Leadership

The students I usually talk about doing the DTS are not the only students around base. The staff of the DTS are also taking a class at the same time. We are involved in a school called BLS (Basic Leadership School), it is a school that runs alongside a DTS, except it's for the staff. It helps us to develop as leaders as we prepare for leading an outreach team and lead small groups during the Lecture phase of the DTS. A few of the requirements for the course are, keeping a journal, two book reports, and lead a week of DTS. Leading a week of DTS means that we take on the roll of the leader of the school and prepare for the week, get the speaker set up and do all of the announcements in front of the class. My week to lead is in late September, I am actually really excited for it and a little bummed that I only get to lead one week as I want to have more practice at leading the class.

For the first book report we read "Developing the Leader Within You," by John Maxwell. It was a great book and it had a ton of great tips on how to lead. Some of the best tips were that leaders are not managers and one of the most important skills a leader can have is to inspire, because if he can't inspire then he won’t have people following him. Attitude was the second largest aspect to a good leader, a good attitude will change how you act and react to your surroundings and conflicts that may arise. The second book I read was "The Leadership Paradox," by Denny Gunderson. It was a great book and I loved it. One of my favorite parts was that Denny takes stories from the gospels that display how Jesus leads his disciples and turns them into narratives, expanding on the dialogue and highlighting the leadership qualities of Jesus. He then takes the qualities that he has highlighted and expands on the concepts, making for a great model to base our leadership off of. The greatest thing about the book is it is all biblical and all of the leadership concepts are blatantly modeled by Jesus.

God is really developing me as a leader and I am looking forward to our outreach time in China and everything the Lord has to grow, mold and change me into!

China's on My Mind

Outreach teams were officially announced on July 23rd and Erica Gustafson and I are will be leading a team to China! It is still early to be talking about outreach, but outreach is the practicing ground for everything the students learn during the lecture phase of a DTS. My co-leader and I have taken some time to start planning our trip. We are expecting great things! The Lord has assembled an amazing team to China, and we are taking 9 students, eight of them are Korean and one is Taiwanese. I will be continuing to update as more is decided in the area of our outreach.

As the team has formed for outreach we have been spending a lot of time praying into what our trip is supposed to look like and what is on the Lord's heart for the areas we will be in. Our whole class has taken time to intercede for each of the outreach locations, to receive prophetic words and prophetic pictures to encourage each of the teams and to give them an idea of what the Lord has in store for each of them. The Lord has started to place His heart for China on me and I am spending a lot of time seeking Him and what He has for our outreach to China.

Thank you for your prayers, emails, letters and financial support. I would love to pray for you in any way I can, so please contact me so I can lift you and your needs up to the Father. Please pray for me as I continue to seek His face and direction, along with Erica for our outreach team. If you feel lead to support me financially please see the sidebar for more information on how to do that as I do need outreach funds. Until next time…