Hand of God: A Story of Transformation from South Asia

When students embark on a discipleship training school session with YWAM Salem, they open themselves up to a great opportunity for transformation. Every journey with God is different for each individual, making YWAM DTS a truly unique experience.

The DTS lecture phase uses classroom learning and a local community project to equip students with the knowledge, confidence, and skills they need to harness their potential and change their lives to reflect God's plan for them. This class lecture phase engages students in new perspectives and prepares them for outreach opportunities.

However, it is in the YWAM outreach phase where that transformation becomes tangible. From an outreach location across the globe, students will feel and see their missional mindset and perform powerful acts of discipleship to kickstart their new life of missions during the DTS outreach phase.

Outreach locations vary and all students participate in fundraising to cover outreach fees, but our students know the experience is worth it. But don't just take our word for it!

Hear from DTS students who were once just like you and learn how they discovered the power of hearing God's voice in a new way and joined our outreach teams for a transformative experience. And when you're ready to experience DTS for yourself, apply online.

The following is a testimony from one of our YWAM Salem Alumni reflecting on her Discipleship Training School experience!

More than two years ago I did my Discipleship Training School (DTS) at YWAM Salem. I had the awesome opportunity to go to South Asia and Southern Thailand for outreach. Over the course of two and a half months, my team and I were able to participate in numerous ministries. We got to sing to a young boy struggling with physical and mental disabilities, encourage and pray for disheartened men and women in prison, teach children English, and so much more.

When I reflect on that time, a specific encounter with a gentle local woman always comes to mind. God changed her heart, as well as mine, forever.

Amisha [name is changed for privacy reasons] lived in the rural jungle of South Asia. She was a neighbor to the Christian family who hosted our team for one week. If our team learned anything about ministry and missions - it was definitely flexibility and resiliency to change.

We always started with a plan, but how that plan followed through was totally up to God! We planned to visit and build relationships with as many of the native people as we could. As followers of Jesus, we have desires for revival and want to see all people come to know God. However, when we look at Jesus’ life we can also see the importance of seeking out the one lost sheep.

Amisha, whom we believed was about 97 at the time, and her family were the very first and basically the only people we got to meet and visit with that week. She was a very feeble woman with soft eyes. While there was a language barrier between her and us, her eyes did tell a sad story. She was exhausted and tormented.

Communicating with Amisha was a very slow process. She spoke in a local dialect, while the 12-year-old girl we were staying with translated from that dialect to the more dominant language, and our interpreter translated it back to us in English. From the local dialect to the national language to English.

We learned that Amisha had been suffering from back pain from a motorbike accident as well as severe skin irritation. She scratched her skin constantly when we were talking to her.

In our lecture phase, we learned about praying for healing, so several of us felt the same call to pray that God would heal Amisha. After asking her if we could pray for her, we placed our hands on Amisha’s back and arms.

God did something amazing that I personally had only read about in the Bible. As we continued to pray, Amisha’s pain and skin irritation ceased! Not only that but during our prayers, our translator said we no longer had to translate because she began to understand what we were praying! We all cried tears of joy and celebrated what God’s Holy Spirit had done.

So, our team did what we knew best. We worshiped in that space and sang songs of praise to God, YAHWEH. Amisha stood up from her bed, walked over to the window, and smiled, and we celebrated God’s authority again!

God’s hand was so evident in ways I had never experienced before. Still today, more than two years later, I’m reminded of what He did that day. And the most amazing thing that happened: revival in heaven as Amisha heard the Gospel for the first time and accepted salvation in Jesus Christ.