September Newsletter

Shalom! Thank you so much for taking the time to read our newest Newsletter.

As always, we want to say thank you for all you support through prayer and giving!

The summer semester started back in July and we just finished the quarter by celebrating what the complission of several schools.

This coming Thursday we have the new students arriving for our September schools.

The Lord has been so faithful during the quarter and we have so many things to be greatful for.

We love to share some of the highlights over the last few month.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2:2)

1. Ministry

We had a spectacular and special semester. In addition to our regular schools, we had a leadership school called Leadership Training School (LTS), which included many of the leaders who serve in leadership roles at YWAM bases all around the world. Many of our leaders came with their families, so the base was full of children, and we had over 250 students and staff participating in various schools and ministries. With nearly double the number of students compared to our usual 100-150 students, our community was much more diverse.

SeongEun’s Ministry

SeongEun was able to serve this quarter in the role of overseeing the worship ministry at the base, organizing and leading the practical ministry teams throughout the community, and serving with Jana in our QLT (Quarter Leadership Team).

This quarter, he stepped into the role of overseeing the entire worship ministry of YWAM Lausanne along with one other staff member, as the leaders who lead this team before transitoned our of YWAM Lausanne after nearly 20 years to pursue a new call to church ministry.

Every student at YWAM Lausanne has 1.5 hours of Practical Ministry each day, serving in variety of ministries. There are no paid staff at the YWAM base, so everything from breakfast, lunch, and dinner preparation, dishwashing, housekeeping, maintenance, baking, hospitality, communication, and office work is done by the staff and students. His role this quarter has been to organize these Practical Ministry teams and tasks, and to manage the teams to keep the base running.

SeongEun leading worship in the city of Lausanne during our Local outreach event called Kingcome come. 

Jana’s Ministry

I helped to keep the base running this semester by handling housing allocations, working in human resources, managing the staff schedules, and distributing people to different departments as needed.

With nearly 250 students and staff at our Campus it needed a good coordination to have the different departments running, especially our kitchen.

Some days, I woke up at 5:30am to go shopping for ingredients with the kitchen team, spend the morning in the office, then head to the kitchen to help set up the meals as lunchtime approached, attend meetings in the afternoon, and then lead our Basic Leadership course in the evening. Overall it was a very fun & diverse quarter.

Prayer Day

Each Semester we spend one day in Prayer called our Prayer Day. This is a day dedicated to worship and pray before the Lord. During the Prayer Day we fasted and spent time seeking God's heart for our community, listening for His voice, and praying for the gospel to be spread out in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the nations. Myself and SeongEun were asked by the leadership of YWAM Lausanne to plan and lead this Prayer Day, and we prayed and prepared for it. Although we had served together before on a Prayer Day team, it was our first time leading such a large community event on our own, so we were excited and nervous.

As we were praying, God laid on our hearts to pray for the nations through a format of having different mission booth which different people at our base presented some inside inforamtion about specific nations.

Through the mission booths, we were able to learn about mission fields that are not well known in our community, such as Reunion Island and Kyrgyzstan; we were able to pray for closed countries where there is a lot of persecution, such as Djibouti and North Korea, and we were able to pray for Mexico, South Korea, Honduras, the United States, and Sudan.

As we prepared and led the programs we were able to experience that spiritual leadership is not something that we can get by relying on our experience or knowledge, but something that we learn when we surrender everything to God and listen to His voice.

At times, we had to adjust and change the program as God was highlighting in different areas and led us to pray more deeper in these topics. It was a great learning experience to be able to lead the day by continually asking to the Lord, discerning, and seeing how the Holy Spirit is leading, rather than focusing on a structured plan.

King Jesus You're the name we're lifting high 
Your glory shaking up the earth and skies
Revival we wanna see Your kingdom here 
We wanna see Your kingdom here 
Spirit Break Out - Kim Walker Smith 

New Season, New Roles

This summer has been a season of great change for our YWAM Lausanne community.

Several friends and families have been transitoning out of YWAM Lausanne to pursue new callings and to pioneer new YWAM bases. Some of them have been here with us for around 25 years.

This transiton is definelty not only easy for us as the ones leaving have been great friends and mentors for us.

As we have some transitoning happen it allows us to learn and grow in several new areas.

Learning and growing is a beautiful thing yet sometimes scary and not only easy.

Even if in our eyes, minds and hearts we do not always feel ready to step up we want to trust the Lord that he will use us in his will as we say yes to his calling for our lives. Our prayer is “Here I am, send me,”

Please pray for us in this season of transiton and leanring many new things.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)

2. YWAM Together 2024 in Manila, Philippines

Early September, SeoungEun was able to be in Manila for an event called YWAM Together.

4,500 YWAMers from 110 countries around the world gathered in one place to worship God, hear testimonies of the amazing things God is doing around the world, and share and pray about the direction of the next generation of YWAM after our founder, Loren Cunningham, went to be with Jesus last year.

We glorified God as we heard how He is opening up opportunities to share the gospel in many campuses and schools in the Philippines, the great revival of local ministry in Battambang, Cambodia, over the past five years, and the amazing work of Bible translation among a tribe in Nepal who has no Bibles in their mother tongue.

We also spent time weeping with the ones who lost friends and co-workers in the bus accident in Tanzania happend last February.

We worshiped God in Chinese, Arabic, and many other languages. We prayed for open doors for the closed nations, blessed and prayed for the many YWAM bases that are expanding in Africa and the Middle East, and trusted for more people to be send as missionaries to these places.

Seeing the YWAM family from all nations worshiping God together in every language, just as Revelation 7 says, gave us a glimpse of the beautiful worship in heaven to come.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:9-10)

As we have heard so many amazing God stories all around the world, we feel so blessed to be part of the YWAM Family. Seongeun was able to see so many of the speakers and students we have met through leading schools, and friends we have made in so many countries through leading outreach teams, all in one place.

In particular, four days before YWAM Together started, SeongEun attended the Malachi Gathering, a three-day gathering of YWAM's young leaders, along with one other leader from the base.

He was able to meet and fellowship with younger leaders like himself who have only been in ministry for about five years, leaders in their 30s and 40s who are leading multiple bases, and leaders who have been serving with YWAM for 40-60 years, since the organization's earliest days.

Many YWAM bases are in the process of transitioning leadership from first-generation leaders to new younger leaders in their 30s and 40s, and he was able to learn a lot from these younger leaders.

Seongeun came back home with a lot of Visions and desires to see change and transformation happening in the young peoples lifes. We are excited for this new season to come!

3. Mission Night

Last Saturday evening, we had the privilege of hosting family, friends, and church members from Switzerland for an introduction to our ministry.

Sharing our ministry was a great way to remember and reflect on what God has done in and through us over the past few years.

We also had the opportunity to answer questions about our ministry and helping them to gain a deeper understanding of what we do.

our vision: 

to train young people from all the nations like a great wave, and to send them out into the nations, so that the whole earth will be filled with the glory of the LORD!

We are so grateful for everyone who attended but we would also love to share more about our work and vison with you. So if you are interested to hear more please reach out and we love to arrange a time. We love to meet with you via Zoom or in person! :)

4. Next Step - MLD (Ministry Leadership Development School)

Next semester, we will be serving as staff in our MLD, a school that trains young leaders. About 15 students will be attending the school, and after the school wraps up in mid-December, we will be leading the DTS (Discipleship Training School) in January 2025.

We've been particularly challenged by the book we've been reading lately, “Practicing the Way” by John Mark Comer, about what it means to live as an apprentice (disciple) of Jesus. Please pray that we would be leaders who first live out what we are learning from the book and then teach by example so that the students we will be teaching can live as disciples of Jesus.



5. Prayer Request

1. SeongEun's student visa expires at the end of this year and he will change to a spouse visa from beginning of next year. please pray for a smooth transiton and with that we also have to apply for a new health insurance. This will add some financial costs for us but we trust for Gods provision in it all.

2. Pray that we will always have the joy of serving, that our love for Jesus will grow more and more each day, and that we will be missionaries who teach the next generation of leaders not only with our words but with our lives.

3. Pray that the students who will attend the MLD can grow and learn in leadership but also in the Intimacy to God.

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! 

We love to hear from you & feel free to share this Newsletter wiht friends and family around you!

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

Many blessings

Jana & SeongEun