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Prayer Requests We leave for Cambodia again on August 17 to help pioneer DTS Equip in Battambang. Please pray for a school filled with leaders from Southeast Asia, for a safe and fruitful time there, and for someone to rent our house while we’re gone. Please pray for our current DTS Equip that we’re staffing in Montana. We’re glad to be home for the summer, and excited for what God will do in the hearts of these 18 leaders in our school. We’re praying for more monthly financial supporters. If you or anyone else is interested in partnering with us financially, please let us know. All financial gifts are tax-deductible and are applied completely to our life and work with YWAM.

We’re home from Cambodia…for two months already! Life has settled back into an exciting routine. Before we talk about that, let’s take a look back at our winter Discipleship Training School and our outreach to Cambodia! For more pictures and regular updates, check out our blog at www.betsyandnathan.blogspot.com. This was our second trip to Battambang, Cambodia, and this time we took ten students along with us (last time we were the students, now we’re the leaders!). It was an incredible trip, and so many lives were changed, including our own and our students. We were privileged to individually disciple and mentor ten students before our trip – Nathan met with four young men and Betsy met with four young women weekly. (Our co-leader, Becca, met with the other two young women.) We were able to continue those discipling relationships during our outreach, and saw God work incredible breakthroughs in almost every single student during our time in Cambodia. What a gift it was for us to return to Cambodia! From the moment we arrived we saw old friends and quickly made new friends. We carried on in ministries we had worked with previously, including teaching health and English classes, discipling our friends So and the pastors at the FourSquare church, and working with street kids at Kalyan’s house. But there were so many new ministries as well! We created an agriculture team that helped the church and the YWAM Battambang base both create sustainable farming that will supplement both income and their meals. Many of our students did ‘street evangelism’ during the morning hours, where they simply walked and met people and shared about Jesus. As a result, several students were invited to share about Christ in the Ministry of Commerce office – a government office! It was incredible.

Nathan and Betsy

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SPRING 2012 THE LOREM IPSUMS

We could share for hours about all that happened on this trip, but we’ll share just a few quick highlights. One personal highlight for both of us was watching our students grow in their faith, releasing past hurts and shame, and sharing Jesus with everyone they met. Before we left on outreach, we prayed as a team and asked God specifically for several things: a revival in the church, opportunities to serve and share our faith, and for healings and freedom for people, and we saw Him provide all of these things! We saw a woman physically healed in her back, a dry well was filled up with water, eight young people became Christians, and the church in Battambang is in the beginning stages of growth and revival! What an amazing God we serve! How can we sum up two months in Cambodia? Well, we can’t, really. It was an incredible time for us to see God move in a nation hungry for truth and love. We found ourselves pouring into ten young people and cheering for every successful outreach moment for them, from trying a new food to praying with people to accept Jesus, and everything in between. We suspect it was something like parenting 10 children between the ages of 18 and 26. We loved leading together, serving together, and discipling young people together. What are we up to now? Just when we thought we had calmed down from staffing the winter school, our next assignment began: staffing DTS Equip, a six-week training program for leaders and DTS staff. We’re midway through with 18 participants, and it’s been a great experience. It’s a very different from staffing a DTS – the participants in Equip are already DTS staff or leaders within YWAM, and it’s a time of learning and sharing together how to effectively disciple students. We’re privileged to be on this leadership crew and are so excited to be teaching and sharing in this class. And in just a few weeks, we’re headed back to Cambodia! We’re going with our friends Jeremy and Molly West to help pioneer and plant DTS Equip in Battambang, Cambodia!

When we were first there as students in 2008, we knew we’d be returning, but we didn’t know it would be this often! As we’ve prayed, we’ve felt for a long time that Battambang is a training hub for Southeast Asia, and planting the DTS Equip there confirms that sense. There will be staff and leaders coming from all over Southeast Asia for this school, and they’ll be returning to their home countries to minister and disciple more effectively. We’re so blessed to be a part of this planting and pioneering process! We’ll be teaching more in the Cambodia DTS Equip, and are excited to be teaching to a broader audience about leadership and discipleship. Please pray for us in these next weeks and months. We’ll be staffing and teaching in the DTS Equip here in Montana until August 6, when Nathan’s family will come out to visit. We’ll be leaving for Cambodia from Denver on August 17, and will be there until October 16. From there, we’ll be spending a week in Taipei, Taiwan, teaching for a week with Jeremy and Molly West. We’re praying that we’ll be able to begin teaching more within YWAM, and shadowing Jeremy and Molly will be a great learning opportunity for us. We’re still looking for and praying for someone to stay in our home while we’re gone for three months to help us with our rent, so please join us in that prayer! There’s so much more to share, but please look at our blog to get the latest updates and photos! www.betsyandnathan.blogspot.com We remember you with the words of Philemon 7: “Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brothers, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.” Please let us know how we can continue to pray for and encourage you! With love,

Nathan and Betsy Russell