eTouch is written mainly for the 4 to 5 million-strong family of former YWAMers ~ plus all of our many friends who love and support the mission.
Following is a little taste of the exposé that you’ve been waiting for, the book that names names and blasts the lid off some of the missionary-mythconceptions that are rampant in our day! This profound and pithy page-turner will grip you right to the end!
[Oi gente! Pretty cool intro, eh? But I have to admit I wrote it myself. Ed]
Content in a Tent
Our family loved camping, but this was ridiculous – even if it was Hawaii. Mere days after leaving our comfortable home in Montreal with visions of palm trees and white sand beaches, we discovered that for the next three months, “home” was to be an old, leaky, olive-green army tent. It was pitched over a patch of lava rock made slightly less jagged and lumpy by a musty carpet we had scrounged up. The only furniture that graced the sorry-looking shelter was iron bunk beds, until we added some storage “cabinets” fashioned from fruit crates from a local grocery store, plus a couple of unwanted school chairs from a bygone era. So this was what missionary training was all about.
Some sixty Youth With A Mission (YWAM) trainees – both families and singles – shared a lone cold-water shower, which was nothing more than a hose slung over a tarpaper frame. We also shared two toilets that defy description. Rather than assign one to each gender, they were divided according to bodily functions. To the left was the “Liquids Only” toilet, whose contents were channeled straight down into a lava tube, to be reduced to steam in the molten bowels of the volcano upon which we now lived. To the right was the “Solids Only” receptacle, whose contents were incinerated daily in a diesel-fuelled fire.
But we were in paradise, right? We could put up with minor inconveniences, such as the rain that fell frequently on what we laughingly called a farm, and the temperature that dipped into the fifties most nights because we were two thousand feet above sea level on the side of an inactive volcano. And living in a tent had its advantages. It had taken Donna, my wife, a full day each week to clean our four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Montreal. Now it took her five minutes to sweep the lumpy rug, which served as a playground for mice, cockroaches, and poisonous centipedes.
Challenging though it sounds, I loved every minute of it. For the first time in my life I knew for certain that our family – me and Donna and our children, Laurie (fourteen), Julie (twelve), Michelle (eight), and Peter Jr. (six) – were right in the centre of God’s will. What a contrast to how I had lived my first forty-two years on earth!
To read the ‘rest of the story’ you can obtain, “The Last Thing I’d Ever Do!” While you’re at it, get extra copies as great Christmas gifts. Go to YWAM Publishingand type “The Last Thing” into the search.
Live so as to be missed when dead – Robert McCheyne
Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil; it has no point
The best things in life are not things
Never wrestle with a pig; you both get dirty, but the pig likes it
A bull in a china shop isn’t all bad; sacred cows get broken
A friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be somewhere else.
Some Letters We Get
I’m in shock; last month we received an email shouting, “Unsubscribe me!” (I need prayer, I’m feeling rejected. Ed)
eTouch just made me smile and miss you guys! 🙂 I loved Peter’s thoughts on taking walks & iPods, music (BTW, I like Yanni too), and hearing about his father’s legacy in China, a mixing of insight and humor, eh? Donna, your energy and passion for people never diminishes! I enjoyed hearing about Gleanings for the Hungry and all that is going on there, I could sense your excitement. John & Jana Knoch
I absolutely loved your very amusing ’40lb reel-to-reel tape recorder-in-a-backpack’ analogy, since I used to play with those as a kid. I also love the Beatles’ Michelle song too, and Garrison Keillor is indeed a total hoot! I myself try to tune him in (Prairie Home Companion), at five pm every Saturday night that I can. Maybe it also helps that I’m Norwegian—like him. Brent Hegle
Hi Donna and ‘Ol-what’s-his-name.’ Lynn Battermann
Donna’s Corner
A Letter To Our Ohana
Dear Ohana (Hawaiian for Family),
We will be part of an Associates Gathering here in Kona next week. YWAM Associates as a ministry is really connecting ‘family,’ to encourage, strengthen, comfort and exhort one another. The family of God is made up of those who are desiring to do the Father’s will. (Mark 3:34-35)
Following the Gathering we will have a ‘StaffLink’ meeting of many of our Associates co-workers from several nations, sharing what God is doing, but also waiting on, and listening to, our Father as to what is on His heart for this ministry. There is a wonderful convergence of the Associates family happening. We are very excited as to how we can enlarge our borders and stretch our tent pegs. (Isaiah 54:2-3)
In January Peter and I will be co-leading an Oha Loa DTS (All Nations-All Generations) with our Samoan ‘son’ and his wife, Ieru and Karen To’omua. Oha Loa is the Hawaiian name for ‘extended family.’
Whenever we have a DTS or an Associates Gathering, the first thing, as in any family, is that people need to feel like they BELONG. The enemy always tries to isolate us and then he can feed us lies. When we’re together as family, we listen to truth, because Jesus said, the truth will set us free. (John 8:31-32,36)
We take time to share with each other what we BELIEVE God is saying, and pray for each other. When we believe together, His purposes will be fulfilled and His vision will not be aborted. When we feel like we belong and we believe together, then we can fulfill God’s purposes.
The enemy is out to destroy the family. He hates the family of God because he knows we will reproduce physically and most important spiritually, when we come together as one. The enemy gets man to abort children, the seeds God has planted and also to abort what God has planted spiritually in man’s heart. He loves divorce, which God hates, because God knows the pain it will cause the children.
When elders of a church split, the enemy loves that too, because then he can feed lies to the ‘children’ who are left behind. In both situations—abortion and church splits—people take sides. God’s view is “BE family.” BEHAVE like the family that God originally designed. Not working for Him but walking with Him.
What amazing days we’re living in. His Kingdom is going to be established and we’ll know each other by the Spirit, not by our works. Out of intimacy with Him and each other will come our ministry. His works will be established as we walk together in the Spirit, not competing or comparing but encouraging, strengthening, comforting and exhorting.
Love and Blessings,
And Finally . . .
There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable. Wisdom is knowing not include it in a fruit salad. [Maybe a little common sense would help. Ed]
Editor
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