Follow Luke and Bethany: Back in Oz...and hitting the ground running!

Hey guys!

So apparently our last post glitched and only showed “Goodbye America” but none of the content…oh well.

We’ve been back in Australia now for a few weeks after an awesome time in the states with friends and family. Thank you everyone for all your love and hospitality…it was so fun to enjoy a bit of the American summer with you!!

It is now winter in Australia…and a little chilly. Its kind of a nice change as we’ve been doing the endless summer for several months this year. We had a really hot summer in Oz and just as it was starting to cool off we went to America and had 6 more weeks of summer!

Coming back, we really hit the ground running. We landed in Australia and within a few days all of our outreach teams returned from all over the world for the final week of their DTS –debriefing week. This is a time for all the students and staff to process everything that God has done in and through them over the last 5 months, to rest and to begin to transition to what is next. Bethany and I ran the week with the intention of really helping students take the next step with God and not simply returning home to life as it was before. We want students to be “ruined for the ordinary”! God has such big dreams for our lives but many of us fail to lay hold of them because of fear or simply not taking the practical steps to get there. We have the students set up a meeting with a mentor they’ve selected from back home. This person can help keep them accountable on goals they’ve made, help them continue to process and push them to take the practical steps they’ve planned.

Meanwhile, I was working every other free moment I had on submitting all of the forms and documents required for our Permanent Residency application. I’d been working on this for several months but the deadline was the end of the lecture week! Thankfully, I got it all in on time!

The students graduated that Friday night and it was incredible! A bunch of students shared testimonies of how God had changed their lives over the last 5 months.

One story stood out to me:

One of our students, Mariah shared how when she came to DTS she had been suffering from depression for almost 4 years. She was suicidal and said that not a day went by where she didn’t want to kill herself. She was on loads of anti-depressants but none of it was helping. A few weeks into DTS it became clear that she was really struggling. She hated every lecture and every prayer time…in fact she didn’t want to talk to God at all. But she wanted to be free. Bethany and a few girls approached her and said they wanted to help. They had a prayer time where she just let go of unforgiveness and bitterness that she was holding against people who had hurt her. It didn’t make what they did ok, but Jesus said that we need to forgive from the heart…and she did. She balled her eyes out and forgave a list of people. And after a few hours of praying and confessing stuff she was exhausted, so she went to sleep. When she woke up she was free! She said she felt like a brand new person – delivered! Set free! Her depression was gone. She never had another suicidal thought. She could pray. She enjoyed lectures and began to really grow! On outreach she got to see other people set free in the same way! You can’t give away what you don’t have…and she had freedom!

Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” John 14:6

And “…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” John 8:32

Jesus is so awesome! Everyone could see that her life would never be the same again!