New year new ways!

Hello Friends,

We pray you're all well and can't wait to hear what God is speaking for this new year in your families and lives. We wanted to try something new this year, as a new family we want to create a place where people who might know Christopher or Joannah can see how we are going, can pray for us, support, and see what God is doing in, through and around us. I've made an FB group that will hopefully do all that and we can be more regular with it and have a lot more small and quick updates so you can journey along with us. If you would like to join our group please message Joannah or Christopher and we can add you. If you're not on Fb I'll try to continue to add the updates on here as well.  

I'm sure some of you know either Christopher or Joannah, but maybe not both. We want to share a little of who we each are, some of what God has spoken to us individually for missions, what we're currently a part of and maybe even a little of what we're hoping for in this coming year, and bigger dreams and hopes as the years go by. We will do this by post finishing with a little bit about each of us so y’all can get to know us!

Meet the Whitby’s:

We meet in 2019 while doing schools with YWAM Perth, Joannah was already on staff when Christopher joined staff end of 2020. We got to live in share accommodation, and become good friends bonding over bubble tea, missions, coffee, a fondness for cookies and tomato soup. End of 2021 we started noticing each other and started dating beginning of 2022. In April-May Joannah and Christopher took a holiday and met Christopher’s and Joananh’sfamilies, in New South Wales and Texas respectively. July-Sept Christopher staffed the FIE online. End of July we got engaged and started planning a wedding. In August Joannah was asked to pray about staffing the PHC in 2023 and lead it in 2024, after seeking God and talking to Chris she got a yes.

November 5- we got married and were so blessed to have loving family come around, supporting and celebrating with us. We spent end of November and beginning of December setting up our home in Perth.

As a family we currently don't have an end to our commitment with YWAM Perth, we’re here until God leads us somewhere else.

Meet Christopher:

Hi, I’m Christopher, originally from New South Wales, the East Coast of Australia. I'm from an incredible loving family, that has loved Jesus, and believed the best and God's leading over my life. I came to Perth in 2019 to do my DTS, with YWAM Perth. After completing that school God spoke to do the Foundations in Education (FIE) school. I returned home end of 2019 for Christmas with the intention of joining staff but was unable to do it for a while because of COVID and border closures. While at home with family for most of the year I did the Transformation School (TS) and the School of Frontier Missions (SoFM) online in 2020, being able to join staff with YWAM Perth in December of 2020. I joined volunteer staff helping initially in the under Christian Education, Pathway, and Media ministries. Under Christian Education I was helping with the Preschool and later helping to staff the FIE in an online capacity due to more COIVD limitations. Pathway was a ministry that would reach out to refugees that have been placed in and around Perth to feel and know Jesus’s love for them.

Within the Media team I served part time with the other ministries, but I later joined full time and applied to focus applying my IT skills to help the base operational and secure, improving systems and solutions to enable ministries and schools to continue, and to train and minister no matter their focus. In 2021 I staffed the FIE online, and again in 2022 where it ran online and in-person which was such an amazing step forward to see other nations included that wouldn’t always be able to get that kind of training.

My heart is very much discipleship, education, and training. God has given me a heart to see a DTS pioneered with a focus of enabling people at risk, those with needs, come to know they have a place to serve Jesus in the nations, by sharing his love for them and those they meet. With this DTS it will have a focus in education and how it can break chains off nations, restore identity and raise up people to who God made them to be.

Meet Joannah:

Hi, my name is Joannah, I'm originally from Texas in the USA, and part of a large Christian family who has supported me so much in missions. I came to Perth Australia in 2017 to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Perth. After completing that school, I did two more second level skill and discipleship schools with YWAM Perth- the Birth Attendant School (BAS) and the Primary Heath Care School (PHC). I joined staff with YWAM Perth as part of the Heath Care ministry and the PHC in 2019. Since then I've been a part of PHC twice, worked with an accreditation team part time over COVID, I've been part of ARMS- a ministry that focuses on the city of Perth, helping families going through a crisis helping by giving them a practical help to get back on their feet, and actively trusting for God to open the boarders again that we'd be able to go back into the nation's and train up Godly health care workers.

I met Christopher in 2019 during schools we were doing at the same time, becoming acquaintances. In 2020 he joined staff, and we had the opportunity to become better friends over the next year and in 2022 we started dating and got married November 5, 2022. I’m currently part of the Primary Health Care School running this January 2023, that will run for 6 months while we learn skills to meet people’s physical needs while also getting God’s heart for the poor and needy and to see beyond the physical to the mental, emotional, and spiritual.

My vision is to see teams of people with a variety of skills that can do health care, community development, upskilling, discipleship, training, education and more through relationship, prayer and worship. Focusing on one nation and a couple communities at a time and seeing nations transformed by Jesus and biblical community development.

Thank you for being a part of our lives and journey, we love you all very much.

Love you very much, 

Joannah and Christopher!