Yabuki Breeze Blog

We recently got a message from UNT about a former student. She is from Taiwan and she was a part of some in-depth Bible studies, helped to lead at both our spring break retreat and with the local team. This student got to know Lisa when we sent her to Urbana with a student scholarship to be exposed to missional service. It was an encouraging message the development of her “missional heart to serve and share. She currently teaches 6th grade in her home country.

I started going to [XYZ]  Baptist Church three months ago and joined their Orphanage Missionary what I loved to involve… [XYZ] also hosted BSF class which I attended last month. The BSF homework pushed me to read Bible every day and help me know more God’s words.Because of the Orphanage Missionary, I knew an American family— with two high school age daughters.  I invited “M—” to come to my school for an “English Summer Camp (with a some gospels)”… I do hope we can run this camp successfully and draw more attentions in the community. Let these country side students have more chances to practice English with English speakers and to hear gospels as well. Hopefully, the ESC would keep going. Then, when you guys come to visit, you may “help” us. (Of course, I will have a good experience to hold a summer camp before you come. : )

This is a good example of how our ministry does not stop after students return home.

Tags: Leadership, Returnee, Student

This last Saturday ISI DFW sponsored a training event for international students. Around 20 students, staff and volunteers heard from various member of our staff to learn about God’s plan for the world and His heart and impulse for missions. It was a lot of fun and the students really learned a lot from the experience.

The Christian students, most of them campus leaders, all came together at Irving Bible church for a day of training. This is part of our twice a year training cycle where we try to prepare students to be stronger Christian leaders when they return to their countries. We adapted the traveling team’s mission mobilization curriculum (http://www.thetravelingteam.org/?q=node/334) to help students see that they have a responsiblity to touch the world for Jesus.

Topics included:

• The Harvest is Plentiful, the Laborers are Few – Jeff Anthony
• The Bible is a Missions Story – Ron Bunyard & Derrah Jackson
• Every Christ Follower a “World Christian” – Roy Yabuki
• Every “World Christian” a Mobilizer – Ray Cotton

The students were greatly moved as many shared that they never knew about this purpose that God had for believers. It motivated them to consider how they could strategically affect the world around them and world back home. I

After the training seminar, we met with other “Tejas” retreat alumni and watched the Tejas summary video in its world premier. We heard some very rousing testimonies from the students who were there too. Wow!

Tags: Leadership, Mobilization, Student Leadership, Tejas, Training

This last weekend, ISI DFW hosted its annual training for international student leaders. As one of our goals is to mobilize student to become leaders when they go home, we have two training days every year toward that end. This year we did something a little different. We invite key volunteers. We shared some of the themes that God has been especially placing on our hearts this year. International Student ministry is changing in leaps and bounds and we feel the need to develop a strategy, vision, values and mission in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that is focused enough to keep us on track but flexible enough to adapt with the changes.

We have an incredible team with deep passions and incredible abilities. Each of our team members shared things that were most on their hearts as we followed the ministry values we identified as essential in international student ministry (see picture on left).  Here is a sampling of the topics: “Prayer and Trusting God: Who’s Ministry is it Anyway?” – Ron Bunyard & Derrah Jackson, ” The Power of Loving People Well” – Jeff Anthony & Roy, “Passing it On: Discipleship and passing on the the Vision” – Ray Cotton, “Innovation in Touching Lives: The Product of Grace Enabled Spirit Powered Teamwork”  – Roy. As you you can see, the focus was on fundamentals of international student ministry but we also made an emphasis on innovation but around the core. Our long term vision it to see every international student have the opportunity to taste the love of Christ in some way through interaction with the Body in some way.

There were close to thirty people involved and we heard some great comments and no doubt some of us had our best presentations ever. Probably because it was from our hearts.  It was Holy Spirit driven and I suspect we will hear God work through this.

If you want a copy of the audio or slides/handouts for this, please contact me and I can send you a link to them.

Tags: Leadership, students partners, Training

We were going to Colorado to learn how to be better leaders! In June Roy attended ISI’s Advanced Leadership Conference (see video) with most of the local staff. This is a very important conference as we work this year to work on tuning up our strategic plan for the DFW area and as we invest in our already gifted team. We learned about the importance of mentoring and how intensive it has to be to be effective. We learned about the nuts and bolts of strategic planning. We learned about technology and how important in or type of ministry to stay on top of technology that makes the world flat. Finally, we learned about how to do networking from the new president of Biola. It was excellent training that was truly mindbending for most of us. Very well done by our national traning team. I roomed with Ron Bunyard and we were up almost every night thinking about how all this applied to our personal ministries. Wow!!!

Tags: 2007, Conference, Leadership, Summer