New leaders in the YLI community

Training conferences are not the focal point of YLI, but they serve a vital purpose: help us meet new young leaders. We asked a few new leaders in our community about the impact YLI has made in their lives and ministries:

• Owusu shared how God is using him to relationally win drug addicts for Christ.
• Achare said God recently used him to pacify, befriend, and ultimately lead to Christ a crazed man who would often invoke curses on people in his community.
• Josephine is having success leading Muslim co-workers and family members to Christ, despite the fact that her Father is a committed Muslim.
• Johnson works at the Ghana Water Company, and each month has been giving his salary back to the company to fund clean water wells for poorer communities. He also led his Muslim brother to Christ.

YLI’s conference ministry is fully under the care of Ghana’s coaches. I sometimes attend, but I don’t teach. The coaches are not only better culturally equipped to relate to the young people, but are also incredibly gifted communicators. Each year coaches travel together four or five times to teach YLI’s discipleship material and identify a few young leaders to ‘go deep’ with. They then journey back to the same towns many times to invest in the new relationships and provide additional coaching.

The young leaders we encounter at YLI conferences typically do not have to be convinced to share their faith with those who do not know Christ. Evangelism is embraced as the responsibility of all African Christians. What they need and receive from YLI is training, community, discipleship, encouragement, friendship and partnership. The YLI conference ministry opens the door for the YLI Coaches to engage with young leaders in these areas.