Happy birthday to me!

My birthday saved the day! I did have a happy birthday for all of you that were hoping. I took off my night lecture and went out with a few friends for dinner. It was nice for a change to dress up and go in a car out of Manoa valley and not eat base food, thank the Lord. My wonderful friends blessed me here with a brand new beautiful Bible because little did I know that I was reading out of a New King James Version for about a year and a half wondering why the crap I couldn't understand anything. They all felt bad for me and bought me a New Living Translation. Its awesome I think I can hear God now. Just Kidding. I think. It's been raining all day and I feel like I am back in Vancouver Washington for the Holidays so maybe I don't feel so sad about not being home for the Holiday. I am not coming home for Christmas but if you all want you should send me christmas stuff or movies so I am not so alone with myself. I will watch a movie marathon and maybe see if I can go to a friend's house for a little part of christmas so I dont have to be by myself. It should be interesting. Well I miss you all. Take care. Enjoy your Thanksgiving with your family. Hooray for family. Maybe just call me on the holidays to make sure I am alive. heh kidding again. maybe.

ALOHA!

Hello Family and Friends,

I am doing fantastic and my health is good. I have been so busy ever since I came here. I just want to fill you in on a few things that I have been doing here. For some of you that do not even have a clue what I am doing or knew that I was gone I just want to tell you that I am now living in Hawaii and I work alongside a non-profit organization called Youth With A Mission. Last January I came to Honolulu to do a Discipleship Training School because I wanted more of God and knew He had more for me and my future. I traveled around India with a team for my Outreach ministry. It was an awesome experience and I felt God calling me back to staff the DTS school. So I came back to Hawaii in August to do training. YWAM runs several different schools during the year. One school that consistently runs throughout the year is our Discipleship Training School. Youth from all around the world apply to join a DTS for 2 and a half months here in Honolulu and then we send them out at the end of their training to do an Outreach trip over seas. Our YWAM base focus' generally near Asia and the South Pacific. We hold three DTS schools that are split up into three quarters. September, January, and April. This quarter we are sending out teams to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, and the Philippines. This school has been awesome and they are so on fire for God and growing in Him. It's radical and a delight to be a part of. I am just a support staff in this school and will not be taking a team abroad until this next January school. I am here helping disciple students and have been loving it. It is hard at times especially to live in community all the time. I live at my work! God is awesome though because He has been giving me a lot of grace and strength to do the things I am not good at and not always fully comfortable with. We have lectures weekly and take students out to do community outreach and evangelism. They also help out around the base to keep it up with assigned work duties. You are welcome to locate our website to find out further information: www.wyamhonolulu.com 

I hope you all have been enjoying your week and have a lovely weekend. I will write more later when there aren't two people waiting for the computer. Love you all.

Also if you want to catch a glimpse of who are staff are go to www.youtube.com and type in: Aloha Day Sept 2008 in the search and watch our staff video. Its interesting but well made. 

Hello to all of my loved ones. I miss you and wanted to tell you thank you so much for your support and prayers. Today my dear friend Becca Wall surprised me at the Starbucks we have here in Manoa Valley just a short walk away from our base. My staff Lauren pulled me aside from a small group meeting to ask me if I wanted to help her bring back coffee for the staff before our lecture and I was like, sweet! of course I'll skip out on a small meeting to get coffee, I love coffee. So we were walking there and I was in this deep conversation with Lauren and all of the sudden as we were crossing the street Becca Wall walks out of Starbucks and it took me a second to understand what my eyes were seeing. I about wet my pants in disbelief of her presence! I dropped my purse once I got to the sidewalk and started crying I was so pleased and blessed to have a good friend from home be there to hug me and love me. Oh familiarity is so cool when you dont have it for a while. What an awesome surprise. Thankyou Ellie for getting a hold of Lauren. Thank you Becca so much for taking time to see me, it meant so much to me and my heart needed it. I am so sorry I could not stay longer to visit you but wow was that just a trip to see someone that I did not expect to see while I was here. Thank you again! Anyways I am doing just fine here and I am, like usual, procrastinating on doing some stuff that was due like two weeks ago and I have to finish this book by the end of the week which I am not even half way through so that is where I am off to. By the way for all you Washingtonians, not to make you jealous, but the weather is wonderful and I am sitting in the sun and it feels great. hah. I love you all so much and you mean so much to me.

ISLAND BREEZE

I am doing excellent here. I am in Kona now the big island of Hawaii and God is changing my life! I believe that my attitude is transforming into something wonderful, I am still being challenged by it but God has given me grace to love people here and to love Hawaii, as weird as that sounds. I wish you could be here to experience all of this. I have heard many amazing testimonies of students from all nations here. There seriously is so many people from all over the world here in the Kona YWAM. I have been lucky to meet them and hear their hearts and the persecutions they have experienced as followers of christ. I have cried a lot and God has won over my heart and soul. I dont deserve this life that he has given me but he has given it to me and I am choosing to do what he has called me to do. I dont know all of what that is but so far that is in India. With the children and the men and women there. To serve them and to be welcomed into their culture and learn from them as much as I can. Today it was so wonderful. We have these true Hawaiian islanders that have come to visit Kona and they taught us about Protocol which is when you come to a chief of a village and formally ask them for their approval and acceptance to visit, and the two parties give gifts in exchange and they taught us the "hone" (sp?) which is a Maori tradition and it means to breathe in the same breath to show that they are welcomed. So the hawaiian group called the Island Breeze Ministry came to us through protocol and we welcomed them and their group as well as they welcomed us and our group. It was truly beautiful how God is a God of culture and that we are to honor the cultures around us and respect the people within that culture. Upon learning about this culture of the Hawaiians it brought about something in our school here at YWAM. A native man from the Philippines came up on stage in representation of his country and shared with us his testimony. He explained how he first was uninterested in Missions because they came into his country to share gospel and along with that htey did not embrace the culture of his people, instead the missionaries came in and pressed the western culture on his people. He was offended until someone encouraged him to come to America and do a DTS in Kona. As he was sharing this with us, the leader of YWAM Kona, came up and asked for the forgiveness towards his country and many countries for not coming in properly and embracing the cultures of each country and learning from them and this action of hers started a wave of people coming forth representing their countries and asking for the forgiveness of their country and the persecution and wrong doings of our ancestors. I cried the whole time because I could definitely sense the presence of God working in all of our hearts as Nations coming together and asking one another for the forgiveness of our people and the bloodshed and offenses that we have done towards each other. Wow, talk about unity amongst God's people! This seriously lasted for three hours, then we danced together and sang together all 400 people of all colors, all nations, and all hearts holding hands unity, love, and forgiveness. I know my mom is please right now because she if anyone has pressed upon my heart, how important and honoring it is to God to forgive someone and as well, asking them for their forgiveness towards me. Mother, you would have loved it! My friend Anna and I took a walk together this morning around the campus here in Kona, and prayed for each other and our friends and family, it was so wonderful and we really experienced God's creation because the campus is set up on a hill and it is so close to the ocean and you can overlook everything, we even watch the sun rise. I dont know about you but I believe our God is amazing and deserves all of our glory and praise. I wish you all were here seriously because I have never in my life experienced God like this, and I know why now, I have come forth humbling myself as his daughter and have asked from him to open my eyes from being blind all these years and I know that I am but vapor to him and He has given me grace and mercy which is all I could ask for. I love you all so much and miss home so much but my place is here for now where God can work in my heart and I know this now and understand it. So I apologize to everyone at home whom I have called and complained a lot about the conditions I have been living in and how hard it was for me to get use to the unfamiliarity of everything. Yes I was uncomfortable here for quite some time and now I see. So thank you all for your prayers, I have never needed them so much before and I now can appreciate them. I pray for blessings to you all and know that I miss you and love you. See you soon.
YOU KNOW REALLY, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CROSS!

kathryn