YWAM Information Technology

Hi all. I thought I'd give you a little report on how this first week has ended up.

We started off the week on Monday with Sindre putting into us the fear of God, literally. I know at least I was squirming in my seat, as I sat nearly dumbfounded with the realization of the incredible importance that this tool of GENESIS is lending to YWAM ministry, not to mention how God uses this tool, & how I, as a potential GENESIS coordinator, must act as a spiritual gatekeeper. I came to this seminar merely to become an effective "hand lender" to the GENESIS coordinator at our YWAM center in Latvia. I had no idea that I was possibly stepping into a greater role with this. I'll let you know how this pans out.

Next, we had wonderful teaching from Markus in Lausanne on the history & concept of GENESIS. In his fantastic Swiss way, he conveyed strongly inspirational stories of God's faithfulness & miracles in regards to GENESIS and laid a solid foundation of what GENESIS is all about & how it's not about technology. It's about multiplying & facilitating the learning process, which, as a result, can help to disciple nations, as our Lord has called us to do.

The following couple of days had some great hands-on times where we, the students, were allowed to "get our hands dirty" on 3 different systems. We made connections from 3 different rooms using the IP protocol & pretended to be different locations linking up. The funny thing that happened is that in the midst of our pretending, we actually did connect to some live sites & some for the very first time in the history of GENESIS. Our seminar witnessed the very first GENESIS link with Kiev & also Curitiba. In addition, we had some friendly & inspiring meetings with some friends in Belo Horizonte & Latvia.

Then, Helena taught about different learning styles & how we can use this understanding to facilitate a successful GENESIS classroom where everyone walks away having gained significantly from the experience. Not everyone learns the same way, so by keeping this in mind, we, as GENESIS coordinators, can help the teacher & the students with creative solutions to make the learning process interesting & productive for everyone. This teaching brought a lot of healing to many of us who had experienced educationally restricting methods of instruction & constricting education systems that had caused many of us to suppress who God really made us to be. This is a subject I highly recommend to anyone.

We ended this week with a great teaching from Adriano on a link from Brazil about trans-cultural communication. It's so important to keep in mind that every culture has its own way of communicating, & as we facilitate GENESIS links, we should help each side to communicate with each other effectively & respectfully. I'm looking forward to the rest of his teaching!

Well, that's the gist. So, I'm hoping to really relax this weekend, & I'm looking forward to that sauna on Sunday!

Oh, & one more thing... this seminar is made up of 7 participants who, when you count each one's ministry location, we represent 11 nations. God truly is amazing!

Cheers!
~Chris