Middle East 2024 Outreach

On December 19th, after 54 hours of smooth travel with zero delays or complications (praise God!) my team of ten landed in the Middle East expectant and ready for the coming ten weeks of outreach. That following morning and the next three days were our orientation days held at the local YWAM base there where we had classes on culture, religion, and language. The first two weeks we took it quite slow and mainly spent time as a team bonding, spending lots of time in prayer, worship, evanglizing, and getting to know the other two YWAM outreach teams that were also on outreach (one team from England and one team from Greece.)

Unlike other outreaches that I have been apart of and/or led, we partnered with only one ministry this time - a local English Center that is a branch off the local YWAM base. Everyone who attends classes at this center knows that all the workers are Christian but because YWAM is illegal - they have no idea that everyone who "works" there is a missionary. In each quarter of the school they have around 150+ students sign up (all but sometimes a few being Muslim). So while my students taught English classes 2 or 3 times a weeks - my co-leaders and I would serve coffee from the coffee bar and have conversations with the locals before and after their class. This was a time for us to boldly step out in faith and ask them about their religion, share about ours, and overall love them well.

Having our main ministry be teaching English led for quite the opportunity of leaning into God and trusting Him with what He was doing through my team and I. With one of the very prominent strongholds over the country of Jordan being comparison - it was easy for my team to allow the enemy to speak into our lives and have us compare the ministry that we were doing to the other ten outreach teams from our DTS in different nations. The enemy would speak lies saying that what we were doing was pointless and whether we were there or not seeds aren't actually being planted for God's Kingdom. Week after week the enemy spoke these lies over each of us but yet week after week we would take it to the Lord and trust Him that whether or not we see salvations or healings - we know that God is still moving and working in the lives of those around us.

In fact, a really cool testimony of this is actually from this past summer when both my co-leaders were in the same location (were we were for outreach) for a month during a staff team outreach. When my co-leader, Justin, was there in June, he met a Muslim guy at the local gym and was able to share the Gospel with him. Nothing really came of it during the month he was there, but months later, Justin got a message from the guy he met and the guy told him that he accepted Jesus into his life and is now a believer! Hallelujah! Seeing salvations in the country we were is not common unfortunately. In fact, over the last two years, the local YWAM base has only seen three salvations total. Muslims, specifically in the country we were in are very hardened in response to the Gospel - but they will for the most part happily allow you to share the Gospel. They absolutely love to discuss Religion and talking back and forth between what we believe and what they believe.

Outreach overall was absolutely incredible! God surpassed all of my hopes and expectations. My team was truly amazing and exactly who I needed to be surrounded by in this season - they loved, encouraged, and supported me and eachother so well. God taught me that it's okay to not have everything figured out - that as long as I'm being obedient to Him and doing what I humanly can - then He will do the rest. He taught me that I won't always have the privelage of seeing the end result to what I'm doing (i.e. the fruit of sharing the Gospel to someone) - but instead, I need to just trust Him that it's in His hands and He has it under control. God taught me that He always knows exactly what I need in every season. I may have not wanted to lead an outreach team because I desired a season of rest (and in my mind that meant taking a break from staffing) - but God knew that staffing and leading an outreach team was going to be the most restful thing for me! 

Blessings,

Rebekah McGunagle