Waking up to a beautiful Kona morning looking forward to another extremely busy day of school preparations…this pretty much seems to describe my life these days. As I am sitting here writing this I am thanking God for the view of my office. (The photo above) It is so nice to sit outside and work because if not you would probably find me huddled under my desk in a little ball just rocking back in forth singing to myself. I never realized just how much went into preparing for a Discipleship Training School. As of right now I am sitting here staring at a list of forty plus items that need to be attended to…soon. Before I left I prayed to God that He put me through fire, provide me with the opportunity to learn as much as possible, to be given as much responsibility as He felt I could handle, and be able to work to the point of being so tired at night that I could just fall into bed and sleep deeply. God is good; He answered my prayers and then some :) Right now we are eight and a half weeks away from the schools start date and there are only two of us working on preparations. The remaining four staff will not be here until December, so please put us on your prayer list. God’s grace is sufficient and I know everything will come together for a fantastic school for our students.
Well, one morning this past week as Joanna and I were sitting in the café doing our Bible study we decided we needed to pray for our school and ask God what He wanted to show us. As we were praying Joanna received Isaiah 63-65 and as we read through it what struck me most was Isaiah 65:1 which says “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, “Here I am, here I am.” That verse struck home for me for two reasons. These past couple of weeks with moving and transitioning into a new “home” while dealing with the loss of my old one, my focus wasn’t completely on Him where it should have been. As I sat there pondering that fact I prayed more into what God had just placed on my heart and I felt He was telling me that there are students who are going to be coming to us who would be going through the same thing and we needed to disciple these individuals, see them through and help them understand…He is wanting us to come to Him. He is wanting us to come to Him with our everyday life struggles; He’s wanting us to talk to Him like we talk to our best friend, spouse, family member, the way we talk to those closest to us. He waits so patiently for us to come to Him, but most of the time we are so oblivious trying to figure things out on our own that we don’t go directly to Him or rely on Him to see us through. Yes, it is a two way street, He does come and pursue us, but we need to constantly be pursing Him. He wants that close intimacy with us where we come to Him for everything. As long as we are pursuing Him and have that intimacy everything else will flow from that. These next eight weeks are going to be crazy busy, but I know some amazing fruit is going to come from it. I’m so excited to see what God has in store for our students.
We have some exciting things planned for our school that I know are going to really stretch our students. We have just been approved to take our entire school together during the last two weeks of lecture phase to a top secret location. I’m sorry I can’t say where this amazing location is at this time as some of our students might be reading this, but I will be announcing it in the newsletter I’ll be sending out at the end of the month. Our speakers are confirmed, outreach contacts and preparations are beginning, and materials are being collected. We are now up to 25 accepted students and in the process of approving more applications in the next few days! Two more staff joined our team last week and now we’re up to six, so thank you all so much for your prayers. This week along with all of the paperwork we will be working on we will also be putting together videos for our students so they will be familiar with our campus and staff when they arrive. The ages of our students range from 17 to 29 so for a lot of them this will be their first experience away from home and we want to make the transition as stress free as possible for them. There is so much to do, so much to learn, but I am so thankful for the opportunity. What an amazing God we serve.
I’m in my second week here in Kona and I’m getting familiar with the campus and learning my way around town. I am now the owner of a pink moped (yes, pink ;D thank you Christine for all your help) and we have managed to attached a shopping basket to the back for trips to the nearby Famers Market where I’m able to shop for the most amazing fresh fruits! (I’m working extra hard at getting healthy as I’ll be leading a team on my own for outreach, so I want to make sure I’m in the best health possible!!) Joanna was just the best and bought me a pink pancho to match for those random afternoon rain showers, so I’m all set. I’m all settled in my apartment and I have four wonderful roommates that are just the sweetest girls. They are all staffing various schools that are in session right now, so it’s nice to be with people that I can ask for advice since I’m the newbie. Joanna (the school leader) and her roommate Christine have just been amazing helping me get acquainted and settled in here and I am so thankful for all their help. The leadership/training team here on base has also taken me under their wings and spending time with these people and their families has just been a huge blessing. Now that I’m getting settled in I have found a ministry I want to get involved with off campus. There is a Crisis Pregnancy Center here in Kona that is doing amazing work and I’m excited about the possibility of working with them. I’ll be updating you all later this month on how the process is going on getting involved with them. Well I had better sign off I just wanted to catch you all up on what has been going on since I got here.
Love you and miss you all and I’ll be in touch soon!
Allie :-)
This is a picture of our Thursday night meeting in Ohana (family) Court!
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