Hello!
Excited to share with you all an update for our current Aspire DTS that is running! We’ve just wrapped up week eight of the lecture phase, which was on the topic of the Kingdom of God, a powerful week indeed. This DTS has been flowing beautifully with eight students and a staff team of five. Every moment I get the chance to pause and reflect I’m amazed still at God’s faithfulness and in awe of how God moves. We’ve seen students go deeper in the Word and their relationship with Jesus than ever before, everyone is stepping outside their comfort zones to see the Holy Spirit break out in new ways, late night spontaneous worship sessions, we’ve seen relationships built in the local community through our local outreach and evangelism opportunities. We’ve connected with people and missionaries in Italy that are desiring with us to see revival in this beautiful country!
The one verse that keeps coming to mind when I think about these past weeks is in Ephesians 3:20-21, “God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly all that we can ever think or imagine. According to His power that is at work in us.”
Here is just a short highlight from one of our students, Markus from Germany, “My highlight is the community and all the people worshipping God together. We have a lot of positive crazy people here and I freaking love it, it’s so awesome! People you can have fun with, do silly things together but also have great deep talks. I thought a few times in my life that friends feel like family, but being in YWAM Trentino it’s the first time I really mean it. These people were doing DTS with me and after one week they knew more personal stuff about me than some friends of mine after 15 years of friendship. I learned that openness, bringing things into the light and being vulnerable is so healthy and absolutely bonding. I really know I can talk with anyone about anything and can pour out my entire soul to the entire group. That is so strong and brings me closer to Jesus. In the second week we had a relationship as a topic, and on a Wednesday evening we boys sat together in the vineyard and talked about our feelings. Just imagine 7 guys just sitting there and talking about their deepest desires, their deepest wishes and deepest struggles. I never experienced this before and that was absolutely intense and so precious. What a powerful evening. Going to Arco to do a DTS was the best decision I’ve made in my entire life. Even when I had a hard day, I go to sleep very thankful and wake up and realize what a privilege it is to be here. God is good.”
So many opportunities to highlight God’s goodness in this time! Another one is the fact that in just 2 weeks the team of six students and two staff will be traveling to Costa Rica for their Outreach portion. We are so blown away by the opportunities and open doors that came with this answer to our prayers. They’ll be connected with contact that is actually on staff here at YWAM Trentino but hasn’t been able to move here yet with his family due to visa issues, but they have a huge heart to serve and have been helping prepare the way there with open arms! So I’m super stoked that the team is going and that we get to send them off for this beautiful powerful journey ahead.
Prayers for the team, finances, open doors, and ways for the Gospel to be shared would all be appreciated!
By Chasity Allman, School Leader of the Aspire DTS 2021