Follow Luke and Bethany: Big News!! (and no, Bethany's not pregnant ha ha!)

Hey everybody!

Our time in the states is just about over!! Two months just isn’t enough to hang with so many beautiful people!

As I write this, I am looking out of the terminal windows at Newark Airport with the smoky Manhattan skyline in the distance. We are on a layover here just before our connection and the last leg of our trip… to Rhode Island to visit my family! We are stoked! Then we head back to the Southland of the Holy Spirit (as it was named by the first settlers down under)… Australia.

Well, as some have you have heard, God has crazy new things in store for Bethany and I! For those who haven’t heard…we just wanted to explain a little bit of what God is doing with us.

When we moved to Australia, we felt like the Lord said “put roots down and invest in people’s lives” and that’s what we’ve been doing the last year and a half. We’ve been discipling and mentoring DTS students. We have absolutely loved seeing God radically transform each of their lives in unique and powerful ways!

However, as the Lord has seen fit, He has gradually been giving us more and more influence and responsibility within the DTS program. To give the full picture of what God has done…I have to go back to our first visit to Australia when we originally came to “spy out the land”. Bethany and I knew that God was calling us to live in Australia but we didn’t know where exactly. So, we visited a few different places, the first of which was the YWAM base on the Sunshine Coast. Almost everyone involved with DTS happened to be on outreach at that point but we did manage to catch a breakfast meeting with a guy named Ryan who was/is the DTS director.

Now, I have to give a little backstory here. Ryan and his wife Christen are from Canada and have 2 kids. They came to Australia 5 years ago and took leadership over the whole DTS department. But God had put a dream in their hearts to go and live and work as missionaries amongst the muslims of Morocco, in North Africa. However they had not felt released to go to Morocco because there was no one to take their place as DTS directors when they left. They felt like the Lord would raise someone up to carry the torch in their stead but after 5 years – none materialized. There had been a few individuals that had looked promising but each of them left YWAM Sunshine Coast to follow their own pursuits…university, marriage, other ministries etc. They fought back discouragement. How long would it be until God opened the door to go?

Well, there we were – Bethany, Ryan, and myself – having breakfast together. We instantly connected on so many levels; it was awesome. But the coolest thing was, while we were talking, Ryan felt like God said to him: “here are your replacements”. We had no idea…until he told us a few weeks later through an email!! Ha ha! We hadn’t even led an outreach at that point, never mind taking over the whole DTS department!! It seemed crazy to us but we had this deep, abiding peace the whole time. We just decided to jump off the cliff and trust God.

So, this last year and a half has been incredible. We staffed 2 DTS’s and led outreaches to Taiwan, Thailand, and India. Then we had the opportunity to not only staff a DTS (where we focus on discipling the students) but to plan, organize, and lead an entire DTS (where we focus on pouring into the staff team, that in turn disciple the students). This was a big change of role for us but one that we really enjoyed!

So, the BIG NEWS is…(drumroll please) we will be taking on the role of DTS DIRECTOR this upcoming year – January 2013! Woo hoo! It seemed totally crazy to us at first but we know that God has called and prepared us for this! We will still be involved in missions and discipleship just like before but we will have more of a pastoral/overseeing/organizing role.

We would LOVE your prayers as we make this transition!

Please pray:

-- that God would open up a cheap, nice place for us to live (we live in YWAM housing at the moment but would love to have our own place!)

-- for our marriage…that we would love one another like Christ loves us. Also, that we would have closeness and intimacy even in busy and stressful times.

-- that we would have deep, abiding, intimacy with Jesus, our Lord.

-- that we would have wisdom from on high to lead and disciple others and that we would have prophetic vision of what God is doing and where he wants to take us as a DTS crew.

-- that we would be able to finish (by God’s grace) these difficult and annoying government certification courses we have to take to work with YWAM Australia. This has been a HUGE source of frustration for reasons I won’t burden you with but we need God’s help to get through this…with a good attitude.

-- that NATIONS would know the love of the one and only God and Savior…Jesus Christ through our witness!!!

Here are a few pics from our travels: