Compassion DTS and beyond...

A couple of weeks ago a woman who was 38.5 weeks pregnant ran, and completed, the Chicago marathon. She then promptly went into labor and had her baby that night. I am currently 38.5 weeks pregnant and I can't imagine how she did it, and how tired she must still be. I will not attempt anything nearly as outrageous as running a marathon so late in my pregnancy (or probably ever for that matter...) but I figured if she could run a marathon, I could update our ministry blog before this little guy makes his appearance! :)

This fall has already been a whirlwind for our family. Johnny was asked to not just staff the Compassion DTS, but was asked to be the co-leader for the school. We talked and prayed and decided that he should take that new role of leadership, so he is now helping to lead 20 staff and 80 students. He is doing an amazing job leading with his servants heart and his love for people and has earned the respect of everyone who works with him. I am incredibly proud of him and I am so thankful for this leadership opportunity for him and also that he gets to work alongside such fantastic leaders/mentors who have already taught him so much!

Lecture phase is currently underway and the students are experiencing life changing lectures from incredible speakers addressing various topics. Just last week the students found out which of the ten outreach destinations they will be traveling to! It's an exciting time to be a part of the University of the Nations here in Kona and we are thankful for the opportunity to play a small role in it.

We will be in Kona until February, at which point we are praying for the finances to send Johnny on some pastoral visits to a few of the outreach teams. It would be an incredible experience for him and the teams really benefit from having one of their leaders spend some time with them while they are on outreach. Having a leader visit is a time of refreshment and encouragement for the staff who are on outreach, and also for the students. Our prayer is that Johnny, who is so gifted in counseling and encouragement, would be able to go and bring energy and passion and excitement to the teams when they may be feeling the exhaustion that can come along with outreach. Please join us in praying for this to be possible!

Johnny should be done visiting teams by mid to late February at which point we will be making another HUGE change. As I mentioned in my previous blog, we knew that God was calling us back to ministry with the Performing Arts Discipleship Training School, but we didn't know exactly what that meant. In the past couple of months it has become quite clear that we are to join the staff of YWAM Orlando, Florida, and help them pioneer a PADTS, along with training them how to do outreach into the public schools, like we were doing in New York. We have been in communication with the leadership there for a number of years because they had an interest in us training them to run the PADTS, and it became quite clear while talking with them this summer, that this was exactly what God has for us next.

So in March, we will be moving to Orlando, and joining their staff team, taking a 12 week School of Ministry Development (which is required for all of their staff) and then jumping into preparations and planning to launch a new Performing Arts Discipleship Training School! We are so excited to be working with artists again and there are not enough words to describe how thrilled we are to be preparing to go back into the public schools, with No More Victims!

God has taken us on an incredible journey the last year and Kona has been the absolute right place for us. It has NOT been easy at times but it has been an incredible time of watching Johnny's confidence in leadership grow and a time for me to really focus on my family. As we look to a new season in Orlando, we again face many challenges and changes but we take with us so many lessons learned and such an excitement to now have the opportunity to lead together in ministry as a couple! God has been faithful to our family in incredible ways and we do not question his call, we say YES we will go where he sends us and we cannot wait to see how he uses us!

As we get closer to our move to Orlando, we will keep you updated on details, however right now we are choosing to focus on the season we are currently in. Giving our attention to the Compassion DTS and to Ezra and the new baby that will be joining our family any day now. We ask for your prayers as we fulfill our commitment here in Hawaii and then prepare for another new and exciting season. We are so thankful for this life we have been called to, and for how God continues to provide for us in every way. This includes being eternally grateful for each of you who takes the time to pray for us and encourage us and support us, our ministry would be impossible without you. Thank you for loving our family and for believing in the call that God has put on our lives!

We truly love all of you!
Kelsey, Johnny, Ezra and Baby K

p.s. I have felt very compelled to use my love for writing on a more regular basis, and have been keeping a writing blog. It is a combination of posts about our everyday life, or something God has put on my heart, or sometimes a short story. If you are interested, I would love for you to follow that blog as well as this one, you can find me at... www.thegingerminstrel.wordpress.com . Happy reading!

ministry. babies. and more ministry.

I love working in ministry. Even more specifically, I love working in the area of discipleship.

I love being a part of someone's journey to gain intimacy with God and out of that intimacy, to watch them change the world around them. God has put an even deeper love for discipleship into both of our hearts over this past year in Kona. We knew that we loved the Discipleship Training School model and what it does to radically change peoples lives. But in the last year we began to feel specifically that discipleship was a long term call on our lives. We have had the wonderful opportunity to staff both a Compassion focused DTS last fall and a Performing Arts DTS this past Spring.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, Johnny has taken more of a front seat in regards to daily ministry with the students, while we, along with our leaders, felt that I was to take on a smaller ministry role so that Ezra, and also Baby K on the way, could be my main focus. And over the past season, for both of us, God has confirmed to us in so many ways that our calling as a couple is to disciple young people and help equip and prepare them for ministry. Whether it be in a traditional mission field overseas, or in the high schools of America, or helping our own children grow up with a heart and passion for the Lord and a desire to serve Him. We feel that one of the main purposes of our time so far in Kona was to recognize this passion for discipleship and to allow God to unfold how this was going to play out into our long term ministry. We have, of course, staffed and lead DTSes for many years, but it wasn't until recently that we realized that this is something we are certain we want to invest in long term. There are many opportunities within YWAM outside of DTS, so we have always been open to any direction in which God would move us, but he has made it clear that until further notice, DTS will be our focus.

We also had the wonderful opportunity to return to the world of discipling performing artists this past spring. Our PADTS team is currently on outreach in South Korea. We again did not get to go on this outreach because of my pregnancy, but we are itching to get back on outreaches as soon as possible! A growing family makes going on outreaches more challenging but we LOVE the opportunity and we love that our kids will grow up with these experiences! We are realizing more and more how special the hearts of performing artists are and how unique they are. Also, how powerful they are in this world where the arts play such a huge role. We have found ourselves missing being in the middle schools and high schools with our team of artists and with our message of putting and end to school violence and bullying but also the message of worth and value that so many kids around the world need to hear. We feel God leading us back to PADTS leadership sometime soon, although the details of how that will happen are not clear yet, but we are waiting and listening and trying to take advantage of the incredible leaders and staff and students that we have worked with and will work with through the end of this year.

So what does that mean for the upcoming seasons in our lives? thanks for asking!

We are committed to staffing the Compassion DTS again this fall. Well, let me clarify, Johnny will be staffing the school and I will be having a baby and focusing mainly on that for the fall quarter. We absolutely love and respect the leaders of the Compassion DTS in Kona, it is an honor to work from them and learn from them and we are beyond excited to be involved in the school again this fall!

After the New Year, when the teams from Compassion leave for outreach, we will once again not be traveling with them because we will have a newborn. Our hope is that this is the last time we will have to watch a school leave for outreach and not be going with them! But we take very seriously the role that we play in their discipleship and growth and preparation for outreach during lecture phase and we are so thankful to be a part of that season with them!

This fall we will be making some decisions regarding the exact next steps we will be taking, and we ask for you to join with us in prayer! As I mentioned, we know that God is moving us towards working long term with Performing Arts Discipleship Training Schools again. We feel that it is time for us to start leading schools together as a couple, something we have never had the opportunity to do before! There are a few different ways that we can move forward in regards to PADTSes, however we do not know for sure yet how God is leading us. We have some time to decide how and when this will happen, but we figure it is never too early to ask for prayer! So we ask for you to pray with us for clarity and understanding about this next step in our life. We are open and willing to take any path the Lord asks us to, we just want to hear him clearly!

It's an exciting and sometimes scary journey, doing life as a missionary family. We have days when we are not sure where our finances are going to come from, or days where being so far away from our friends and family is almost too much to handle. But more often we are overwhelmed by the richness of our lives, by the way that God has provided for us time and time again, and by the blessing that our friends and family have been to us. We could not continue on in our ministry without your faithful prayers, and encouraging words and your financial support. Please know that we are eternally grateful and consider each of you to be an integral part of our ministry!

We are currently in Canada visiting family and attending Johnny's oldest brother's wedding reception. He recently married his fiancee, she is Japanese and they were married in Tokyo but we are here to celebrate with Canadian friends and family. And then we will head back to Kona at the end of August to prepare for Compassion DTS and Baby K #2! Please pray for safe travels and that we would find a good apartment to rent. We need to find one BEFORE we return, so it could be tricky! I will keep our blog updated as we move into Compassion DTS and also as we make decisions about our future! Thank you for loving our family and for taking an interest in our lives! We love you!

All our love,

Johnny, Kelsey, Ezra and Baby K #2

six months... and everything has changed.

For someone who loves to write so much, you'd think I would be better at remembering to update our blog. My apologies. But here I am, ready to give you the last six months in a nutshell, because as the title says, everything truly has changed.

We spent September through January working with the Compassion DTS. This was an incredible experience. We had an incredible staff team that we were privileged to work with and we had incredible students who were on fire for the Lord and ready to take his love to the nations.

December into January we spent leading an outreach team, along with our co-leader, Josh, to London England. (Check out my writing blog for some of my personal insights into this sad and lovely city as well as a detailed account of our Christmas outreach www.thegingerminstrel.wordpress.com) This was a very different type of outreach than our teams that went directly to an African nation or South American nation where the gospel is much more warmly received. London is a very closed and difficult city to reach with the gospel, but our team was courageous and bold and we prayed over that city and were determined to make a difference. The main ministry we worked with was called Earl's Court Community Project. This is a ministry for homeless and needy in London that not only provides for their felt needs but also provides counseling services. The long term staff at this YWAM ministry have spent YEARS developing friendships with some of these people. Over the Christmas holiday they do a week long outreach that offers a Christmas party of sorts each day with a meal and entertainment and a real family feel, in hopes that these people will feel the love of Jesus and the joy of the season. We had a wonderful time encouraging and supporting Earl's Court's long term staff as well as building relationships with the guests who came each day. We saw a few people even commit their lives to the Lord for the first time which was an amazing answer to prayer in this city!

After our time in London ended, Ezra and I headed back to New York to spend some time with friends while Johnny continued on with the team to South Africa. We felt that Ezra was not quite old enough to take into the type of outreach that the team would be doing in South Africa. They would be working in the slums and orphanages, etc, and we felt that the best thing was for Johnny to continue on without us.

However, as many of you know, all of our plans changed three days after I arrived in New York and Johnny arrived in South Africa. I still haven't found the words to write or blog about this properly, but my best friend, Heather, was killed in a car accident on January 12. As my world spiraled out of control after receiving the news, I tried in vain for hours to get in touch with our team in South Africa. Finally, several hours later, I got in touch with Johnny and had to share the horrifying news with him. Our school leaders, who were currently in Kona, immediately agreed that Johnny needed to come home as soon as possible and within 12 hours they had him on a flight to New York.

January and February are still mostly a blur of shock and denial and also feeling an overwhelming outpouring of love from our family and friends during that time. I will sit down and write further about how losing Heather has changed me forever, but I'm still not completely ready to do that. So I will just say that in the time since Heather's accident I have realized again and again how fragile life is, what a gift that it is, and what a shame it would be to waste even once second on this earth. Heather definitely didn't waste a second of her time. And I am still learning every single day from her example. I was so lucky to have her in my life and to know her so intimately and now my desire is to honor her life with the way that I love my Jesus and the people around me.

We are forever grateful that Johnny was able to make it home for Heather's funeral services. Yes, services. She was loved by a lot of people in a lot of places. Her funeral was in Illinois where she grew up and we also had a memorial service for her in Smithtown, NY, her home for the past seven years. We are so thankful to the people who helped us financially cover the cost of Johnny's extra travel as well as mine and Ezra's. As well as those of you who covered us in prayers and reached out to us through emails and phone calls and driving long distances to be a part of the celebrations of Heather's life. You were such a blessing to us in a time when we didn't even know what we needed or how to ask for it. We could not ask for more amazing people in our lives!

We returned to Kona the first week of March, still reeling from everything that had happened, but confident that it was time to return. We arrived here in time for our Compassion DTS students to be returning from outreach and we spent their debriefing week with them hearing stories of outreach and catching up.

Just days before we returned to Kona we also discovered that we were once again expecting a child! This was exciting and overwhelming news and when we arrived back in Kona we weren't exactly sure what the next season would hold for us. However, God moved quickly and clearly and within days of arriving back we had been informed that the Performing Arts DTS here in Kona needed staff. We of course love PADTS's and we arranged to meet with the director and find out what her needs were. There was an instant connection between our family and Maria Jackson and within a half hour she was telling us to pray about our decision but she wanted us to be on her staff as soon as possible! We were also confident that this was the right thing, and the rest is history.

Our PADTS students arrived April 7. Johnny is very involved in the school, overseeing pastoral care/ counseling aspects of the school, which are his strongest areas of leadership! I am taking more of a back seat with this school, but am staying busy spending my time taking care of Ezra as well as the baby in my belly! We both feel strongly that this season continues to be one in which Johnny is being challenged to step up in leadership and that God has asked me to make my children my priority. I miss being with the students every day and leading them, but I am so thankful for the opportunity to be involved when I can be but to have the freedom to focus on my family!

We know that we will continue to work with discipleship training schools here through the end of the year, continuing with the PADTS and then working again with the Compassion DTS in the fall. After the fall quarter, and the baby comes, we are not positive what God is calling us to. We have many offers of long term ministry opportunities available to us here in Kona, but we also want to keep open hearts and minds to what God would have for us as the end of this year. We know we will continue on in ministry, we are just praying about God's perfect location and timing.

So that's the last six months. In a nut shell. We are so thankful for all of the amazing people in our lives and we appreciate your prayers more than we can say. We would ask for prayer as we seek the Lord about his long term plan for our family in minsitry. We also ask you to please join with us in prayer that this pregnancy would continue to be a stronger and healthier pregnancy than our last and that I would be completely free from anxiety and panic attacks! We are asking God for this pregnancy to bring nothing but joy, and for the baby to be strong and healthy. Your prayers carried me through my last pregnancy and we need a strong team around us again! Please also continue to pray for our hearts as we struggle to grieve and process the loss of Heather. It's a daily struggle and we miss her more than we have words to say. We know that she is dancing with Jesus, and we find peace in that. But it doesn't mean we don't miss her.

Love and blessings to all of you! My Ezra is up from his nap so I think that means blogging time is over!

Kelsey