Reaching the Nations

What do you think of when you think of the work that we do? When you think about Laurie and Billy Drum, do you think of the work we do in Spain? Do you think of La Mesa Turquesa and the work we do with immigrant populations, with refugees, with teaching Spanish and English, etc? While all of that is true, it is just a piece of the larger picture.
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At the end of June, we will be leading TMS Global’s yearly flagship training event. Laurie is the Director of Training and Formation for TMS Global and this has been her major focus of work for the past few months. For three weeks (June 25-July 17th), we will be working with a group of expert facilitators to train our newest group of cross-cultural workers. This training is 90+ hours of curriculum designed to prepare global workers for their fields.

This training event is intense! Laurie has put together a facilitator team of 11 experts. The entirety of our training team is composed of facilitators who have lived overseas and have served as cross-cultural witnesses themselves. We have a combined experience of more than 175 years of cross-cultural service and ministry. Our most ’rookie’ facilitator has 7 years of cross-cultural experience, while our most experienced have 25+ years. Our trainers have lived and served in Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

Billy joins the facilitator team to teach sessions on valuable member care topics. “Community, Connection, and Care”, “Theology of Risk”, “Theology of Suffering”, and “Conflict Management and Resolution” are some of the sessions he leads.  He also comes alongside the TMS Global Member Care department as a counselor and coach during this intensive training event, to help our newest workers as they plan and work through their transitions to their respective fields.

This training event is designed to train not only TMS Global cross-cultural workers (CCWs), but also other local believers who seek to be more fruitful in cross-cultural ministry among their own people. This is an intense, multi-week training event that bring together missiology, skills training, and experiential learning - all while learning with and from our multicultural peers. Training topics include Bible storying, bonding and becoming bicultural, discipleship, Inductive Bible Study, prayer, the lifestyle of a CCW, and much more.
 
Our curriculum scope and sequence includes four main training threads:
Spiritual Formation (24 training hours)
Joining Jesus Cross-Culturally / Cross-cultural ministry skills (27 training hours)
Member Care (12 training hours)
Language Acquisition Skills (18 training hours)
 
All of our training sessions are highly interactive and put and emphasis on active engagement, lively discussion and debate, and real-life situations and case studies.
 
Outside of our four core threads, we include several hours of experiential training activities designed to help cross-cultural workers learn through activity and through specific assignments that push students to work through issues and problems that they will encounter in their fields of work.
 
We also run a special training program concurrently for the children of our cross-cultural workers. Our TCK program (third-culture kids) is designed to help our youngest family members be well prepared for life in another culture. We have dedicated trainers and caregivers who specialize in the unique issues that effect cross-cultural worker families who are raising children outside of their passport country. The TCK curriculum mirrors many of the same topics that are being taught for the adults, but in age-appropriate ways. Additionally, children of cross-cultural workers have very unique needs and, therefore, have a very unique curriculum tailored to their well-being, growth, and development.
 
In 2021, we have 23 cross-cultural workers preparing for launch. They have been working through the initial phases of their training and preparation and are ready for this last step in preparation before launching in the Fall/Winter. These workers will be serving in a total of 13 different countries. In addition, some of these trainees have influence and reach to more than one country due to strategic partnerships.  Via this training program, we will be equipping workers to go and have influence and outreach in India, Albania, Spain, Colombia, Peru, Jordan, USA, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, Thailand, Kosovo, Germany, and more!  These cross-cultural workers will be serving in a variety of roles and ministries as they join teams and local workers in their fields of service: outdoor education, leadership training, outreach to teens and young adults, university ministry, teaching in local schools, training local teachers, refugee ministry, English teaching, discipleship, prison ministry, diaspora outreach, racial reconciliation, church planting, and ethnomusicology, to name a few.
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YOU are a part of this amazing training event! Thank you for your constant support of us and our work as we not only reach the people of Spain and our neighbors, but as we work to prepare the newest generation of cross-cultural workers to go forth and reach the nations!