YWAM Swaziland opens its doors.
As the festive celebrations for the New Year calmed down, YWAM Swaziland celebrations had just begun. YWAM Swaziland was officially opened January 2007. With a team of four on staff, they are running their first DTS this winter. YWAM Swaziland’s vision is to train Swazi people and send them out as missionaries: “Ourvision is to create an international atmosphere of training and discipleship which will champion the Swazi people to be released into their God-given destinies and culture. Being set free in their culture,but guided by love (Galatians 5:13), they can find their identities as Swazis and as Christians, finding purpose in their lives and going to the nations.” With three Swazis amongst the nine students on the DTS currently running, the beginnings are promising.

YWAM Mozambique plants churches among the Yao – but first they have to learn the language!
Without the tongue clicks and difficult pronunciations, language learning could be easier. Then again, that would take away the fun of it! The Berrington family lives among the Yao people in northern Mozambique and now find joy in their language learning. Fred Berrington says: “I read an Italian proverb that says ‘all things are difficult before they are easy’. This is where we are with learning the local language,Chiyao. We remember most of what we learned last year but there is still more to learn.” Every day, after having time with their language helper, they put what they learn into practice by trying to make conversations with the Yao people. The local people enjoy it very much and are more than willing to teach them their language. Future work will thrive on the foundation of these positive relationships.

HIV/AIDS Conference at Hopeland, Uganda.
More than 100 YWAMers met for an international conference on HIV/AIDS in Jinja, Ugandain May, 2007. Miranda Heathcote of AfriCom writes: “We spent much of the first two days of this conference hearing stories from YWAM projects around the world. This kind of opportunity to hear from staff working at a grassroots level never fails to impress me…there are some amazing people out there and few of us could do what they’re doing.They work among people suffering from HIV,or in various stages of full-blown AIDS, so members of their ‘client group’ are regularly dying. I can’t imagine how one deals with the constant sense of loss and grief, the constant need to reassert hope inthe midst of disaster. Being here has brought home to me the reality ofthe pandemic through the stories of individuals, in a way that knowledge of the statistics simply fails to do. Conferences like this are a time when I feel proud to be part of this wildly innovative organization, one that has seen the multiplication of projects that truly impact communities and bring change.”