Details n a lil breakin it down!

Hey to all my prayer warriors n supporting homies!!!!!

So...many of you have been askin for a run down on the details of what i'm currently up to, since i seem to enjoy bloggin it up bout the abstract and idealistic, overall thinkings of my brain instead of the detailed workings of the rational realities. haha. So...i'ma try my best to set a comprehensive picture up for you to understand:


This weekend i am moving into a new trailer with a new roomie (a very awesome roomie!!!) Her name is Helena...she is German...and alot like my oldest sister. So we are pretty much opposites, but i like it like that:) love her! and we will both be staffing together for this upcoming School Of Ministry Development (SOMD) (Also the school that i just completed myself). I live in the trailer with 3 other girls, not including Helena. How am i doing so far?! lol. And our room is freshly painted up---it looks moderny with deep reds, black and whites. i'ma fan. it feels more like a little apartment!

SOMD planning and training will begin this Monday and run up until the students come on Sept 18th. We still need to plan outreaches for after lecture phase...look and pray over a couple more student applications, and im sure alot more logistical work in the preparation for the school to start. SOMD, if i haven't explained it before, consists of a 3 month lecture/local outreach work---where the students learn their giftings and strengths....passions...community development...basic counseling techniques...worldview (which will blow their minds wide open)...faith and finances, etc. each week a new speaker comes to teach on these subjects and entertain questions and dialogue. The students will choose a focus track in which they will serve within the community during the week. Some will work with our Urban Team in going to Jeopardy (an at-risk youth center). The Urban team has been working with these at-risk youth for a long time and have built relationships with them. some of the other students will be working with a youth group through a community church....we have also started building relationships with the youth there. and still others will be working on furthering the relationships already established at the local skate park. Its gunna be so tight!!! After the 3 months of lecture is over, we will present them with overseas outreach locations which will last between 2-3 months...or some may choose to just stay long-term!

My job: I will be supervising the Jeopardy students and continuing fostering relationships with the kids there. i love those kids and have already met many of them throughout this summer. I will have a small group of students which i will meet with throughout the week...as a group and individually. Counseling skill refreshing will certainly occur i'm sure! This is what i am most excited for....discipling the students. pouring out to others, the wisdom and love that have been poured into me during my time here. This is why God called me to stay here with YWAM LA: To disciple. To learn more of the depths of his love and grace....to learn more. I am excited to lay down my life for these students and walk with them through their eye-opening revelations and through their challenges and processes of restoration. So...i'm getting carried away again with my passionate heart lol...but basically, i will be sitting through the class times with the students throughout the week...going to Jeopardy with them...attending staff meetings...helping with logistics and giving input to aid in the overall growth of the school and the students. I will be working alongside a very TIGHT staff and leadership. There is one overall school leader, Chanelle (who has also lead both my DTS and my SOMD) and 3 of us staff---me, my roommate, Helena...and Geoff. i love them all and we work and think so differently that it will be amazing to watch how God uses our uniqueness to complement the whole of the team for the advancement of God's glory.

People have asked me that now that i am on staff...i will be getting paid, right?! hahaha....ummmm...not so much lol. No YWAM staff gets paid, not even the base director. we are working on total faith with our finances...well...we do what we can and should in this area---raising support and creating budgets...and structuring our incomes with our expenses in wise ways, but in the end...God is seriously evident as our Daddy...our Provider. and to tell you the truth...it is SO AWESOME to see how he has already worked in this area in my time here. i kinda like it. i am forced to trust God, with money---which is not easy for me because money has been an ill subject for me. BUT...i have been shown a faithfulness that i would never have seen in the same way if i wouldn't have to give it up to Him. and as a result...my trust in my Daddy is increased immensly. I find out a little bit more of who it is that i serve. and my faith walk is lifted to new levels! so...with no further rambling in excitement....i come to a new thought...hence a new paragraph:)...

I am calling on anyone who reads this who may feel led to support me financially. and if you don't feel so led after reading this, i ask that you pray about supporting me haha. just to make sure:) I need your help in order to remain ministering within this setting at YWAM Los Angeles. I am trying to create a budget of $500 a month. I have $300 already pledged monthly. i prefer monthly giving, but obviously would greatfully welcome one time givings. If you are desiring to support me, you can send me a message on fb or give me a call: 317.332.4764 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 317.332.4764 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Or you can just go ahead and send a payment either through my paypal (located on the top right corner of my blogsite: http//www.stepup2life.blogspot.com....or mail it to YWAM LA attn: Registrar 11141 Osborne St Lake View Terrace, CA 91342

My staff contract with YWAM LA is a 2-year committment. but this doesn't mean i stay on the LA base the whole time. the leadership is starting up the same school (SOMD) in Brazil in this coming up March. I am praying about joining the staff team there. it would be ideal in my mind for starting to get plugged into the brazilian community and start connecting and working with the street children ministry there in Belo Horizonte. But we will see...God seems to have his own agenda for me, that doesn't always match up with my own ideas lol. But his plan is perfect. and his timing is perfect. and i know without doubt that he is preparing me to launch my visions and dreams. The vision of a safe house/rehab center for street kids and survivors of child trafficking/prostitution is still my dream. to have a team of therapists that work with the children...write the children's stories in a book for them not be forgotten...for societies to know of the pain that exists within this world. and a new dimension of thought has recently invaded my thinking. To not only have these kids be counseled and worked with in their skills and giftings so that they are prepared for life and supporting themselves...but to work alongside local churches and have church families adopt these kids...still being provided with family and individual counseling. I believe it is the job of the church to look after orphans....and we are failing at this. I want to replicate this idea in several countries: (at the moment i'm thinking about): Brazil, Thailand, Nepal, Phillipines, Cambodia, Africa (west and south)....and New York:)

So....there it is!!! hahah...the low down of my current stage of following God, and my future ideas that we are working up together. It's an exciting adventure...this God life...and i ask again, for you to be apart and to partner with me however you can. Thank you over n over again for all of the support many of you have blessed me with throughout my life and time here in LA. God has used you in such huge ways!!!!!!!


Love n blessings.

Kate

the conduit urgency

We are called to be conduits of grace.

It is of great urgency that we embrace this grace in a manner that confidently receives and accepts the fullness of grace that we've been given alongside the glory that we are called to live INTO. Our thoughts, beliefs...our every detail of how we live our lives should align with integrity, the glory that we claim and excitedly teach others about. I feel that so often i live below this line. I often live very selfishly in choosing to accept less than what i have gained, through Christ. I also live selfishly in the fact that...if i continue to stubbornly refuse God's full gift of renewal and identity, then i fail to be capable of fully transferring that same gift of grace to others. I don't choose full restoration, and half-filled restoration is not acceptable. It is not life lived abundantly.

There are hurting people that i long to counsel and tell of God's great restorative power, but they suffer when i get in ruts of faulty thinking. they suffer when i choose not to live what i so passionately believe is possible. the hope and faith of life abundant--total transformation. When we linger in a stagnant state of self-consumption---always focused on "my issues" or holding on to offenses stacked against us from life---we stay right were Satan wants us...below our potential---not influencing others with high velocity of truth and restoration for the advancement of the Kingdom.

We are to "Take captive every thought". Our thoughts have power. Power to remain living in our filth of our pasts...or the power to live in transformation. The greatest gift we have and the most powerful one is our choice. We have to first realize this choice. Get out of the fatalistic mindset that life happens to us...that we have no influence over anything or anyone...that our thoughts and feelings---that we don't matter. The fundamental truth is quite the opposite. We matter. We influence--either positively or negatively---either half-heartedly or with passion. We have the choice. That is the depth of God's great love and respect for us. May we choose to utilize this freedom to further God's grace...fanning the flames of his hope over people's lives...taking up our position in God's great army---the position that he has assigned to each and every one of us---to fight for life lived in abundance, both here and for eternity.

May we awaken from our sleep of self-pity and self-focus, and realize the urgency of living fully in our transformed selves. transforming not only our behaviors but also our hearts and our minds in order that we live with purpose! In order that we bring the brevity of Christ's grace to lengths of this world. May we start giving out the grace that we have been given with such great price.

Recognize your God-given passions and strengths and choose to respond with passion of a self fully embracing their true identity---fully giving out instead of keeping for yourself.

True Living

and the testing continues. while we are still on this world, it will. we will continue to see pain...to feel agony...to walk amidst suffering. But the price does not come without reward. Hope is not some elusive concept that Christians have made up to get through hardship; it is real and tangible. Joy has been ever present with me this week even amidst the hardest times of questioning and heart-breaking tragedy.

One of my heros left this world this week to be introduced, face-to-face, with her Father and Savior. Not fair, right??! yeah, ima bit jealous of her. Kandice was 28 years young, but lived more passionately and intentionally then most i know...pursuing God daily with all that she was, she impacted more in her 28 years than most will in a long-lived lifetime. The things of this world were of fleeting and ill purpose to her...her hope and purpose were deeply rooted in what was truth. True Kingdom living. Integrity. Her faith matched up with the way she lived her life...there was no room for questioning or doubt...just a pure representation of realness, vulnerability, passionate pursuit of eternal life...of truly knowing her Father. And people responded. people often best respond to realness. People know when you are being fake...they can spot hypocrisy from far away; and reversely, they know genuine living. I believe it is the cry of this culture...to encounter truth, the real deal, to understand what hope really is.

I cannot say that i am not mourning her separation, because i am. I cannot say that i didn't ask God that "why" question, over n over many days during her battling. I cannot say that i have not cried so many tears that i have made myself sick on multiple occasions, thanks to my new found ability to feel and process! But...i CAN say that while i have had my questions i have also been shown grace...joy when i never thought it possible...peace during pain...the understanding that even tho i may ask why, i am able to come back to the who. For it is not the 'why' that keeps me stuck anymore...it is the 'who' that i am able to grasp and grab tight to. The Who it is that i serve...the Who it is that loves me...us...and Kandice more than anyone on this planet. Craziness, i know, but truth nonetheless. I know my God. i know his character. ok both of those i am still in the process of knowing and understanding, but i have enough...and strong enough foundation, now, that i am able to experience more of Who He is through the crappiness of this life. I cannnot even tell you how much he met with me this past week and revealed more to me during this time than i ever would have imagined could have come through the pain. The point is 2-fold: To constantly pursue God with so much intentionality that you are learning more about the WHO again n again....so that when your faith is tested (when)...you have the strength of knowledge and truth to overcome...to be strengthened as a result of the testing. my faith has been strengthened once again, and i now, even more than before, desire to continue serving and knowing my God.

The celebration of her life this weekend was amazing. amazingly hard and good. brilliantly beautiful! So many testimonies of the character of Kandice and how she unceasingly impacted lives for the glory of the Kingdom! She left a 15 page outline of how she wanted the service to look lol...why did this not surprise me?! It was anything but ordinary...just like her life. we worshipped our God and encouraged one another. Kandice's mama and daddy were such an inspiration to me...encouraging everyone else, encouraging me so immensly with her words. And i will carry on her passions...i will carry on her truth...i will continue to persevere and passionately live out Truth and Love while i am still living on this earth. i will continue to pursue the Christ that she so consistently represented to me. To my hero...I promise to live this life out fully and purposefully for the God and Savior that we both adore. Enjoy soaking in his radiant presence my sister. i cannot wait to see you again soon. what a jealous and loving God we serve.