It’s official, I’m a Word by Heart Student!
Last year Paul Childers (Jackson’s leader, our campus director and who founded Word by Heart together with Bruce Kuhn, former broadway actor) asked me to pray about being a student. It was definitely not on my radar but when I prayed the Lord gave me 2 scriptures that each had “word” and “heart” in them. I was still not convinced and very concerned about how Kyndness would do if I would spend all the mornings in class. We prayed about asking a friend to babysit and the campus calls this category a “nanny”. Dec 1st I woke up with the impression I was to ask our friend Moriah McClure who had been here before with her family and been an amazing help with the children when Jackson was traveling last February. She is getting ready to do DTS in April and said YES to come 3 months earlier to serve our family! This is such a blessing and it was such a confirmation that I should do this school.
So in January I started. And we are learning the Gospel of Luke by heart. I chose to do this in Dutch- my mother tongue because I really want to be able to share the stories when I go back home. We recently finished week 4 and I already have about 23 minutes worth of stories to share. It is word-for-word the Gospel of Luke, and you learn to tell it as if you were there seeing it all.
The school is beyond anything I imagined.
I went into it more rationally- this is “good” school to do and so on. But it has been so life giving. So rich to spend so much time in the Word of God and so refreshing as well. The teachers take us into in-depth background discussions where we ask ourselves questions like: “how would Jesus have said “father forgive them, for they know not what to do?”” Would he have seen a coming judgment, or …?
And we also reflect on the depth of “classic” stories like Zaccheus- how ridiculous it was for an adult man to run ahead and climb a tree (but he was just so eager to see Jesus!) and then how precious it was that Jesus called him by name and that he was so transformed in sharp contrast to the crowd who muttered ‘he has gone to the home of a sinner”. And we not only learn to tell the stories, but also meditate on what that means for us- what can we learn from these stories that really happened?
I’m so grateful for this opportunity to be engaging in the scriptures so intensely. Kyndness and Moriah have been bonding well and he has gotten used to the routine of mommy being gone in the mornings. The girls don’t notice it much as I have class during their school hours, but REJoyce does remind me every morning “Listen good to your teacher, mommy!”
YWAM BATTAMBANG CAMBODIA
Jackson has just returned from YWAM Battambang Cambodia where he had an incredible time at the YWAM DNA event as he represented Word by Heart. He had several opportunities to present and give workshops as well.
As a result of this time there are many YWAM campuses in Asia who are interested in running the Word by Heart training. So my husband will be helping to train up staff who will go to these nations and multiply the school there as well as take more trips for seminars and presentations.
We were all thrilled to pick daddy up from the airport and happy to have him back with us.
Comments are closed