Since we have the same vision, I participate in the team that organizes the event. This year, like last year, my job was to organize the break out sessions. There were 28 “workshops” during the two days. My job was to think up titles and take care of the logistics of that part of the event. It went well.

I also taught a 2 hour course at the event about my new book “Corre para Ganar.” The book is about Running to win in youth ministry and talks about 5 disciplines that each youth leader can develop in order to reach the goal of youth ministry. It went well, and I had a great time teaching it.

One of my favorite parts of the Summit was seeing Kareny and Karyna, 2 of our graduates leading their own workshops. Kareny, who graduated last year, was teaching about leading your group to serve your community. As I listened to her share, I had to step out of the room because God was allowing me to see the realization of a dream.

We are in Mexico to train others so they can train others. I was almost moved to tears when I realized that seeing our graduates teach is exactly what He has planned from the beginning. I am so impressed with their ability to lead a youth ministry and communicate timeless truths to the next generation. Not only that, but God has placed within them the desire to see other youth pastors and leaders raised up to lead the next generation.

I am very proud of all of our graduates, and I am excited to see how God uses them in the future.

There is no doubt that YMI’s ministry is growing, for which we are all thankful and tremendously humbled. However, along with success in reaching the lost youth of the world comes opposition. Satan does NOT like what we are doing! It is one thing to confront the pains of management, seemingly endless logistical details, and international, national, state, and local bureaucratic regulations, but when spiritual warfare jumps on the band-wagon, well, it is beyond our ability to fight alone. We know that we always need the power of the Holy Spirit to infill us to fight the good fight of faith, but sometimes we feel so oppressed and attacked that we need to rally-the-troups to fight back.

I believe YMI’s ministries around the world are being harassed and attacked by Satan and his demonic powers in ways I have not seen before! It would take too long to go into all the details, and for those who wish to know those details you are welcome to call me, but believe me when I say we need all or our team members to join together and pray that Satan will be defeated in his efforts to hinder our ministry worldwide.

In leu of this situation, I have declared May 5, 2014 a 24 hour day of prayer for YMI’s ministries around the world. I am asking all who can to go to thewebpage link below and sign up for one 30 minute segment between May 5th, 12:00 AM and May 5th, 11:59 PM. I know that many have YMI and its personnel on their daily prayer list, and for that I am very grateful; however, I feel the need to really focus for one full day on our ministry.

When you go to the webpage (under Sign-up Genius), you will see a letter from me, a suggested prayer list, and means of signing up for the day of prayer. All we need is your name, location and your email. If you do not want to use the web-signup, then just email us, tell us which slot you want and we will sign you up.

Finally, please pass this email and the link to anyone on your personal email list who you think is willing join us! Let’s bombard the throne room of our faithful and omnipotent God, and ask him to defeat our enemies around the world!

For the Youth of the World,

Randy

If you’re willing to join us, please sign up by clicking here: YMI Global Prayer Day Web Link

We need your help!

We hope you had a great day, too.

I’ll be teaching a “Super Course” on Friday of the event. I’m still not sure what the topic will be, but I’m leaning towards a theme that has to do with the Youth Leader’s Heart. I feel we need to know what God’s heart is, model it in our own lives, and then we will be able to minister more effectively to those who are around us.

I’m also working in the educational area of the Summit. In other words, I’m helping define the topics of the breakout sessions. We hope to have this finished by the end of this week.

One of my other focuses for the Summit is to be there to minister to those who attend. There are a lot of hurting youth leaders out there, and I believe an event like the Summit can provide someone to pray with them and talk with them.

I’m excited about the Summit. It’s going to be a great event.

We first saw it about a year ago, and we’ve been putting it off and putting it off.

Today we finally broke down and got it for them. They’re so cute on it. It will probably keep them busy for a long time.

Here’s a tweet I sent out with a quick video of them…

ReAcción, the book we published with four Bible study lessons for youth groups, has been downloaded more than 1000 times since July 2012. The other day, I received the following testimony from Kelly a youth leader in Guatemala:

“I am very happy to have found your youth ministry site, which I consider a special tool that allows us to continue in the ministry with young people. Thank you for the site.

I want to share a story from last Sunday in my church. I downloaded the book Reaccion, and I taught the first lesson last Sunday. When I finished teaching my class, I asked all the young people who was sure who Jesus was. Most of them responded that they were sure they knew Him, but there were some who responded, “no.” Right then I talked with them and invited them to receive Jesus, and one of the girls gave her heart to Christ. It was something very special, and I was so happy because of the decision she made. I will continue with the others so that they can all have an encounter with Jesus in their lives.

God is using the lesson series, and it brings us joy to be able to empower youth leaders to guide young people towards Jesus. Who knows how many other stories there are like this. Thank you for your support of our ministry.

We are working on publishing several other projects that will help youth leaders all over the world.

I started teaching a new Certificate class yesterday. It is called “How to Organize Youth Camps.” It’s a fun class that has a final project where the students have to organize a retreat for the class. It’s a fun way to spend time together and learn some skills. Some of our students have never been to a camp!

This week we started off by talking about the Biblical reasons for camps. We started by talking about how connected our young people are. They have notifications flying at them all day, and they never really get a chance to be still.

In contrast, there is a clear Biblical mandate to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Our purpose for using camps and retreats is to allow people to be still and know that He is God. Unfortunately, even much of what we do in church is a stark contrast to being able to be still. We keep ourselves busy with activities thinking that they will bring us closer to God (and many of them will) at the expense of taking time to be still. I hope to convey this to the class during the camps course. I think they got it today.

Everything seems to be in place. After a few months of negotiating, we have reached an agreement with the Institute, and it appears that classes will start in April of this year.

Please pray that registration will go well and many of the youth leaders in Monterrey will be able to receive the training they are seeking in order to better serve the families of this important Mexican region.d

We’ve never been very good at “family devotions.” You hear the stories of the families that spend hours praying together and studying the Bible, but since we have three very active little kids, it’s not been something we’ve been able to perfect as a family.

Sure, as we are going along, we talk about God and the Bible (which might be one of the most important things to do), but we’ve not made a whole lot of progress of being intentional about those conversations so far. Our family is young, so we have some time, but not that much. Like everyone says, “They’ll be grown before we know it.”

A few weeks ago, we I (Dennis) had a crazy idea to paint one of the walls in our house with chalkboard paint. It’s fun and the kids get permission to draw on a wall. We use it for home school and other things. Then it hit me: Why not post an intentional question on the wall and let the kids answer with a word or a drawing? The parents can play along, too, answering the question each day as we pass by the wall.

This week, I have asked two questions. The first one was: What are you thankful for? It came out of my personal devotions of the story of the ten healed lepers where only one came back to thank Jesus for healing him. The answers were great. Watch the video below to find out what we’re thankful for.

Nathan drew some of his toys and we had a great talk about what we are thankful for. That night at dinner I asked Nathan to pray. He asked if he could keep his eyes open, and of course I said yes. Then he prayed one of the best thanksgiving prayers I’ve ever heard him pray, listing off the things on the wall that we are thankful for as a family.

The second question we asked was: What is God like? This led to a great conversation with Nathan about God’s attributes. We put a few on the board. The first one Nathan wrote was “holy.” I thought that was a big step for him to write that. He also wrote, “Forgiveful.” That turned out to be my favorite characteristic of God that was put on the board that day.

It’s fun now to think up new good questions for our family. Do you have ideas for questions we could ask our kids? I’d love to hear them. I only have so many brilliant ideas per week.

Last week we had our friends Chris and Hannah Bond in town to research costs of living and other things that they need to know as they prepare to move to Mexico to join our team. We are excited for them and are praying that God will open doors for them in extraordinary ways so that they can be on the mission field soon.

The plan is that they will spend a few years in Mexico while learning Spanish and helping us with the ministry here. Then they move to Central America to open a new field for Youth Ministry International in Central America. Since our job is to oversee all of Latin America, the new addition of Chris and Hannah is really important to our overall vision.

During their visit, Chris and Hannah helped us dream about a vision for the next 15 years of ministry in Latin America. As we dreamed and planned and prayed, it became obvious how important the right team is going to be to accomplish all that we believe God has for this part of the world.

We are excited to have Chris and Hannah on board with us, and we are praying for them as they live in New York and raise funds in order to get to the field.