In case you missed it, YWAM is celebrating 50 years of missions work this year! Throughout the year there are special events being held in every region of the world, giving YWAM staff, students, alumni and supporters the opportunity to look back on the milestones of the last half-century and give thanks for all that has been accomplished.
Everywhere where there is a Com Team, the members of those teams are taking this great opportunity to support their YWAM community at these events. Some are offering their practical skills to help make the celebrations run smoothly through taking care of all the technical details of showing video, maintaining good quality sound and even producing name-tags. In other places - such as in Uganda next month - Com Team members will be producing a photographic time-line of YWAM's story in their region and producing other visual pieces to help celebrate 50 years of missionary endeavour.
Here in Cape Town our team has been working on a commemorative magazine of YWAM's history in Africa. It has been an incredible project, with more contributors than any other project we have undertaken. The willingness of so many people to get involved means that we have successfully produced the very first compilation of YWAM's story on this continent ever! From design, to photos, to stories, to translation in French and Portuguese, to printing and mailing - everything has been done in partnership with very special people from around the world. Today boxes of those magazines are being mailed from India, where they were printed, to YWAM centres around Africa. At every 50th celebration in Africa YWAM staff will receive complimentary copies of the magazine.
We are thrilled to give these special gifts to the unsung heroes out there - Jo or Jenny YWAMer, giving their time and their energies to see sustainable change come to their communities. As they read the stories of those who have gone before them, may they be strengthened to persevere.
After all, we are not only celebrating what has passed ... we are eagerly anticipating what is still to come!
