2024 DTS - Outreach & closer of the school

Hello everyone :)! 

We are back in Switzerland after 2 month in North Africa and finishing up the DTS during the final week back in Switzerland.

With this Newsletter we would like to share with you some of the ministry updates and prayer requests from the past two and a half months. 

We were able to experience once again that God is indeed alive, nothing is impossible, and that He is a loving God in Switzerland, in North Africa and all over the world. In amazing ways, God led a Syrian refugee Muslim woman to turn to the Lord, and He comforted and encouraged Sudanese refugee women by healing them.

Our first Missions trip as a couple was a special experience for us, and it reminded us of how much we love the Nations and the work we are able to do. It also taught us that when we don't give up and pray, God works.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Matthew 28:19-20

1. North Africa Outreach

Both of us have been in North Africa before and returning to the land after several years was very special. We were able to see many of the seeds we had planted grow, and we were even able to harvest some of them. 

We spent two months in North Africa where we ministered in the following ways.

Church Ministry	Sudanese Refugee Center Ministry	Sudanese Refugee School Ministry	Refugee Home Visit
Alpha Course	Youth Bible Study Group	Bedouin Ministry	Elderly Home Ministry
Special Needs Ministry	Street Kids Ministry

Through these ministries, we were able to meet a total of 1,225 people, share God's love in a variety of ways, and experience two people giving their lives to Jesus! All glory to God!

We want to share with you a few testimonies of the many amazing things we've experienced. These are the fruits of your prayers, and we can't wait to share the stories with you! :)

A. Salvation

North Africa is home to refugees from Syria and Sudan who have fled war. Of the 250,000 refugees living in North Africa, 180,000 are from Syria and Sudan.The Syrian refugees are almost all Muslim, and the Sudanese refugees are predominantly Christian, but there are also Muslims.

Our team visited on a weekly basis refugee families from Sudan and Syria.

Not every visit was easy, as the Syrian refugees, the majority of whom are Muslim, would love to talk about casual things but shut down when we started talking about Jesus and the gospel. Muslims consider Jesus to be the second most important prophet after Muhammad, but they also believe that God took Jesus to heaven before he died on the cross and sent someone who looked like Jesus to die in his place. They also strongly reject the Trinity, so whenever we shared the gospel, the conversation would often turn into a theological debate and then fizzle out.

But one day, Jana visited the home of a Syrian woman and upon arriving at her home, she remembered that this was the same family she had visited when she came to North Africa three years earlier. Back then, she had the opportunity to talk to Halla about Jesus because Jesus had appeared in her dreams, so she was open to learning more about Him, but she still didn't want to accept Him as her Savior.

But over the past three years, numerous teams have visited this home, sharing God's love in different ways, and we could tell that her heart was really open during this visit, so we had the opportunity to talk freely about the gospel, which led to a conversation about the story of Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3 which talks about the meaning of being born again and the decision to accept Jesus as your Lord and savior.  

And when we asked her if she wanted to receive Jesus into her heart, she finally said, "Yes!" She prayed a prayer of acceptance with us, and when we prayed for her afterward, she broke down in tears. After the prayer, we asked her how it felt to accept Jesus in her heart, and she shared that she felt like a heavy weight had been lifted off her shoulders and that she had a great sense of peace and joy.

Our team has returned to Switzerland, but we are looking forward to continuing to visit her with the local ministry team we worked with, reading and studying the Bible with her and leading her to a deeper relationship with God. Please keep Halla in your prayers!

Seeing fruits in Muslim countries is not easy to see, but Halla's salvation has taught us once again that God can use our prayers in amazing ways.

Sometimes our ministry is about planting the first seeds, sometimes it's about watering and tending to the seeds that have already been planted, and sometimes it's about harvesting the fruit that others have been watering and tending to!

Over the past 15 years, YWAM Lausanne has sent numerous teams to this Nation to serve and share the gospel with the many refugee families, and we have many more teams coming to share God's love with them. We ask that you pray for this ministry and for all the Muslim families we have met through our time.

In Muslim Nations, we can't expect to change hearts by winning theological arguments, so pray that through the service and love of the many teams who will be visiting them in the coming days, they will taste and experience the love of Jesus, and that by the supernatural work of God, they will encounter Jesus in dreams that will open their hard hearts.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Revelation 3:20

The 2 woman who got healed

B. Healing

During one of the Sudanese home visits we met 2 sick Sudanese women.

It's not easy for Sudanese refugees to find work in North Africa. Even if they would have a degree most of the women get only a job as a housekeeper. 

The woman we met during our home visit had to quit her job as a housekeeper because she developed an illness that made her body sick: whenever her hands or arms touched water, her skin would burn like it was on fire. The pain was too painful and therefore she was most of the days at home. 

When our team visited this home, we felt God was telling us to pray for this woman's hands to be healed, so we all laid hands on her and prayed for healing. After praying, she told us that her hands feel better, so we wanted to put her hand in the water to see if it was really healed. We brought a bucket of water and carefully put her hand in, and to our surprise, all the pain was completely gone!

The other woman who was in the house with us didn't seem very interested in the conversation and prayer we were having, but she was so amazed at the healing that she asked us to pray for her as well, as she has joint pain from head to toe and was in constant pain from day to day.

Our team laid hands on her as well and prayed twice that God would take away all the pain. After the prayer, she said to us, “as you were laying hands on my back, it felt like a cold shower was flowing over my back and then all the pain left!”

Praise the LORD!

The Holy Spirit worked through us in amazing ways. The Holy Spirit taught us that He doesn't work through people with special abilities and gifts, but He can work through ordinary people like you and me. 

Of course, there were countless people we prayed for healing during our ministry that we hadn't seen fruit "yet," but we trust that God works in His time and in His way, and we will not stop praying for healings and miraculous to happen!

We hope that for these two Sudanese women, the miracle they experienced was not just a mysterious experience. We pray that trough the miracle they are able to grow deeper in their faith and live a life of a daily fellowship with God.

And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. James 5:15

C. Hiking Mountain Sinai

On top of Mountain Sinai

About halfway through our outreach, we had the opportunity to hike up Mountain Sinai.

We started climbing at 1:30 a.m. and reached the top around 5 a.m., an hour before sunrise. As the sun rose, the mountain we had climbed began to reveal itself, and we could see the greatness and awesomeness of God in its beauty and overwhelming majesty.

As we watched the sun rise, we played worship songs and worshiped God together. It was such an amazing experience to be able to worship God while watching the sun rise from the top of Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai was the place where God gave the Israelites a new identity. After hundreds of years of slavery, God made this covenant at Mount Sinai that Israel would no longer be slaves, but would be God's possession, priests, and holy people. Not only that, but Mount Sinai was where God gave Moses his mission, where he gave Israel the Ten Commandments. And Mount Sinai was a place where God trained the Israelites to live as His people.

As we worshiped God on the top of Mount Sinai, we were able to reflect on the significance of Mount Sinai in our lives today. What a privilege it was to stand here and worship God in our new identity as "Children of God". We were once "Slaves to sin,", but by the free grace of Jesus, we have become "Children of God”.

D. Prayer

We would like to ask you to continue to pray for North Africa, Sudan, and Syria. As we shared in our testimonies, our prayers are not empty words but we believe that there is power in our prayers. 

The Sudanese refugee community living in North Africa is facing great hardship. Many have fled Sudan to survive the war and arrived in North Africa, but many say life in North Africa is worse than life in prison.

In North Africa, Sudanese refugees who are black face a lot of discrimination, unlike Syrian refugees who are Arab. When they go to school, many North Africans throw stones at them, curse them, or spit on them. They run over Sudanese people on the street with motorcycles for no reason. 

Sudanese refugees can barely make it through the day. No matter what education or work experience they have, they can only work as housekeepers. Many of the children who should be learning and growing up in school have no school to attend as they do not have the money to be able to pay for the school fees.

Seeing these hardships was for sure heavy and it was not always easy to love the people living in North Africa. 

We asked God to give us more of His heart, to help us see the people of this land through His eyes. And  God showed us that He sees it all, He hears the cries, and that He loves every single person living in North Africa. In this way, we learned the heart of our Heavenly Father.

There's no prison wall You can't break through 

No mountain You can't move, all things are possible

There's no broken body you can't raise

No soul that You can't save, all things are possible. 

The darkest night, You can light it up You can light it up, oh God of revival. 

Let hope arise, death is overcome

You've already won, oh God of revival

Come awaken Your people, come awaken Your city

Oh God of revival, pour it out, pour it out

Every stronghold will crumbleand I hear the chains hit the ground

Oh God of revival, pour it out, pour it out

2. Final week

Graduation Night

The Discipleship Training school has 3 different phases. The first 3 months are more a classroom setting of hearing different lectures and learning about who God is. Then we spent about 2 months in another Nation before we all come back together for a final week in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

During this time, we share with each other what God has been doing in the Nations we went for the outreach, give some Reports to the community, and prepare to go out into the world after the DTS training is over with lectures on how we are to live as disciples of Christ in the sphere God is calling us.

Even during this short week, God continued to work in the lives of the students in amazing ways, and we could see how amazingly God had changed their life's. Here a short summary of what we were able to see and experince during the last 6 months.

Transformation is something so beautiful to witness and we are beyond blessed that we had the honour and privilege to walk alongside 21 amazing students over the last 6 month!

For I am about to do something NEW. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. Isaiah 43:19

God is a God who is transforming us as we say yes to him and this is what we were able to witness and see. God’s unconditional love was falling afresh on each one of us, forgiveness took place and we were able to receive the freedom Jesus has promised us! And the most beautiful thing, God is not done! He is and will keep working in our lives as we say daily yes to him!

Let our daily goal be:

“To be with Jesus, to become like Him, and do as He did” - John Mark Comor.

3. What's next

Currently we are on a break for about 10 days where we spend some time with my family and friends and supporters before we will jump back into ministry.

During the summer session, YWAM Lausanne will host several schools including  the DNA Seminar, which is a 2 weeks seminar talking about the history, vision, values and foundations of YWAM.  About 300 students from around the world are expected to attend this seminar, and nearly 150 students will be attending the schools offered during the summer session. YWAM Lausanne is also sending a larger group to the Olympic games in Paris where we hope and trust to share the gospel with travelers from around the world who will be there to watch the games.

Our main ministry will be at the campus where we will help and support in several areas in the office. We are looking forward to this summer season and what God has in store for each one of us. 

4. Missions-Night, 14.09.2024

We are currenlty organising a Misisons night in Zurich where we love to share more in person of what we are doing, our vision and how you can be a part of it. If you are interested to join please let us know so we can send you the details.

Thank you

Thank you again to everyone who has been praying and supporting us :) We can't tell you how much it encourages us in the midst of our work to know that someone is listening, caring, and praying for us! 

Some specific prayer requests: 

1. pray that the students who attended this discipleship school will continue to live as disciples of Jesus wherever they are called.

2. Pray that the Muslims we have met through our ministry in North Africa would come to know Jesus and have their lives transformed.

3. Pray that God would give strength and hope to the Sudanese refugees in North Africa to overcome their difficult circumstances.

4. Pray for our health as Seongeun is fighitng against a cough over 3 month already.

How to support us: we have new Bank-details which you can find another te following link

https://janastettler9.wixsite.com/my-story/general-1

Thank you so much.

Much love 

Jana & SeongEun Kwon