KATHRYN’SNEWSLETTER

December 2011

Hello all! Welcome to a very condensed version of my life! I heard someone say that December is the Friday of all the months (which seems pretty accurate to me). In that case, I figured that a little end of the year update was in order. Here goes!

Little Flowers and my Community

As you may know, I am quite passionate about community. My community here is made up of a band of misfits who have decided to do church together in the shape of Little Flowers. We’ve been in a very interesting and exciting time. We’re in a time of exploring who we are as a Christian community and also a church. I never really thought that I would be a leader in a church at 22, but that is exactly where I find myself. I am on the leadership team as well as the worship team. Never have I ever had such responsibility or freedom, for that matter, than I

do with Little Flowers. It’s really good. I’m looking forward to see what God dreams up with us.

Justice Discipleship Training School 2011/12

I am smack dab in the middle of staffing our Justice Discipleship Training School (JDTS). This will be my second staffing experience on one of these schools, and I would say that it is going quite well. This year we have two students, Katrina and Corina. While that might seem like an extremely small school (let’s be honest, it is!) we all believe that God has led each of us to this place. We had a bit of last-minute drama with the number of students we were to have, but in the end we all felt that going through with the school was the right thing to do. It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been at this for over 2 months now. There has been a lot of laughing, learning, stretching, and crying going on in that time. Well, if I’m honest

most of the crying happened last week so it’s still pretty fresh in my mind. We only have two weeks left before a two-week Christmas break, followed by another two weeks in Winnipeg before we head out for our international outreach portion of the school (more on that later). While the focus of our school is justice there has been a theme that has shown through time and time again, truth. Maybe it’s just a theme for me this school, but I have been seeing it everywhere! I’ll give you two for-instances. Perhaps the first time it showed its face was when I was with the girls (our students) on our local outreach. We volunteer at an after-school program in our neighborhood. There is a lot of hurting in those little kids. Well, on our first day we were there one girl named Jedzia was having a REALLY hard day. All of the kids were picking on her and making fun of her. Try as we might to make them stop they never did. At the end of the day Jedzia gave up. She sat

Me and the girls (our two JDTS students) ready to clean up some trash in our neighborhood.

down, cried and felt the whole of all the world on her shoulders. It was heartbreaking to hear what she thought the world thought of her. Everyone hated her. No one liked her. Now, I know she was being a tad dramatic (as all children can be), but I understood that that was how she was feeling. For the last 10 to 15 minutes of our time there, a student and I sat with her trying to speak truth and value and worth into her life. While Jedzia didn’t have a breakthrough moment that day, I was reminded how important truth can be. My other story isn’t so much an event, but something that has been constant throughout the whole school. We have all been needing truth to be spoken into our lives. We have all listened to some lies for far too long, and now it is time to hear the truth. This looks like us speaking truth into each other’s lives, but also receiving it as well. I like that, and I’m pretty sure God does too. In fact, I think he LOVES it.

JDTS Outreach

As I mentioned earlier, I have 6 weeks before the international outreach portion of our school. What I did not mention was that we’re going to THAILAND! I was able to go to Thailand two years ago for my own JDTS outreach, so it will definitely be interesting going as a staff this time as opposed to being a student. Our team of 5 (the two students, myself, and two other staff members) will be going from the 16th of January to the 20th of

February. I’m really very excited to go again and see some familiar faces. We will be working with a lot of the same people and organizations that we did when I was there before. We will be working with some hill-tribes outside of Chiang Mai as well as some new ministries that we’ve never worked with before. We’ll also work with the elderly in the slums of Bangkok with a ministry called The Ruth Center that we spent some time with last time we were there. I can hardly wait! Thailand is SO beautiful and full of beautiful, smiling people!On that note, trips like these tend to be rather expensive. While I have raised the majority of what the trip will cost, I still have a rather large chunk left to raise. The trip will cost around $3,500 and I am still needing to raise $1,000 of that. I realize that with Christmas coming up there are a few more expenses than usual, but if you are able it would be great if you could help me out financially, as well as keeping me and the team in your prayers.

And now comes the farewell part of this little newsletter. (I know that I usually add a little more about my life outside of ministry, but this time of year ministry is my life!) I hope that this finds you all happy, warm, and full of the Christmas spirit! Happy Holidays to all! (I get to spend mine with some of my family in Spokane, Washington!)

Thank you for reading!

If you are interested in financially supporting me (that’s great!) please make all checks out to ‘YWAM’, without ‘Kathryn‘ anywhere on the check. Please attach a note with my name on it. If you are interested in financially supporting me monthly feel free to contact me for more information on how to do so.

Send support to: YWAM, PO BOX 3000, Garden Valley, TX 75771-3000.

443 Furby St., Winnipeg, MB R3B 2V7, Canada - (204) 774-7072http://www.ywamwinnipeg.com/

Hey look! Pictures from my last trip to Thailand!