I have a big desire to communicate what God is doing in our lives and around us but, my problem is that I don't like incomplete stories. What I am realizing is that our lives have become a big long God story that only gets better over time. So, when I sit down to write an update the story is often incomplete and changing actively while I am writing. The moment I get done writing God introduces a new piece of the story that makes the whole thing richer and only something He could do. As such I am working on growing in this area of communication and desiring to communicate more often even though the story may feel incomplete. 

In other words... keep reading!

It feels like it has been forever but at the same time it feels like it has been only moments. A year ago we returned from our outreach to the Philippines. Now, we have been invited to staff a DTS. It's an opportunity that seemed to come out of nowhere. Our ministry leader here came to us and recommended that we staff a school that was looking for a younger generation of leaders. The school was happening as a last-minute addition to the April quarter, and they were looking for a young family to join in what they were doing, since the heart of the DTS is literally "All Nations All Generations." Currently accepted into the school are students from the ages of 18 all the way to 72, representing 6 nations, with more applications still coming in. We aren't leaving our current responsibilities on campus, but rather adding the DTS on top of what we normally do. That comes with only one exception: OUTREACH. We will be leading an outreach team from June through the first of September. We are currently waiting to hear where our outreach will take us, but we have been told generally that they are looking at France or French-speaking Africa.

In the last month we have been experiencing an acceleration. It started with an informational meeting on what God is doing in the Middle East; this lead to a lunch with one of the Apostello school leaders, who helps launch teams to unreached Muslims. In sharing our vision and processing the details of what it would look like, what stuck with us was that we will need an outside location to process the media that we produce.It is extremely dangerous to have media accurately depicting what people are doing in closed nations. We run into this weekly here in YWAM, and have to be cautious with the content that we put on social media and livestream from our events. This will definitely apply to working in closed Muslim nations, where the threat of being raided is a stark reality for many Christians. Also, this leader expressed that we needed the an experience of leaving our home country, learning a language and getting plugged into the international missions community, partially to help understand those who we will be serving in the years to come. When it comes to future locations we had communicated to many that Spain would be an amazing location. It appears to be exactly what we needed: we can communicate openly, but trips into North Africa and the Middle East would be convenient. We have friends and ministry contacts there. But as much as we would loved it, we haven't felt that it was right.As we continue to grow in our walk with the Lord, the most crucial component in stepping into our future is following Holy Spirit, not making sense of things on our own.Here's where it begins to get crazy. For the past year, I have been slowly learning French instead of Spanish. A couple weeks ago, Cheri started feeling Holy Spirit draw her toward the south of France. This pull was strong enough that one evening, we sat down together and both started praying into where in France God was highlighting. In faith she put her finger on the map where she felt God was directing her to, and on the surface it was nowhere - no major cities, just a rural area on the map she was viewing...Then we googled YWAM bases in France. From right where her finger was a pin dropped onto the map, she had been pointing almost exactly to the YWAM Bridges of Life base in Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort.

Now we are praying about timing. We have also begun reaching out to those who God has placed on their hearts to join our team for the future, to have them pray about joining us in France as well.

Ohana Court last year

Ohana Court this week

In the last year, the areas we have been overseeing have gone through major growth and transformation. It's so much fun being able to pour into a place for a season, to see what God wants to do with a simple YES!

Our responsibility in every season is to be faithful with whatever God gives to us. Even greater than the opportunity to pour into the "stuff" is the opportunity to see transformation happen in the lives of the people that we've been able to encounter and mentor. Since September, we have worked alongside 9 DTS work duty students, 20+ degree-level work duty students, 2 teenagers on base who just wanted to help out, and several other DTS students that were simply interested in growing their A/V skills. 

Here is what I meant in the first section of this update. I had written most of what was above except for the first section. Then, since starting this one short week ago, this happened:I broke and decided that it was important to talk to the base leaders in France that we felt God had pointed us to. We sent an email and within 18 hours we were on a Facetime call with the base leader. During our conversation, we felt continual confirmation that we would be joining them. One of the coolest ways was that the base leader said that they have been praying for media people to come and join their base. The night before our call I told Cheri, "It's not necessary, but it would be confirmation to me if they have been praying for something that we are bringing to the base." The conversation ended with them telling us that the next step was for us to submit our staff applications.Here is where our story gets wild. I have told you two things so far; the first: We are staffing a DTS, the second: we feel God is sending us to France as our next long term location. Now, I will tell you that those two things collide.Joe Portale, one of the school leaders that we will be staffing the DTS with, actually helped pioneer YWAM French ministries. The first time we spoke with him, we found out that he was teaching at the same base in France that we felt God was calling us to, WHILE we spoke with the base director, and that the base director had talked to him excitedly about us!Our school leaders also just released the locations of the outreach that we will be leading... and you guessed it, we will be going to FRANCE. The first several weeks will be spent in Switzerland with the Montreux Jazz Festival, the next two weeks will be in Paris, and the final month was planned to be at the very base that we felt called to!Yes you read that right. Before the school leaders had even invited us to staff their DTS, they felt that we would be the couple to lead the outreach to France. Is this something only God can do or what? 

Thank You! From the bottom of our hearts. We couldn't be doing any of this without you! We are excited to continueBlessings, Jeff and Cheri Willecke