Tired...and Thankful.

I’ve been a “single mom” all week long. Johnny and David left last Sunday to drive our car to Los Angeles, and although I had an incredible time hanging out with people I love, I have to admit that I’m exhausted. Taking care of a toddler on your own is no small order. Therefore, I am excited to see my husband tomorrow for many reasons, but primarily I am excited to hand him his son and go take a nap. J (Just kidding babe!)

In other news…I’m sitting on mom’s couch in Indiana, I should be sleeping, but I’m not. Instead I just made macaroni and cheese. Yes… the processed, neon orange kind. I now feel sick to my stomach, I have to wake up in five hours, but alas I feel a blog coming on.

I fly to California tomorrow, with Ezra, to meet up with Johnny. We fly to Hawaii Tuesday, and get started settling in. Before I start posting pictures of Hawaii, and our new home and writing about all the stuff we’re doing, I wanted to give thanks to my Jesus for his faithfulness to us. The past several months have been a journey of faith and not once did we not feel God’s hand in it.

Thank you Jesus for calling us to Kona so clearly that we could not deny your voice.

Thank you for confirming that call to us through not one person, not two people, but through dozens and dozens of encounters, conversations, scriptures, and more.

Thank you for loving us and being gentle with us through this process, for allowing us and the Burd’s to see your plan unfolding for All Access and what we all needed in this time. Your gentleness is humbling and overwhelming.

Thank you for walking us through such an intense past two years, and allowing so much healing to come for me since our difficult pregnancy.

Thank you for my husband and my son who are the joy of my life. I don’t deserve them. I don’t know why I am so blessed. But I am so thankful to call them mine.

Thank you for providing for us financially in so many ways and for surprising us when we least expect it.

Thank you for giving us so many people to miss, because it means you gave us the gift of so many people to love!

Thank you for the support and love of our family and friends, we are abundantly blessed to have such a strong network of people who believe in us and pray for us and make it possible for us to be in ministry.

Thank you for our safety and our health.

Thank you for all of the little things you have done to make this season one of excitement and anticipation instead of fear and stress.

Thank you for loving us and for having a beautiful plan for our life. We desire only to follow your will and bring glory to your name.

So often we become overwhelmed with the stresses of life and the busyness of our days, we forget to be thankful for the small things. I don’t want to forget to notice these things, because it is so clear every single day, in our day to day life, that God adores us and is faithful to us. You don’t have to be moving 5.000 miles away from home for him to shower you with blessings, he adores you and delights in you and wants to give you more than you ever dreamed or imagined. But for him to be able to do that we must surrender our control.

This is a daily process for me, I am not even good at it yet, but the more and more that I try, the more I see how amazing our God is and it gives me courage to let go of my control just a little bit more. And that gives me more time and energy to put into being thankful.

Thank you Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

ready or not...

I’ve been struggling with what to write for a few days now.

I think it’s because this entire process is so surreal to me. Anyone who has picked up their entire life and moved to a new place, one they’ve never even visited, can probably understand.

This month has been a whirlwind and then yesterday we packed up our house, moved everything out, and our whole world changed.

But my poor brain is having a hard time computing everything.

I’m sitting on the Burd’s couch right now, hanging out with my friends, and I’m convinced (and Lola seems to be too…) that in a little bit I will get in my car and drive back to my pretty little house and go to sleep in our big king size bed.

But that is not going to happen.

Instead, we’re moving to Hawaii. Johnny leaves on Sunday to drive our car to California (we’re shipping it to Hawaii instead of having to find a car there) and I leave Tuesday to start my journey to meet him in LA before we fly to Kona.

This is our new reality.

Several times throughout the day I find myself trying to imagine what my life will look like a month from now, or two months from now. But I have no idea. And I’ve decided that’s just fine. Because my Jesus has asked me to surrender the life that I know and love for him, once again, and follow him on a new journey. And that means trusting that he has the very best for our family in mind, and I don’t need to know exactly what it’s going to be like. That’s the control freak in me. It’s okay for me to take it one day at a time, and allow God to surprise us with the beauty of a new journey.

I’m going to cry when I leave New York because I will miss so much that I can’t even begin to put it all into words.

And I think I might cry when we step off the plane in Hawaii because God asked us to do something, we listened, and has been so faithful to us every single step of the way.

If you know me at all, you know I’m a worrier and I struggle with taking risks because fear paralyzes me if I’m not careful. This move is one of the greatest risks Jesus has asked me to take in a very long time, and I am up for the challenge because of his strength, not my own.

I can’t wait to find out what our life in Hawaii will be like. I can’t wait to pour myself into a new ministry and serve in whatever way I am needed. I can’t wait to build relationships with the other staff and our students and I cannot wait to see what God is going to do in and through this school.

Thank you Jesus for letting me be a part of your eternal plan, I am humbled and overwhelmed by your trust in me and I will continue to share your love and fight to bring people back to your heart. I know I don’t deserve this incredible life you have blessed me with but I will continue cherish every second.

What a beautiful God we serve.

there's no place like home...

First things first...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY SWEET EZRA BRAYDEN!!!! I love you baby boy!

Next, as you all know, God has been challenging us with this radical shift in our lives. And we are excited and overwhelmed and ready. But one thing that I have been struggling with is desperately wanting a place to call home that could be a special place of love, and safety, and comfort for our little family. We knew that we needed to live on the YWAM Campus in Kona for at least the first several months and we were okay with this, but that longing never left my heart.

Yesterday, on a whim, I logged on to a website that tells all of the Kona campus news, has classifieds, and off campus housing ads. The top ad was for a one bedroom condo, owned by one of the staff families who has outgrown the space, and immediately I was in love. This tiny space has been well cared for and renovated, and comes FULLY furnished, down to the dishes and silverware in the kitchen! It is also within our price range and available at the end of this month, which is when we will arrive in Kona. I called the landlord at 1am last night, which is only 7pm in Kona, and spoke with him. Through a series of emails today it turns out that...

WE HAVE A NEW HOME!!!!!!

We are so blessed and so excited! The condo is located across the street from the campus and is a 10 minute walk from town. We have such an excitement because this provides a retreat for us in the midst of ministry, we know how important family time is when you are in ministry and living on a YWAM campus with some 700 people around all the time can become overwhelming. We are so thankful for this opportunity and truly feel like God is creating a sense of home in our hearts towards Hawaii, before we even step foot on the big island!

God has been so faithful in this process, there is not one second that we have questioned that this is his plan for our lives. How exciting to know that God is taking us on this journey! How lucky we are to serve him with our lives!

Now we are just hurrying to get all of our final details in place so we can get to Kona and prepare for our students, we will have between 55-70 students in our Compassion DTS alone, and with all of the DTS's combined there will be some 300 students! I cannot wait!

My heart is so full and so excited.

Seriously. How cool is God?

-K

who needs stuff anyways?

For the last couple of weeks we have been slowly selling most of our worldly possessions.

A kayak here, a couch there, a mini fridge and on and on.

This weekend we are having a garage sale and anything that doesn't sell is going to Goodwill. I have been trying not to get sad watching our things go, but I have to admit, it's not that easy. Not because I love things, I really, really don't. However, I have spent the last couple of years creating a home for Johnny, Ezra and myself, and it's a little sad and a little scary to let this home go, and not know what our new one will be like. It's scary to think about ALL the changes that are coming and the reality that almost everything we know is about to change.

As we get closer to moving, to starting a new chapter in our life, I get more and more excited, but there's a part of my heart that is breaking too.

I guess that's what living your life for Jesus is all about. Being willing to drop your nets and follow him. And, no matter how much you think you're leaving behind, if you follow Him, you're always headed somewhere far more incredible than a path you forged of your own accord. Sometimes I just need to be reminded of that.

Nets don't matter in heaven.

Neither do tv's or mattresses.

I just want to follow my Jesus.

-K

new beginnings...

28 days from now our world will change dramatically.

Most of you visiting this blog have read our newsletter, but for those of you who haven't I will post the text of the newsletter below, in green. If you've already received our newsletter, go ahead and scroll to the bottom of this post...

Hello to our beloved family and friends!

The last year and a half has been filled with seasons of intense change from pregnancy to parenthood, from being a part or Youth With A Mission Metro New York to an independent non-profit, All Access Productions. And now even more changes are upon us as a family and within our ministry.

We returned to New York in February and have been working hard on the administrative tasks required to get our new organization up and running so that we could begin active ministry once again. We are now in a place where we only have a couple of major projects left in the administrative process. But on top of the administrative tasks we have been doing, we have been on a journey, under the direction of our accountability leader, to find our long term vision and calling. He wanted us to explore these questions because they affect the future of All Access and the future of our families.

We could write pages about what God has spoken to us during these times but one of the major things we felt was that in this current season our focus needed to be on people over product. We believe that in ministry if you take care of your staff and place their needs first, the result will be stronger people and a stronger ministry.

Taking this to conversation we realized that our current situation was not placing people over product. We were pushing very hard to reach deadlines that other people had placed on us, instead of staying true to our original plan which was to take the necessary time to build our company, whether that was a year or longer. We began to see that as two families with children and no other staff , we could not properly take care of our families and take care of All Access, especially with Rebecca’s health still struggling. We sought wise counsel and each person we spoke with confirmed that the right thing to do was to allow All Access to move at a pace that was realistic with the understanding that during that season our families had different needs.

Dan and Rebecca will be staying on Long Island and they will be continuing to work on administrative work for All Access as Rebecca’s health allows, with no timelines or deadlines to stress her out or make her more sick.

Rebecca will still be near all of her specialists and will be able to continue her many therapies so that she can gain total health as quickly as possible. We could not be more excited for them as they move to a new home and are able to focus their energies primarily on their boys and Rebecca’s health, without the stress of completing All Access work too quickly. We know this is going to be a season of healing and growth for all of them!

What does that mean for us? We're glad you asked!

We have both been feeling God shift our focus and our passions for the past few months, and did not realize the journey God was about to take us on. We have both been feeling a desire to learn what it means to love people the way Jesus loves them and to serve them the way he wants us to. Johnny has also been feeling that he wants to gain more experience and education in biblical counseling so that he can utilize one of his major gifts even more effectively. And we both have had an increasing desire to be a part of a vibrant ministry community again, doing active ministry on a daily basis.

God has lead us very specifically and clearly to join the staff of the University of the Nations in Kona, Hawaii for at least one year. The University of the Nations is the largest YWAM ministry in the world and it has opportunities for us to serve in ministry as well as the potential for further educational courses that Johnny can take in biblical counseling. There are approximately 700 staff and students on campus year round and dozens of families with young children which we are very excited about!

We will be joining the DTS department as staff for the Compassion Focused DTS which begins in late September. We will have between 50-60 students and we have the opportunity to go on outreach with our students to Cambodia, Rwanda or other outreach locations. Our exact roles in the school will be determined during staff training in early September, but we have told the directors that we desire to serve in whatever capacity they need us. The directors, Pieter and Dawn Heres have been wonderfully encouraging to us and told us during our first skype meeting that they had not only been praying for more staff, they had been praying for a married couple to join their staff, and that we were an answer to their prayers.

We know that this is something God wants us to be a part of and we are so excited to pour into our students lives and to reach out to the hurting and the lost and show them the love of Jesus!

Excerpt from the Compassion DTS website:

“Compassion DTS aims to address issues of poverty and injustice in a world gone wrong. We believe God has called us to champion the cause of those in need. We desire strongly to be a voice of the voiceless. If you have a courageous heart, and a burning desire to see God's love spread abroad.... come join us!

This YWAM-DTS is a journey to discover God's heart for you and the world around you. It will give you deeper understanding of the ways of God and amazing opportunities to show His love and compassion. It is purposed to move you to acts of kindness and love to children at risk, the poor and the oppressed.”

We are still involved in the process of All Access, and have no doubt that in God’s timing All Access will return to the schools, but for this season we will take more of a supporting role in that process. Kelsey will be involved in the final administrative projects and will be communicating with Rebecca via the internet and phone meetings to complete those tasks. We both remain as All Access board members and as a family we will remain in prayer as to what our future involvement will be with All Access. But for this season, both ourselves and the Burd’s have total peace that this move is from the Lord and we could not be more excited.

All of this has happened very quickly and we have been praying that if this is the Lord that things would fall into place, and so far every single detail has done exactly that. There are still many things to figure out, but we are trusting the Lord and he has been so faithful.

We could go on and on about all of the little details that are working out beautifully, but the most important part to us is the intense peace and excitement that we have for this new season. We cannot wait to see the lives he will use us to impact. We want you to be a part of each step of this process so we have started a blog that we will update regularly to share our experiences with you. Everything from the journey to get to Kona, to the students that we will work with to the experiences we will have on outreach. Please visit our blog regularly at, www.koslowskisinkona.blogspot.com.

We ask for your continued prayer and financial support as we transition into this exciting new season. For those of you who support us financially, or are interested in joining our financial support team, the following information is very important:

CANADIAN SUPPORTERS: If you are a current Canadian supporter, nothing will change on your end. YWAM BC will just be sending our support to us in our new location. If you are newly interested in joining our Canadian support team, please email us and we will send you the necessary information to begin sending support.

AMERICAN SUPPORTERS: If you are a current American supporter or wish to join our American support team, as of September our money will be processed by the University of the Nations. The process is different than that of YWAM NY, but we will not have all of our new financial information for a couple of weeks. Therefore, please visit our blog in August as we will post all necessary information there. If you are a current financial supporter, we will also get in touch with you directly to make sure you have received the information.

Thank you so much for your years of faithful prayer and financial support. We know that this is the next step that God has for us in ministry, we could not do it without you,we appreciate you so much.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at, jonathankoslowski@hotmail.com, or kelseykoslowski@gmail.com or call us at 631.942.2811.

Please pray for us as we prepare for this move that the Lord would provide for us, but that he would continue to give us his peace and that he would draw us nearer to his heart every day as we prepare to pour into students lives once again. Also pray that stress would stay at a minimum and that especially Kelsey, would not allow fear or anxiety to enter her mind. Also pray for Ezra for traveling mercies and health and for a smooth transition into a brand new phase of life.

We love each and every one of you and recognize that our ministry is only possible because of you. We hope that you are as excited about this new opportunity as we are!

Love and Blessings,
Jonathan, Kelsey and Ezra

So this is the new adventure that we are embarking on. Please check back here regularly for updates, pictures, prayer requests, and more!

We love you!

Johnny, Kelsey and Ezra