Hello! Isaac Smith here and I’m staffing in YWAM!
Right after graduating high school, God called me to YWAM(Youth With A Mission). He placed the next generation of North Korea in my heart. Throughout DTS (Discipleship Training School), God continued to confirm this calling through seminars, friends, and pastors. He allowed me to see the beauty not only of North Korea but of Korea as a whole. Many speakers shared what the Lord had placed on their hearts. They spoke about how we are all part of the reunification and the role foreigners play in the Korean church, how America will stand behind the Korean church as a source of support.
DTS is a six-month period spent with a group of like-minded brothers and sisters, chasing after who God is and striving to be disciples of Christ. Throughout this time, God reveals so much as you immerse yourself in His kingdom's culture. The first thing God revealed to me was that being His disciple is a “one day at a time” adventure. A mindset He wanted to correct in me was the idea of “one and done.” I believed that once you surrender your doubts, worries, and ambitions into His hands, you would never face them again. But every day, He reminded me—and still reminds me—that I must lay everything I have at His feet daily. This is what it means to be a disciple of Christ. On days when I failed to do this, I felt distant, as if His voice was behind a wall. So I continuously die to my old self, following Jesus wherever He is guiding me—hanging my old clothes on the cross and putting on the robes He has prepared for me. Another key lesson He wanted to instill in me was the joy found in community and relationships. Before DTS, the enemy planted a lie in my mind that I was a burden to others and that being alone was where I belonged. But in the first week of DTS, our speaker, the leader of our DTS, Myungsook Nam, spoke on exactly that—joy in community and relationships. Her main point was that joy from the Lord is expressed through those around us; therefore, joy is found in relationships—not only with God but also with other disciples of Christ. Through these people, whom I can now call my new family, He has shown me immense love and joy. Now, as DTS comes to an end, I am left with a gratitude I cannot fully express.
God called me to Korea but for the first three weeks, I had no clue why I was in Korea. I wrestled with doubt and reconsideration during that time. At the height of this doubt, during the third week, our school was invited to attend a seminar called The One Day Gathering. I was hesitant to go, as we had a book report due and I was working on a video for the DTS. However, one of the staff members came to me and suggested I attend. Curious, I asked for more details and learned that the seminar was a brief introduction to the North Korean ministry happening around us. The staff member shared that when he attended the same event last year, he had little interest in this ministry, but after hearing about what was happening in North Korea and how people were responding, God tugged on his heartstrings and called him deeper into his mission for North Korea. So, I decided to go and even convinced a few other students to join me. Through this seminar and the testimonies of speakers who had experienced North Korea first hand—including those who had escaped—God opened my eyes to my purpose in this season in Korea.
My immediate thought was, How do I stay in Korea? God used my lifelong love for Northeast Asia and the deep-rooted relationships I had built within the school to call me to staff at the base in Gadeok. This was an unmistakable calling from God that I could not ignore. With this revelation, I spoke to other staff members about my heart for North Korea, and they affirmed my calling to Korea—to be part of the reunification of the Korean Church and One Korea.
Just to introduce you to the base in Korea—the exact location is in Busan, Korea, in Gadeok. If you don’t know what YWAM is, it stands for Youth With A Mission, first established in 1960 by Loren Cunningham and his wife, Darlene Cunningham. There are over 1,200 bases in more than 180 countries. Each base organizes schools referred to as DTSs (Discipleship Training Schools), usually lasting around six months. Depending on the size of the base, they may run multiple DTSs at once, each with a different central focus. Mine was i2i (Intimacy to Impact)—designed to develop a personal relationship with God in order to make an impact on the world. A DTS typically consists of three months of lectures and discipleship, followed by three months of outreach. The outreach locations vary for each DTS as they are guided by the Lord.
Isaac