, see our testimonial page.

Leaving for Budapest

The sticky on Budapest

We have finally decided that we will be leaving for Budapest on December 4th (my birthday). Even that date is not set in stone since there are still a couple of things that need to happen before we leave.

One of the things we are hoping for is to bring a Dutch teacher along with us to homeschool Lisa. We have cast our net out in several directions and have met a a couple of young ladies who are interested but no one has been able to give us a definite commitment yet. If absolutely necessary Jolanda could homeschool Lisa, but we both feel that that wouldn’t be the best long-term solution.

Another thing that we would like to see happen before we leave for Budapest is for more people to partner with us financially. We have been barely scraping by at times over the last two years and while, as we all well know, most things keep getting more expensive we haven’t seen any growth in our monthly support.

To this end, we will be starting a fundraising campaign this week. We will be sending out a sponsor letter and you might even get a personal email, Facebook message or even a phone call at some point.

Before we leave for Budapest we would like to increase our monthly income by about $500, and we would like to see at least 40 new sponsors join us in the coming year.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our update as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Thanks again for your time.

Blessings from The Netherlands,
Rodney, Jolanda, Lisa and Sarah

Jolanda also recently organized a love feast here at Heidebeek. She’s very good at these kinds of things and she enjoyed doing it very much. (That’s where these pictures were taken.)

Effective Communication Workshop (ECW) in Budapest
In October, I (Rodney) was in Budapest for a week for an Effective Communication Workshop (ECW) and EuroCom meetings. They were held on a “boatel”, that is, a boat hotel which is permanently docked in Budapest on the shore of the Danube river. You may recall that he was in Budapest in May for a meeting, well this was the same boat.

The ECW was a great success with 20 participants, mostly from Central Europe. Subjects included Jesus-style communication, public speak, writing, newsletters, design and layout and websites. It was a 2-1/2 day whirlwind course and the participants loved it. In an impromptu show-of-hands survey at the end, more than half said they would be interested in attending a follow-up course sometime in the future and all of them recommended we continue giving these kind of workshops.

EuroCom meetings
On the day after the ECW, we started meeting as EuroCom. We sent out general (and specific) invitations to YWAM staff working in communication in Europe. The attendance was small, but it was a good group and I was very encouraged by it.

We had people representing Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Bosnia, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. We were also please to welcome Rob Abraham , Director of YWAM’s International Communication Network in Colorado Springs, CO, USA, and Carmelita Clarke, Director of YWAM’s Central Europe region.

The purpose of the meeting was two-fold. First of all, to reconnect with people who are already involved in EuroCom and also to connect with people who are working with communication in Europe and would like to be a part of the “bigger picture” of Europe-wide communication.

We also discussed some of the needs in Europe and came up with several projects which we will be working on in the coming time. Some of which are:
- 30-second video spots highlighting one of YWAM’s 17 values.
- A European mailing list which would reach all staff in Europe
- Coordinating translators for international YWAM communication
- Website templates based on yam.org’s new look that will be freely available to all YWAMers to use for their own region’s, nation’s, base’s and personal websites.
- Communication training for leaders (there are already some exciting developments in this area which I will share about in our next update)

Western Europe Leadership Team (WELT) meeting
At the end of October, I was privileged to attend the Western Europe Leadership Team (WELT) meeting in Malaga, Spain. The WELT is made up of mostly national leaders and ministry coordinators from Western Europe (click here for a map of YWAM’s Western Europe region). It was good to be able to connect up with them and also to share a little about what EuroCom has been up to and is planning.

It was also good to be able to provide some input from a communication standpoint on the other agenda points that were brought up.

Once again, we thank you for taking the time to read our update. We also want to ask you to keep us in your prayers.

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