With over 750 participants at the gathering, the Family Ministries team had a great opportunity to encourage and serve people from all over the place, who are in all kinds of situations. Whatever country and culture, people came from and work in, there was a strong felt need for investment into healthy families.
YWAM Family Ministries had the privilege of running two workshops, led by Eivind Bye from Norway, in the afternoons, where we were able to share some of the FM vision and values. The exciting part was that these were not just times of passing on information, but real opportunities to share from our hearts and lives about how to balance marriage, family and ministry in YWAM. People were hungry for encouragement, hope and practical advice.
Lots of young families participated, with real interest not only in the workshops but also at the Family Ministries resource table in the main meeting tent. Before and after the meetings there was a constant stream of people trying on t-shirts, looking at the resources, picking up their free copy of “Families in Ministry” and just simply chatting with us. That’s right; the new edition of Andreas and Angela Fresz’s “Families in Ministry” was hot off the press and offered as a gift to every family at the gathering. Nearly two hundred copies were distributed to happy participants. Our prayer is that this fantastic resource will be a blessing across Europe.
At the table we heard comments like: “Thanks so much for being here and investing into families. We need Family Ministries on every base! This is amazing! Thank you for this generous and precious gift.” and even, “Oh, I didn’t know that there was Family Ministries…” ☺
