Darrow filed the following report about his teaching schedule this fall.
The first venue was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was there to serve my good friend Dr. Bob Osburn at the Wilberforce Academy’s Worldview for World Healing conference. There were some 150 participants and I had the opportunity to teach from my book Nurturing the Nations: Reclaiming the Dignity of Women in Building Healthy Cultures. Most
people were challenged by hearing the plight of women around the world, especially the sobering reality that over 100,000,000 fewer women are alive in the world because of the war being waged against women around the world.
The second venue was the Youth With A Mission base in Puerto Rico. This is one of my favorite places to teach, because the young men and women at this base are very creative and they apply the things that I teach almost immediately. Each year when I travel to the base I am excited to see how they have applied what I taught the year before.
This year, Yarley Nino, the base director, wanted to show me the seven-minute promotional video for a week-long training program for children ages 4-14. This training program was created for a global movement, The 4/14 Window, that seeks to challenge the global church to engage and disciple children. The week-long training that these young Puerto Ricansdesigned is done through the telling of a story about “The Lost Seals,” employing children as characters in the story. The story introduces the concept of the Biblical worldview as a tool for impacting the different sectors of society.
In addition to the week of teaching the LifeWork workshop, I had the privilege of having four good friends from the USA join me in Puerto Rico. Each evening the five of us met together with three young Puerto Ricans from the base – Miguel, Nelson and John Rey – whom I have been discipling. What a wonderful time of discovery and fellowship we shared each evening.
The third venue was at a Leadership Training School in Tijuana in Baja, California. Marilyn joined me for this week. There were 70 students from over 30 countries. What a rich environment of young leaders. I count myself so privileged to be able to engage with a school like this. Each day we had a time of Q & A. With people coming from Africa, Central and South America, North America, Europe, and Asia, the questions and discussion were very engaging.
The fourth venue was a university town in Sweden, where there were two events. One was teaching each day in a Discipleship Training School, about two dozen staff and students at this school from 10 different countries. On Friday night and Saturday morning, I had the privilege of teaching a group of 40 university students from the local university. Half way into the week, I realized that I had taught in Eastern Europe and the Post Soviet Union, as well as in developing countries, but it had been years since I taught in Western Europe. This was a very different environment. Many of the students came from Northern Europe; their nations were born out of the Reformation. This meant that they had come from a country that valued hard work, thrift, cleanliness, beauty, and the redemption of time. These virtues are sorely lacking in most of the countries where I normally teach.
Next was my yearly “hardship” assignment at the University of the Nations in Kona, Hawaii. I had the privilege of teaching with Bob Moffitt, the co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance. We were with a group of 100 staff and students from Korea. What a delight it was to be with these “big hearted” people.
My last stop was Joao Pessoa, Brazil where I had the privilege of engaging with a group of young professionals to help them see how they may connect their vocations with the coming Kingdom of God.
Darrow says it was “a delight to see God’s hand at work in the lives of so many young people from around the world.”
