sooooo!
a new season needs a new challenge, right?
this fall, i'll take another step in faith to go where God leads me. This upcoming step is called FCM and means Foundations in Counselling Ministry, it's a second level school from YWAM.
But I'll start a bit earlier, as you guys know, I was in Australia with YWAM for quite a while, if you have a look at some earlier posts of my blog you'll find out more details but to give you an idea of how all that lead me to Amsterdam i'll tell you bits and peaces of the whole story.
After my first 6 months in Australia I stayed to have some holidays and travel and hang out, put to practice what I learned and stuff. I lived and worked in Newcastle for 3 months. During that time God really put young people on my heart, that made me stay in Newcastle, doing the SOIYM (school of innovative youth ministry - which I really recommend if you're looking into working with youth!!).
Biggest part of the school is learning about youth culture and with that we learned statistics.
Those statistics were heartbreaking. I learned that there is huge percentages of teenagers with depression or suicidal thoughts. An unbelievable number of adolescents are being abused physically but also through bullying. It's a tough world, that kids are growing up in, today.
I started thinking about how important counselling and healthy relationships must be for them, people they can trust and feel safe with.
I want to be a friend like that for the kids today!
But not enough that I heard those horrible stats, people have been telling me things, good as much as bad, about situations at home, at school, with themselves all different kinds. I realized, with what I know I can only do little, I have my own problems and challenges, how am I supposed to help somebody hurt, when I'm hurt myself? But I know that there is more I could do if I was trained and equipped, if I knew what to say and how to react when somebody talks about heavy problems.
Obviously I think that counselling is a great way to help with that. So I looked into some different schools here in Germany, and the US, until I found out that YWAM Amsterdam offers a Counselling training as well.
So I applied and finally got accepted, and here I am now, getting ready to be equipped!
