Jason’s busy this fall as co-leader to the Discipleship Training School!  He is training the other leader of the school, Alissa, and helping her prepare to be ready for their overseas outreach to Cambodia and Vietnam!  It’s an amazing group of young people so far.  

Justine is helping organize our staff training/support department at the base.  It can be easy to be in the environment that we are in day to day, pouring out constantly, soaking up a lot of emotionally challenging sights, investing in relationship with a lot of people with desperate needs…needless to say, it is easy for staff to jump into all of this 100% and then burn out quickly.  Justine is connecting with some other staff that have been working at YWAM San Francisco for years to come up with a better support system and training for staff to know how to take care of their own emotional and spiritual needs and to process the difficult things they experience every day.  Our hope is that each staff that comes to work with us is able to build their own support system outside of our community as well, so that they are able to thrive at this work and not burn out after a year or two!  Our first goal is to restructure the process of new staff being accepted and received here, establishing better training, preparation, and support during that process.  

Jason is busy with one-on-ones (meeting weekly with two guys, encouraging them as they are growing and seeking God in this season), supporting and mentoring the staff team as they lead the students and prepare for outreach to Asia, and handling a lot of logistics for the school (scheduling, finances, etc!).  He’s also preparing for the DTS that begins in January of 2012, as he will be the leader of that school.  There are already 3 students accepted for that school.  

Eloise is 6 months old!  She has two teeth, and is very frustrated right now because she sees all of the exciting places she wants to go and explore, but can’t quite figure out how to get there!  She crawls backwards, but hasn’t quite figured out forwards yet.  She loves to laugh and scream (especially at her Daddy) and is a huge fan of riding on the train or bus, so she can stare, smile, and scream at whoever we sit next to.

We’ll be here for the rest of the season working and raising our little family, and then for Christmas we will be heading down to visit family and friends in Ventura!  Looking forward to celebrating Eloise’s first Christmas!

Our baby girl is growing so fast!  It’s been an amazing first 12 weeks with her, getting to know her and love her each day.  Parenthood has had it’s challenges already, including being emotionally and physically drained by holding her all day long!  Eloise is beautiful and so lovable, and very sensitive.  She loves being held and bounced as much as possible, and has a difficult time falling asleep unless the holding and bouncing continues throughout the entire day!  Needless to say, we’re a bit exhausted, but loving it at the same time.  

{Eloise Martinez at 12 weeks old}

Our Discipleship Training School students graduated at the end of June!  It was sad to see them leave San Francisco, but incredible to see how they’d grown in their love for the Lord as well as their vision for the future.  

{Discipleship Training School - winter 2011}

{student baptism in the Pacific Ocean during this last DTS}

Jason is already busy preparing for the next Discipleship Training School that begins in September.  He will be leading the domestic phase of the school again, and sending the school off to Thailand and Vietnam in December.  It’s been a blessing for both of us to learn more about mentorship as we work closely with the staff of the school dedicate so much time to mentoring the students and leading the overseas outreaches.  We are becoming more and more passionate about caring for our staff, as they are the example to our students of what full-time ministry should look like.  It’s so easy to fall into the cycle of burnout, as missionaries, to work hard and not remember to take care of our own needs, and nurture our own relationship with God and family.  After being in YWAM for over 5 years, we’ve seen that happen to good friends and even to ourselves in seasons, so we are blessed to be able to care for the staff of our schools.  They can be healthy in the midst of passionately serving, and it not only helps them thrive in their work, but also is a great example to the students who come to get a taste of missions!

We have some family visits coming up in August and September!  It will be wonderful to see family and friends, and especially for loved ones to meet Eloise for the first time.  I am looking forward to edging back into YWAM work in the fall, still devoted full-time to Eloise, but taking on some administrative work and mentoring to support the ministry and what Jason is doing.  It’ll be a busy summer for us, but we are loving every minute here in San Francisco, with each other and our baby girl!

Wow…it’s incredible to realize that Eloise is exactly 6 weeks old today!  We’ve had an wonderful whirlwind first 6 weeks with our baby girl.  The first few weeks consisted of learning how to nurse, resting and recovering from 24 hours of labor, and just staring at her in amazement at how beautiful she is!  Then we had wonderful visits from both sides of our families, doting grandparents and aunts and uncles!  Now it is on to the new “normal”…which will ever be evolving as Eloise grows.  

We’ve welcomed home our DTS this week!  They returned from their outreach to Turkey and Italy on Tuesday, loaded with amazing stories and new friendships to keep up long distance!  One of the biggest exciting developments is a new connection in Italy.  Our teams have been spending weeks at a time in Italy for the past 10 years.  We’ve slowly been building long term connections in different cities, especially Rome, and we’re slowly seeing more and more ability to go deeper with the people that we meet there because of them.  Our team that has just returned created a wonderful new relationship with a church near Bari, Italy (right at the top of the “heel” of Italy’s boot) who is passionately praying for their city and has some wonderful family ministries and music ministries going in their region.  Our team was able to not only work alongside of them this month, but they have invited us back next year!  Jason and I have such a heart for this nation, for God to restore the faith that was lived vibrantly there in history, to see relationships and broken hearts restored!  We’re excited that our team was able to see more evidence of God doing this during their time there.

Now the team will spend one more month here in San Francisco, working alongside of our full-time staff in the homeless drop-in center, with our ministry working to fight human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and building relationships in specific neighborhoods of the City.

Jason is back at work, leading the team towards their graduation at the end of June, and I am going to be at home with our baby girl!  We have a new college graduate who is originally from Vietnam visiting us this summer and we are going to work with her to establish a deeper connection with the Vietnamese community in our neighborhood.  The neighborhood we work in is known as “Little Saigon” because of the large amount of Vietnamese immigrants that have settled here through the years!  Our teams do work in Vietnam every winter, so it’ll be wonderful to tie what we do in San Francisco more strongly to our overseas outreaches.  We’re looking forward to having her here with us!  I’ll probably slowly start picking up some administrative and part-time stuff to do through the summer, as Eloise grows!  It’s a blessing to be able to have a flexible job and schedule where I can focus time and attention on our number on priority (baby Eloise!) and be able to help out at work as I am able.

This next week will be an adjustment away from all of the family visits to living the new “normal”!  Excited, nervous, but I know it’s going to be a wonderful summer, even with its challenges.  We’re so grateful for our beautiful new baby and for what God is doing in our lives here in SF.

It’s been in an incredible ride with these wonderful 19 students and our team of 6 staff.  Our students have only 3 weeks left of classes and lectures and part-time ministry in San Francisco before they head overseas for two months of outreach! They’ve had a lot of time to prepare, learn about the cultures they will be in, and deepening their relationships with God.  Here’s a quote from one of our students’ blogs this week to give you a taste of what their weeks are like:  

“This upcoming week we have a speaker named Mark Parker teaching about relationships [this teaching of theirs does not primarily focused on male/female relationships, but what healthy and Godly relationship looks like, love, forgiveness, communication, etc.]. I’m both excited and nervous all at the same time. I think it’ll be a really good week, filled with a ton of information that I need to hear.

This last week I had to miss the first day of classes. But I was there for the rest of the week. And class this week was PHENOMENAL!!!! I can’t even begin to describe how incredible it was. We learned about discipleship, intimacy with the Lord, insecurities, David and Saul, and so much more. My hand was hurting in class because I was trying to write down so much and I just couldn’t keep up.

We only have about 3 weeks left before we head off to Turkey. I can’t believe that we are already leaving. It feels like we just got here. But I guess it will soon be time to head off. I’m excited and slightly scared at the same time. But I know that the God I serve has got everything under control.

During my quiet times lately I keep being reminded of the fact that I have a heavenly father that loves me more than anything in the world, and he has the best story written for me. With that being said I can know that I don’t have to control everything and it’ll be alright. Isn’t that a comforting thought? We don’t have to control everything because our Lord has got it taken care of. So we don’t have to worry or stress about it. The best author in the world is writting each of our stories so just let him do his job.”

Our hope and desire for these students is just what the student shared in the last paragraph above…coming to that place of walking intimately with God, and trusting that He will lead them towards amazing and creative ways to express His love and truth to others.  These students have been an amazing blessing to our ministries here in San Francisco, including helping out with design and media for our ministries to women trapped in the sex industry, relationship building within our discipleship program for the homeless, etc.  

It’ll be sad for me and Jason to see them go overseas, as we’ve loved walking alongside of them these past 3 months and seeing them grow in so many ways, but we’re excited to hear their stories when they return….

AND…we are excited to introduce them to our baby girl when they return!!!

We have 19 amazing students that arrived two weeks ago for their Discipleship Training School!  Their ages range from 17-27 and they have all come with different stories of how God has brought them here.  We had our first week of teaching on the Character and Nature of God this week.  The students and us staff are just soaking in the good teaching!  Students are getting connected with ministry as well, some are going to be involved in the discipleship program that YWAM has for the homeless, some are helping with administrative as well as building relationships with women in the sex industry, some will be tutoring English to immigrant children that live in the Tenderloin!  

We’ll try to post again soon with some amazing stories of what God is doing in the lives of these students.  It’s amazing to see them already getting excited about the unique gifts they have that God wants to use.  One of the girls that I am getting to know has an amazing gift and passion for photography, and is excited to see where God leads her to bring healing to others through this gift!