This week, We, the YWAM Cusco staff have been seeking the Lord so much about our upcoming DTS. A month ago, we weren’t really sure if it would still come together. A month ago, we only had 1 accepted student and we had to tell him that if the budget didn’t work out with the number of students we need to run the school, we might have to cancel. The last month has been a time of God taking every opportunity to remind us that the DTS is going to happen, but on His terms and by His grace and provision. We certainly have faced a lot of opposition and moments where we weren’t sure if anything was going to work out, but God always shows up to take care of us. He wanted to communicate to us that no matter the amount of striving and worrying that we weren’t going to be able to do this on our own strength.

Fast-forward to today, August 16th. Today marks the “soft deadline” for students to apply to our DTS. Today was the day to pray, do we move forward with this, or do we cancel? Truthfully, we have accepted 2 students to our school (4 if you count that we feel good about 2 more but are waiting on some of their forms to arrive). The American-administrator in me wants to say “ok, we are done. If you missed the deadline, you’ve missed the deadline.” But if God acted that way towards us in extending grace we would be in trouble. So we prayed and heard God say to run the school for September 18th and he reminded us (in so many ways about how he is faithful when we obey) and that He can provide “the more”:
1. We have the budget for the school even with small numbers
2. We have Saulo and potentially 1 more Peruvian on staff with us
3. Even though we didn’t see all the money come in on our HopeMob campaign, The Lord helped us crunch the budget
4. He is bringing the right students to us for the right time
5. in one week we had 3 applications come in

Staff training starts on Monday for the next 2 weeks and we are very excited to get going now that we are officially going ahead with the school! David and I are so excited to start discipling these guys!

Our surprise guests this week at Tuesday Night Prayer was the Outreach team from YWAM Iquique (Chile). They have been serving the past month at different churches in Cusco. David said that they led worship for the Pastor’s meeting last Wednesday and it was awesome to witness and be a part of. Picture a group of five 18-20 year olds were leading worship and commanding the presence of the Holy Spirit to come invade a room of thirty 50-70 year old men. And The Lord showed up.

They came Tuesday night, cooked us a fabulous Chilean meal and led worship and prayer for our city. They encouraged us as pioneers and shared experiences from their DTS. They are wonderful friends that we hope we can visit on our outreach next year.