Hey everyone!
First of all I want to thank all of you for reading this, for spending some time in reading about my life. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
So, my first step on surrendering my life to God: DTS (Discipleship Training School)
First off, let me explain a little about DTS and
YWAM (Youth With A Mission). YWAM is an international volunteer movement of Christians of different backgrounds, cultures and Christian traditions, dedicated to serving Jesus throughout the world. It's purpose is to know God and make Him known.
DTS is a school YWAM offers with the purpose of training young people to be missionaries and then sends them for short term missions all over the world. It consists of 3 months of what is called a lecture phase, and then about another 3 months of "outreach". During lecture phase, you have different speakers coming in every week, (at least my school did), and you pretty much get wrecked... in a good way! You just get bombarded with truth and love. I learned so much... But that's not all! Then comes "outreach". This is where you apply everything you've learned. Basically, they send you with a team, to the outreach location of your choosing to be a missionary. The leaders pray a lot about it and decide which these will be.
Me, I was blessed with the opportunity of doing my DTS in
University of the Nations in Kona, Hawaii. It was a real blessing. I have God and my parents to thank for supporting me all through that. The school I chose is called
Fire & Fragrance. Our first week of lecture was like an intense course on how much God loves us... completely mind-blowing. We have no idea. We cannot even begin to fathom how big His love is. That was perfect to get started. Along came many more lectures just as useful. In F&F, you are submerged in a culture of prayer, worship and intercession. This is essential for reaching out to the nations, and pretty much for life as well. Sad that these 3 months had to come to an end...
Outreach, the moment of truth. God told me to go to Haiti, therefore I chose Haiti. When God speaks clearly, you better listen... The way He told me to go there was through a dream, and a picture. I was in the prayer room for our daily worship and prayer time one day, and as I was asking the Lord where He wanted me to go, when all of a sudden I got hit with a picture in my mind of a black kid crying. And if that wasn't clear enough for me (which it wasn't..), I afterwards got a dream where I was in a house and this family, all dressed in the type of clothes you see voodoo people dressed in movies, starts coming up to me. So in my dream, i start rebuking and binding in the name of Jesus. Next thing I know, the mother in the family starts shriveling up and slithering away from me like a snake. Intense huh? So yeah, Haiti it is!
Me and my team (we were 10) got there and we had no idea what was coming. What we did was we submitted ourselves to whatever the
YWAM base in St. Marc needed of us to do. I gotta say, it was stretching, we had to do a lot of dying to ourselves. But in the end, because of the tough moments, it got me so much closer to Christ.
- So we did some base maintenance such as mowing the lawn, and moving rocks... lots of rocks, and a lot more. It was fun though!
- We also got to stay every other week in one of the tent cities of victims who escaped from Port-au-Prince after the earthquake. We got to build relationship with them and minister to them. One of the most important things we did was just to get to love on the kids, something they don't get very often. We had VBS's (vacation bible school) with the kids of the community and shared stories from the bible with them and did some crafts with them. They loved the crafts, it meant so much to them, and the crafts were just like bracelets, and flowers made out of paper and simple stuff like that. They don't have much so they cherished that so much. We also held English classes for the whole community. It was so gratifying to see all those serious and strict adults laughing as they sang the ABC song with us. They were really grateful. We got to provide jobs for them paid by YWAM St. Marc. This was of great importance, to start giving them a mindset of earning what you get, and to start breaking the mindset of having to rely on foreign aid. We did several more things in this tent city, like opening a nursery for the little kids, worshiping with the community, gave testimonies, etc...
- We also got to partner with an organization called Homes of Hope and take part in the building of 2 houses for people who really needed them. Awesome experience.
- We got to go to the poorest community in Haiti, in other words poorest community in the western hemisphere. We went there a couple of times to walk around and pray for people and we held a VBS there for about 200 kids the first day and the second day we held a play of Jesus' life in front of this time 400 kids... And then we prayed for each and everyone of them individually. They were all lining up so anxiously for prayer. It was so moving. After that, we returned a couple days later with food for all of the families there. They were so thankful. We did a lot more, like door-to-door evangelism, and we led a lot of people to Christ who were eager to receive him.
Yet outreach too, had to come to an end. So we went back to Hawaii for "Debrief Week", where all the teams meet up with our school leaders (which are amazing) and talk about the whole experience. It was so good to see all of my friends from Kona again. We also had some lectures on how to re-enter your home without falling back in your relationship with Jesus. Something I feared a lot... falling back when I got home...
Well debrief is over. Just like that. And after 2 long days of traveling, hello Costa Rica, hello family, hello good food. But little did my parents know, that a couple of days before going back home I had made the decision of doing Fire & Fragrance phase 2: School of Revival and reformation. God has blessed me with such good parents, there's no words to describe... and they are totally supportive about me going to get closer to God. Phase 2 is basically a more intense and in-depth DTS. I feel like this is exactly what I need. So in exactly 2 weeks from today, I'll be leaving for Kona. Again. But all of this, I'm doing by faith, because I still don't have all the finances. Right after I made my decision, I was so scared and worried about how I would raise the money for this. I was so nervous about whether I should do it or not. For a couple of days I wrestled with this until a friend gave me this word:
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear,
is not life more important than food,
and the body more important than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air;
they do not sow or reap or store away in barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable then they?"
Mathew 6:25-26
That really put my mind at ease.. Now I just can't wait to see how God will provide.
So right now I'm in Costa Rica, and I am trying to raise support. So if you feel led by God to donate to make this possible, please do. Find out how to donate
here.
I love you all!
-Julio-
P.S.
Here's a little video about our missions trip to Haiti
