#3 || My DTS - Lecture Phase
I did my own DTS in January of 2022 with Holoholo Ministries in Kailua-Kona at the YWAM Ships Base. Entering into this season was a much-needed break from what was a tumultuous year of working after the COVID lockdowns (a fun time for all haha). So after a time of prayer and fasting, I felt the LORD say to me, “Go.”
There wasn’t much else in what He said, but I knew within me what He meant. So in November of 2021, I sent in my application for Holoholo DTS at Ships, and a couple of months later, off I went into the unknown! The lecture phase of my DTS was 12 weeks, a challenging but pertinent time in my life. Alongside the 12 weeks of Lectures we had in our classroom, we students also took part in local ministry alongside Holoholo Ministries in serving the local community and being the hands and feet to meet felt needs locally.
My favourite weeks of lecture were Bible Overview Week and Holy Spirit Week; each holding a wealth of challenges and a confronting of all that I knew and understood previously within my own faith and relationship with God. Bible Overview Week helped me engage with a new perspective of Scripture, not necessarily seeing it as the totally inerrant Word of God, but seeing it’s Divinely-Inspired, yet written by Humans. Something that before would have completely shaken me to my roots, yet God was gracious and gave me a heart to understand the various ways that His people, my brothers and sisters-in-Christ, read, love and engage with the Word. This inadvertently also gave me a seed of passion to want to engage within an academic capacity with God’s Word too; later bearing fruit within SBS at YWAM The King’s Lodge.
Holy Spirit Week, also brought a new dimension to my faith. I had never before been baptised in the Holy Spirit, and coming from a more conservative background, it was always something that I stayed away from that side of my faith before. So, I was nervous walking into that week for sure. Yet when the time came for the Pastor to pray for me and ask the Spirit to come, the Pastor simply asked me to open the palm of my hands and he placed two figurative seeds in each hand. He simply told me that each of those things he placed was a spark; and that it was up to me to take care of them and allow them to grow into flames of the Spirit'; something that I am still working on to this day.
During this time, we also ran House Church and Opala Day for kids at a local housing estate called Kama’aina Hale, just up the road and next door to the University of the Nations. For House Church we would spend the afternoon with the kids at the estate, bringing a meal and spending time hanging out and playing games with them. We also spent time going through an Action Bible and then did Bible Trivia with them, so that they would learn and engage with the Bible in a way that was fun and kept their attention too!
For Opala Day, we would go around with the kids and help tidy up their estate, helping them learn the importance of taking ownership of where they live, and also doing that in a way that was fun and speedy; thus allowing us time to just hang out with them and provide some high-energy entertainment and distraction for them. A much needed relief for their parents I’m sure 😁
