The Date is set!

As many of you know, the last month has been a whirlwind of preparations, specifically the visa drama (read more), but also looking for shipping quotes, medical insurances, and support raising and so we are relieved to say we have FINALLY BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS!

We will leave the UK on the 13th of September!

Our return flights aren’t until July 2011, and we have committed the next 3 years to working with All Nations in South Africa so this is a big step for us.

Thankyou to everyone who followed and prayed with us through the excitement of the last month. God has been so faithful to us!

• What will we be doing in South Africa?
• Support
• You are Invited…

Rather than send you a lengthy email, we have re-written our website with videos and stories that detail the work we will be doing in South Africa with All Nations – to look through it all go towww.liamandrachel.com or click on the images below to go straight to the projects you are interested in:

Baby Safe, an access ministry to church planting that Rachel will help run, originally started as a response to the crisis of baby dumping in the Western Cape of South Africa.  The practise of abandoning babies in places there are unlikely to be found was not being engaged by any government agency or organisations, therefore Baby Safe was set up to be a extension of God’s heart to both the babies involved and the mother’s who found themselves in such desperation…READ MORE

Liam will be working with 2 others in discipling kingdom principles in a generation of new small business owners throughout Masiphumelele & other local impoverished communities. This will be done through a program called STEPS which addresses the multiple levels of poverty which exist in lives, spiritual poverty, material poverty and social poverty, READ MORE.

The natural out working of people coming to know Jesus through the two previously mentioned ministries, is to gather them in discipleship communities, this is why All Nations is committed to simple church planting. In particular we are focused on making disciples and sending out trained leaders to start simple, reproducing, Jesus focused churches. READ MORE

As we prepare to return to South Africa the most valuable way in which you can support us is through prayer.
We will be regularly updating liamandrachel.com to give you more information on what we have been doing and hope that you would join us in praying for both our own needs and those of the people we will be working with.

At the moment the main point for prayer is that the specific financial needs which we face would be met. We are still in need of just over £700 ($1000) a month to cover the ministry and living costs, which in this area of South Africa are comparable with the UK. Although food costs are cheaper we will have to pay quite a substantial amount each month for medical insurance and accommodation.

Other important needs are that we would be able to fund a few basic the relocation costs (such as a rental deposit, moving costs, etc) which will be in the region of £1,250 and also that we would be able to get a second hand car. This is particularly important given the levels of crime in the  area as we need to ensure that Rachel can travel safely to and from thebaby safe project. Unfortunately the second hand market is hugely inflated compared to the UK (see Cape Town Ads) and whilst we are hoping to generate around £3000 from the sale of our own car in the UK it is likely that we will need to raise an additional £2000 on top of the other relocation costs in order to be able to buy something reliable.

We thank you for your prayers for these matters and although we now only have a month left before we leave, we know without a doubt that God has called us to do what we are doing and are confident that he will provide in these areas. If any of you do feel called to partner in what we do by supporting this work financially please see the details below on how to give, otherwise we are grateful for your support in bringing these needs before God.

How to Give
In the UK – you can give through our charity partner Stewardship by calling 020 8502 5600 and quoting our account number: 20108438 or by downloading forms on our website. This helps us hugely as we can claim an extra 25% on giving through tax.

International – The easiest way to give for those outside the UK is through paypal on our website. You can donate using the button below or alternatively set up a recurring payment to support us regularly.

We would love the chance to share with everyone the work we are doing
in South Africa, so we are planning to run an event on the:

27th August 2010

The Venue is yet to be confirmed, but will be in Aberdeenshire. We will be sharing stories from our last 4 months in South Africa, explaining what it is exactly that we will be doing day to day for the next 3 years, it will also be a great opportunity to see everyone before we leave! Please RSVP by reply to this email, as we’ll also have some food and drinks!

We are hoping to do something similar in Cornwall before we leave, so watch this space…

Liam & Rachel

The Waiting Game..
Well we wanted to give everyone a quick update as we had talked about this big issue for the last couple of months and asked so many of you to pray. We went to the South African Embassy yesterday morning, queueing in the great british fashion from 8am til opening at 8.45am, we were the first in line. Everything was going well, we were called up and the documents that we have been preparing for the last 2 months were handed over, constituting x-ray reports, trips to the doctor, police checks worth about £600 in admin fees not including this trip to London, a lot was riding on this visa application.

The lady looked down at some paper work and spoke the dreaded words, “No, they won’t accept this!”. She pointed to the sponsoring letter from our missions organisation “All Nations”, “It hasn’t been signed”. So you’ll need to go and get it signed (immediately my mind began running, thinking of a way to get a signed letter from South Africa within the few days we had prepared to be in London). As I looked back at her trying to hide my shock, she said “You’ll need that, and you’ll need to bring back £600 (around $900) per person back with you for the ‘repatriation fee’ (should anything happen, the South African govt. aren’t keen on flying our coffins home unless we’ve paid for the ticket!). Finally she said, “If you can get that back to me by 10.30 (it now being around 9.15) we can take it today”

So frantically we ran to the nearest Internet Cafe and tried to call the office in South Africa that wrote our letter…the lady who had written it was overseas, and the letter had been on her computer! After an agonizing 40mins we printed the letters and ran to the bank, which didn’t open til 10AM!!!! With money in hand we sprinted back through trafalgar sq to Whitehall and handed in everything in disbelief we’d made it in time.

Our soon-made friend across the counter took our details and said, “OK, you’ll have to come back on the 28th”, confused thinking we would get a reply that day “we live 900 miles away in Scotland!” we said, so they allowed us to have the visa’s posted back to us. So here we are, not quite relieved from our anticipation of visa decisions, but we’ve done what we can and will hear in the next 7 days supposedly.

Please continue to pray for the process and we’ll let you know as soon as we do.

Thanks for all your support as we go through the ‘dramatic’ preparations for heading back to South Africa.

All Nations is a family of communities, working together across Africa, partnering with the Holy Spirit to pioneer simple Jesus-centered communities in homes, businesses or anywhere Jesus is not worshiped. – All Nations Southern Africa

VISA – We are very please to report, that our application for an ESTA Visa Waiver has been approved, which give us permission to travel to the US. The Visa Waiver is the way most British citizens travel to the US on holiday, but can also be used for business/voluntary work, and gives us 90 days in the US which covers the lecture phase of our DTS (click here to find out more about what a DTS is).

Click here to download our Newsletter

NEWSLETTER – We recently produced a paper newsletter to help get the word out. The content is very similar to the website and is really aimed at those who don’t find checking websites that easy. It can be opened or downloaded by clicking here. Please feel free to send this to anyone you think may be interested.

Grace Community Church, Cornwall

SENDING CHURCH – Last week we had the pleasure of being able to go back to my (Liam) home church in Cornwall, Grace Community Church in Morval, Cornwall. We had a great time meeting with their global missions team, who were hugely encouraging to us and confirmed that they will be providing prayer support for us as a sending church for which we are hugely grateful.

FUNDS – With the events of the past few weeks behind us, we are gaining a stronger sense of the Lord’s hand in our preparation and this sense is filling us with complete faith in Gods goodness, giving us no doubt at all in His ability and desire to take care of all our needs. Through our saving plan and the incredible generosity of a number of friends we miraculously have half of the course fees for DTS. We still have approximately another £6500 to raise. If you are planning to support us in this way or feel led to support us monthly in missions we are asking people to consider letting us know ahead of time on our pledge form so that we can begin to budget for the costs ahead, this would help us hugely.

US Embassy London

As many of you may be aware by now, we were, unfortunately, turned down for a B-1 US Visa for september. The reason given was a lack of economic ties to the UK (jobs, house, etc) and proof that we planned to return to the UK (as we openly discussed our intention to go to South Africa after our time in the US).

All is not lost though, we still have the option of entering through the visa waiver system, for the duration of our DTS lecture phase. The visa would have given us the flexibility to stay for a longer period, but now we will just have to take an alternative route for any further stay beyond our DTS course.

After being turned down we were quite deflated about the situation and prayed in the park outside the embassy, again offering our plans back to the Lord and asking him the significance of the decision for our plans. We both strongly feel that God has directed us to attend the Kona base  to do our DTS because of the quality of the teaching and focus on ministry in South Africa, and so are fully convinced of his ability to make a way for us to do that. Please pray with us to that end.

UPDATE 2: We have now been accepted to enter through the visa waiver program, click here to read more.

Original Post Below:

We have been trying to negotiate the London US Embassy website, speak with as many people as possible and do all we can to work out the best way to get a Visa to the US. We are trying to secure a 12 month visa for us both, which we have been told is very unlikely, but as we are learning as we prepare for DTS God seems to be going ahead of us in things, so we are prayerfully hoping that this will be the same.

To explain, currently the US is particularly difficult to enter for any period of time, we have heard quite a few stories of people being turned away, and being told thye have applied for the wrong visa. We have done everything we can to research and wil be preparing over the next few weeks.

We have a Visa Interview on July 9th in London, we would appreciate it if you would pray for us as we prepare for this and during the interview itself if  you are able! To make it clear, if we were turned down for this visa it would put our chances of being able to enter the US for DTS into serious jeopardy.

In 2009 we took part in a YWAM (Youth with a Mission) DTS which was linked to a great ministry our friends Jeff and Beth Reid run called Community Transformations.

Community Transformations train and send out short term missionaries to focus locations (currently Cape Town, South Africa, Boulder ,Co.  and New York City), engaging with long term missionaries and churches to see transformation in the communities they work in.  We think very highly of the work our friends do, and our understanding and passion in how to do missions are very much the same. Jeff and Bethany are full time voluntary staff members with YWAM, to find out more about them and ways to support them head over to their website here.

All ministries which students of their DTS join or start must be transformation focused and must share Jesus. This means that instead of building a house, Community Transformations will find locals and teach them how to build a house, sharing Jesus and discipling them as they go.

This enables them to multiply what they learned, provide for their families, and understand that Jesus is not only going to church but is every part of life.

Below is the Vision of Community Transformations:

“Imagine a reversal of AIDS statistics in South Africa or a dramatic drop in crime in New York City. Imagine communities stepping out of poverty because they have been taught how to farm and grow their own food.  Imagine major corporations closing child-r sweatshops because of a newfound desire to treat employees with dignity, no matter what their age or race.”

Our Porta-Cottage!

When we really felt that God has asked us to start out in missions by going to DTS we started looking at the implications, both practical and financial, and one of the things that became immediately apparent is that we weren’t going to be able to raise the money just by saving what little didn’t go out on bills.

Our biggest outgoing was the house we were renting, we found it before we got married and it turned out to be an amazing house for the first year of marriage, in fact, it was way more than we needed, but while we had it we enjoyed using the dining room to entertain, and the spare room for friends to stay, but we both knew that if we expected God to provide for us to go to DTS and beyond, we should do everything in our power to save!

And so, after asking friends of ours, they agreed to let us move into a small annex area of their house.

It has a bathroom, kitchen area, and a lounge/bedroom. Its about one and a half times bigger than our old lounge, and has a flat roof, so when it rains it sounds like you are sleeping under a tin roof, but its actually been quite comfortable and cosy, and much less upkeep than our last place, and most important of all it allows us to save much more every month than our last place.

Lecture Phase

The DTS is YWAM’s basic training program, an introduction to the values and culture of the movement and a unique opportunity to explore God’s purpose for your life.  It is offered at hundreds of YWAM centres around the world.

Being in a Discipleship Training School (DTS) is more than just learning statistics about the suffering people of the world. It’s about gaining a heart for those people, children of God, who have faces and dreams and passions.

(Source: YWAM)

DTS stands for Discipleship training school, here is a bit more information about the one in Kona that we will be attending:

The DTS lecture phase
The school includes distinct sessions taught by speakers includes topics such as:

• The character and ways of God
  

  YWAM's University of the Nations

• How to hear the voice of God
• The power of forgiveness and repentance
• YWAM Foundational Values
• Relationships
• Personal character development
• Spiritual warfare
• Evangelism and missions
• Cross-cultural ministry

The outreach phase
Outreach doesn’t just happen during the overseas field assignment. It begins on the Kona campus. The DTS give lots of ways for students to put their faith into action around the local community, long before we board planes for “outreach.” The contribution each student brings will help shape the school itself.

The purpose of the DTS

Ohana Court, U of N Kona

1. To equip people of various ages and levels of spiritual maturity to grow in their relationship with God and develop Christ-like character.

2. To awaken in our students a burden for the world’s lost and hurting people, showing them how they can be an influence for redemptive change in whatever job or country or sphere of society God may call them to serve in.

3. To help students build a solid Biblical foundation for life, including an understanding of the nature and character of God and how to apply his truth and wisdom in everyday life.

4. To challenge Christian men and women to become active in service to their local church, their local community and in world missions and evangelism.

5. To impart an understanding of Youth With A Mission International, its foundational values, calling and opportunities for service.

The community classroom
DTS students’ learning experience goes way beyond the classroom. Much of our cross-cultural learning comes from living “in community” with students and staff from many nations. We regularly eat together, pray and worship together, and get together for various social and educational activities. Each student also serves the community through ten hours a week of essential campus work (Grounds keeping, maintenance, kitchen, hospitality, office support, etc.).

The Kona campus is a family friendly location with a variety of services and

A Recent DTS Class at UofN Kona

facilities for students with children. During class the children of our DTS students are encouraged to participate in our Foundation School. Some quarters we also offer English as a Second Language training for kids.

A fluid and innovative approach
The DTS has a regular weekly schedule of corporate teaching sessions, but there will also be times when the class is split into smaller groupings according to age, gender, interests, calling or needs. We purposely hold the structure and form lightly because we want God to be able to do something new and innovative with us.

We want this school to be integrated, interactive and dynamic. We will offer optional sessions on a variety of topics, and we expect that there will be many student-initiated activities.