Hi everyone!!!

I hope you all are doing well and having a wonderful week!

First I really do need to apologize. This update is going out much later than I intended. I truly planned to send updates while we were on tour. Each week just got busier faster than expected and I kept telling myself I would write once I had a little more time to sit and go through everything that was happening. However that time never really happened while we were on the road and now I’m writing this from El Salvador and am just realizing how much has happened and how incredibly faithful the Lord has been over these last six weeks. Thank you for being patient with me and for continuing to pray even while the updates have been slow or non existent. And I am sorry in advance for such a long update!

As many of you know over the last six weeks our DTS team traveled across the United States sharing a production called Encounter. The production shares the story of the gospel through music, storytelling, movement, and visual art. The heart behind encounter is to share the bigger story of the gospel in a way that people not only can hear but they can experience as well. The show begins with creation, and then moves through the brokenness and separation that sin brought into the world, and then ultimately it points to the redemption and hope that is found in Jesus! Each scene builds up on itself until it gets to the cross and then there is an invitation to have relationship with him. Getting to be apart of this tour was such a wild and wonderful experience! Getting to watch the gospel being told through art was so so special for me! Each show we did was a sweet reminder to me that the gospel is not just a message we talk about. It is the story God has been writing throughout all of history and it is the story that he is continuing to write in each one of our lives!

Most of our days on tour were pretty similar. The biggest thing that was different was the location we did things at. That changed all the time. Sometimes we were in churches, sometimes in school auditoriums or gyms, sometimes on the street or in parks, and one time we were even in a barn! (I will have to explain more on this one later!) When we would arrive at a location the first thing we would do was spend time praying and interceding for the people who would be coming to the show. After that we would unload the 26 foot Uhaul truck that we had packed with lights, sound equipment, props, backdrops, and everything needed to make the production happen. Once everything was set up, we would do sound checks, do some personal quiet time with the Lord, do final run throughs, and would just get ready for the show. After the production Jeremy the leader of YWAM Boston, would invite anyone who wanted prayer to raise their hands. Our whole team would then go out into the crowd and spend time talking with people. We would try and talk with everyone even if they did not have their hands raised. We would talk and pray with them. And then most of the time we would end the night with a worship together. After everyone left we would tear down, load the truck back up and head to wherever we were staying for the evening. This was always different as well. Sometimes we stayed at a church, in a school gym, at host homes, hotels, and we even stayed at one cabin!

My job for the production ended up being different than I originally expected. While the show was going on my main role was to intercede. I would find a place in the building we were at and spend that time in prayer! I would pray for the people watching, for my teammates performing, that as we did the show over and over we would not lose sight of how special hearing the gospel is for us personally and for other people as well, and for the Lord to move in the hearts of everyone as the story of the gospel was being shared. To be honest at first I was nervous about having this role. Actually a little terrified. I was not sure how I was going to intercede for several hours each day and sometimes for multiple shows in one day and not run out of things to pray about. I did not want to let the team down. And I did not want to let the lord down. But seriously every single day the Lord met me! It never felt difficult in that way at all! In fact interceding became one of the sweetest parts of the entire tour for me!! It was a game changer. Getting to spend that time talking with Jesus was truly such a gift!! It became one of my favorite parts of the entire six weeks!! Not that I can’t intercede anywhere anytime but I already miss having so much of that devoted time with the Lord in this specific way! The lord is so faithful!

The Lord also used the beginning of tour to really meet me and another student Bell in another special way! The day before we left Boston I hurt my back badly doing laundry I guess. (Or that is when I first noticed it anyway. I am not really sure how it happened.) I could barely walk without being in tears. Because of that during the first couple of weeks of tour when we would unload the truck I physically could not help much. During the same time Bell was dealing with severe migraines and light sensitivity from a concussion she had gotten over Christmas break. So her role was to help intercede as well on days she felt well enough to. And on days she did not she would find a dark room and rest. Both of us struggled with feeling like we were not contributing to the team in the way we wanted to and should be. We weren’t sure if we were more of a hindrance than a help. However the Lord was so so kind and the first week alone there was three different people that came up to me without knowing anything about what I had been struggling with and shared words from the lord that were so specific. Each of them said in different ways that the Lord wanted me to know I was valued, that I was an asset to the team, and that he was proud of my obedience. Bell had a very similar experience. It was such an evident encouragement from the Lord for both of us that our worth is not measured by how much we can physically do at all but instead by our faithful yes and obedience to him. Bell and I both encouraged and reminded each other in this throughout the tour. And like I said intercession ended up becoming one of the most beautiful parts of the whole time for both of us! And we both were so thankful to do it together. We felt like it was such a sweet gift from the Lord!

Week one started out crazy and was intense from the get go. We had thirteen shows just in the first week! We traveled through Boston, Cape Cod, Sharon, Lexington Massachusetts, providence Rhode Island, Morgantown, Kish Valley, Gettysburg, Grove City Pennsylvania, Front Royal Virginia, and Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. At one of the first shows in Massachusetts a handful of middle school students stayed after to talk with us. One girl told us that seeing the show helped her a lot. She said she had grown up around church but had never really connected why it was so important to have a relationship with the Lord. We got to talk with her and share more. As well as got to pray with her. it was really cool to see how the Lord was helping things connect for her! She was so excited! And it was an encouragement to us! Another night a young woman during the prayer time told us that she felt like her relationship with the lord was not in a good place. She said she wasn’t sure if she believed he even cared about her life anymore. She didn’t really have anything good to say about the Lord. As we prayed with her you could just feel the holy spirit. And during that time she heard the Lord tell her that he had never stopped pursuing her. By the end of the night the way she was talking about God had completely changed! She had so much peace. It was so so cool to see! One last moment from this week is a man who asked for prayer because he had been really angry with some of his family for years. Some of the guys on the team prayed with him and talked through what forgiveness could look like if he chose to. He said he did not know how to forgive them because he was just so angry. But he said he wanted to try to start to. The guys shared how open and vulnerable he was with the lord when he was praying about it with them and just how soft his heart was for the lord! We know and are believing the Lord will restore his relationships with his family!

Week two took us through Ohio, Springfield, Dayton, and Cincinnati. That week we were hit with a massive snowstorm and ended up getting stuck in Ohio because we got over twenty inches of snow. At first i think we all were disappointed. But now looking back at it the snow was such a gift. The lord knew exactly what wee needed. All of us had already been running our bodies down pretty hard with multiple shows each day and the very little sleep in random moments we were getting. Several people on the team had already come down with the flu. The unexpected break gave everyone time to rest and recover which was a blessing. Even though we were snowed in and several were sick we still wanted to make the best of it. So we had some fun in the snow with some snowball fights! We even made some maybe not smart decisions. On one of the days Tianna and I tried to walk to a store just to get out for a bit and just have a change of space. The store was about twenty minutes away walking. As we were about half way there we ended up getting picked up by two very nice police officers because the snow was just so deep! (It was an adventure but we definitely should have turned around a long time before that! we were definitely soaked lol!!) We also got to spend more time doing family worship! As well as intercession. And those were such a sweet time too!

Even with the snowstorm that week we had some great ministry time as well! One night in Dayton it was absolutely freezing and we had just finished the show! we had all got our coats and stuff on to load up the box truck so we could leave for the evening. Most people who watched the show had already left the church. However there was still one couple standing by the door. We started talking to them and they were the sweetest couple I think we met on tour! We found out from Lilly the lady of the couple that her back had been giving her constant pain ever since she had a work injury happen several years ago. A few of us surrounded her and prayed for healing for her body. Nothing significant had changed. She thanked us and they left and we started to help load the truck. About five to ten minutes later she came back running inside. She bent down and was able to touch her toes. And could twist her body stretching it on her side! She told us she had not been able to move like that in years! She said when she was walking through the parking lot she dropped her journal and her husband did not see it happen and she felt a bit better after we prayed for her so she thought she would try to grab it and realized she could bend way more than normal! It was crazy! Thank you Jesus!

Week three we went through Tulsa Oklahoma, Grants New Mexico, Phoenix Arizona, and into California. In Phoenix I met a student named Nacy who loved art. She showed me drawings she had made inspired by different verses in the bible. One of the pieces showed a hardened heart transforming into a renewed heart surrounded by the holy spirit and the Lords love. She shared about some really difficult things happening in her family. Her and her brothers and sister are split into multiple homes. Her brother is struggling a lot right now and they just admitted him to a program for him to get some help. And she was worried that he was mad at her because of her telling their parents on him. I just really felt like the Lord made it really clear he wanted her to be loved and seen that day. I got to talk with her between services and we prayed together. The lord made it so easy to connect with her and it was an absolute joy to spend that time intentionally with her! I think she felt really seen and loved by the Lord! It was also just so beautiful to see how open she was to what God was doing in her life as well!

Week four we were fully in California. We were mainly in San Bernardino and San Francisco!While there we had the awesome opportunity to serve in several different communities outside of doing our traditional shows. We partnered with two local churches to deliver groceries and invite people to an event the church was hosting. We did this by going door to door to families. One woman was taking her trash out when we started talking with her. She ended up inviting us into her house and by the end of our conversation she chose to give her life to Jesus!! We also spent time serving at food banks, praying with people in a grocery store parking lot and going under a bridge where there was a large homeless population stationed in the area. When we went there, we brought groceries to hand out and spent time talking with people, getting to know them, sharing the gospel, and praying for them. There were actually a lot of really awesome stories from this night but for time sake I will share one. We got to talk with one woman and we had a really good conversation with her. She was living under a few tarps that were connected to a few rusted out cars. When we brought the groceries she was incredibly grateful for them and kept thanking us. At one point as we were talking with her she even asked if we had a bible! None of us had one with us but Garith one of the staff members happened to have his personal bible in his bag and ended up giving it to her. She seemed really happy and thankful to receive it. However a little while later another small group of us ended up talking with her again. But this time the conversation was a complete 180. She was very upset and angry that we came by. She tried to give the bible back to us and when we told her she could keep it she threw the bible on the ground. It was really confusing at what changed in just a short time. But Kassidy one of our teammates picked up the bible and told her that we were not there to argue with her. That we were there because God loved her and we cared about her. That broke her. She just started crying and started sharing more of her story and some of the pain she had been carrying for a long time. We listened to her and got to pray with her again. We got to remind her that no matter what she had been through Jesus still loved her and wanted a relationship with her. She ended up deciding she wanted to give her life to Jesus! And the bible she threw on the ground was given back to her! She totally encountered the love of God that night and it was so sweet to see part of that happen.

Week five was one of the most eventful weeks of tour. We traveled through Phoenix Arizona again, Dallas, Houston, Corpus Christi Texas, and New Orleans Louisiana. During one of the shows in Texas I sat down next to a girl who was sitting alone. She shared that she had almost not come that night but decided to go because a friend invited her. As we talked she began to cry and shared that earlier that day she had been thinking about ending her life because she felt completely hopeless. (We were both in tears at this point.) My heart was so broken for her. I told her that her life mattered so much to the Lord and that he sees all the pain. And that we can’t do it alone. We prayed together and she said she felt so much peace. She had not felt that much peace in a long time. And that night she chose to follow Jesus!!!

Another wild moment in week five happened in New Orleans when one of our vans suddenly went into a thing called limp mode and could only drive four miles an hour. Quite literally four miles per hour. We ended up having to rent another van and leave our van with two people from our team in New Orleans to get it repaired. Once it was fixed they met us in Philadelphia. It was a crazy evening. Especially because when this happened we were an hour drive away from our housing doing laundry and thrifting. It was definitely not funny in the moment but we do laugh a lot about it now. A five minute drive took like forty five minutes and a few people even tried to push the van faster in neutral (I believe neutral) than it was going in drive at one point. They made it up to five miles per hour! Whoot whoot!! But it was definitely not sustainable so we put it back in neutral.

Week six was our final week of tour and we were in Baton Rouge Louisiana, Columbus Ohio, Knoxville Tennessee, Dublin Virginia, Philadelphia, and Gettysburg Pennsylvania. During a school assembly in Philadelphia the entire school went on a hold. Teachers moved everyone into a classroom and we had to sit quietly on the floor for about an hour. When the hold was lifted we were actually able to go back and finish the show. Which we were shocked about because at this point the students were supposed to be back in class. After the show we got to talk with a student. It was really cool! He said while he was sitting in the classroom during the hold he couldn’t stop thinking about the scene in the show right before the hold. Which was when Jesus chose to go to the cross for us. He said he had heard the gospel before and believed it but he had never really thought about why someone would willingly do that for people. He said he just could not stop thinking about it. We were able to talk with him about the love of Jesus and pray with him. I am not going to lie several of us were a bit bummed with the hold because we initially did not think we would be able to finish the show and also knew that this was going to make set up for the next show we had later that day a tighter time frame. But it was worth it because the Lord totally used it. It was a good reminder for me that the Lord can use anything even when we don’t see it as necessarily usable.

There is so many more stories I want to share if time permitted. The Lord really has moved in hearts all over during this tour! It has been so incredible to see!

Looking back on these six weeks, I just feel incredibly thankful that the Lord allowed me to be part of it! Getting to see him meet people where they are, getting to hear different peoples stories, and getting to watch him pursue people is something I truly never want to take for granted! One thing the Lord has been reminding of in my quiet time over the last few days is the story in John where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. The disciples were surprised when they came back and saw Jesus talking with her. But the thing that God has been highlighting to me is when Jesus tells them to lift their eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Even though the disciples were just arriving Jesus had already been working in that woman’s heart. By the time they understood what was happening the woman had already gone back to her town and people were coming out to meet him. There have been so many things in this tour that have been like this. We got to step into so many different situations where the Lord had already been working in someone’s life so evidently. And that has just made me incredibly grateful to just be able to witness the way he continues to pursue people with so much patience and so so much love.

We made it back to Boston and were there for about four days getting prepped for El Salvador! It is wild to say it has been a whirl wind but We just got back from El Salvador and are now starting our debrief week. It has already been really sweet having this time as a team to slow down a bit, process, and look back on all that the Lord has done through the tour across the U.S and everything that happened in El Salvador. There is so much to share and I am really excited to tell you more soon about El Savador (This is the next Newsletter!!) because the Lord truly moved in some incredible ways there!! As we finish out this time in debrief we would really appreciate prayer for a couple of things

Continued health for our team as some people are still recovering and our bodies are coming down from a really busy but so good few months.
For all the people we encountered both in the U.S. and El Salvador that the seeds planted would continue to grow and that they would keep encountering the Lord in more ways!
And then as we begin to transition out of DTS, prayer would be amazing for clarity, peace, and obedience in whatever the Lord is leading each one of us into next. Our prayer is that we bring what he has done in us from DTS to our next place and not just leave it in this season.

Thank you again for being part of this with us! I’m really looking forward to seeing some of you soon and sharing more in person!

Thanks

Elizabeth Sheeler