In the season of growth...

6 weeks into staffing my second school. 

I guess I should back up a little. After the September school graduated I stayed here in Aus for a month and then Sam and I went to America! It was a lovely trip and so fun to see my family and friends. Sam also proposed while we were there! We are getting married January 14, 2015 :D

but back to whats going on now.

6 weeks into this July school. It is an Adventure DTS, so in addition to all the normal school content we also have an adventure each week from mountain biking, sea kayaking, theme parks, surfing and skydiving! We have 8 students, 4 girls and 4 boys. They are a really fun bunch giving their all to God and going for it!

Skydiving is how I have felt during this school.. Overwhelmed at times, confused, excited, secure, scared, pretty much every emotion possible. Staffing a school and planning a wedding together makes for a very busy and chaotic time. It has been a time of challenge and of growth. In it all I know that I am with God, that he was walking me through it all. He is the dive master and I am locked in with him, he will take care of me. I just need to continue to lean into him. Give him my cares, worries, anxiety, give him my all. He is my Father and will provide all I need for his burden is easy and his yoke is light.  

Sam and I will be taking a team of 3 students to Papa New Guinea and East Timor. I am very excited to be able to take another team out! We are in need of funds because we are aiming to build a house in E.T. and the costs is an additional 5,500 on top on the 4,000 outreach costs. We are also in need of gear for the trip (tents, speakers, mozzie domes, etc) Please join us in prayer for the finances. We leave on Monday morning for a 2 week outreach to the Outback of Australia. 

Prayer points:

Monthly supporters only receiving about 200 a month and rent goes up next month.

Outreach for all the fiances as well as logistical side of things.

Wedding planning to go smoothly and for me not to worry while away for 6 weeks.

Continued break through for the students.

I am currently with out a visa and waiting to hear back if it will be granted. Prayers that it will be granted soon without any problems.

The September school for a increase in size. 

Love you all!!

I am a ______?

Am I a missionary?

Growing up I had a variety of different things I wanted to be. I wanted to be a mommy, a paramedic, a doctor, a lobbyist, Tinkerbell, circus performer, and many many more. I don't remember ever saying "when I grow up I want to be a missionary"..

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and was reading a friends status.

"I'm just a tad bit overwhelmed by the enormity of events and deadlines in the next month. Passover is Monday - so much to do. Yearbook pages - OMG! Jarrett's homecoming from Korea - Praise God! My Bollywood Birthday - Yay I'm old! And friends/missionaries from Australia are coming to visit for a week - what to do and feed them? So much goodness in a tiny little 3 weeks!!!!"

My thoughts while reading it were: Passover such a treasured time with family and friends and good food. Year books oh my no fun working on those. Yay! Jarrett is coming home that will make Brionna and everyone so happy! Wish I could go to the party. Missionaries? Cool! I wonder who it is...then I realized it's Sam and myself. Oh goodness no! I'm not a missionary. I turned to Sam and read him the status, both of us had the same thought "wow that's really what we do, but its strange to hear us called missionaries"


I still wouldn't say that I was a missionary if you asked what I do. I would have said anything but the "M" word. Missionaries are big special people, they teach, they travel the world, they allow the Spirit of God to move through them. They are a big deal. That's not me, that's not Sam we are just Katlin and Sam. Not that we don't teach, or travel, or allow freedom for Holy Spirit to move, we do all that. We just see ourselves as us and nothing more. I took it back to God because I felt uncomfortable. I am worthy of being called a missionary? Can I live up to this? Will I let people down? I felt a gentle reminder that God has called me here. This is what he wants me to be doing. I don't need to be worried about what people call me. In fact a missionary is what I am. We are all called in the great commission to go out and make disciples, to bring the good news to the people.

Though I still feel a little unworthy of being called a missionary its what I am and I'm OK with that.

In other news, I have been working on getting things together for the July DTS. Speakers are almost all booked in, still accepting students, and helping around base.

Sam and I leave Saturday to start our trip to America, we will spend a few days in Brisbane with his Grandpa before we depart. Excited to see some of you during our trip!!

Prayer points:

More students for July School.
Safe travels.
Monthly support.

Love you all very much!

God bless!!

Teeth, planes, and things to come.

It's hard to sum up the last few months. I'll start with where I left off.

Last day of lectures.

The last 2 weeks of lecture phase went very nicely. Then we kicked off our big 2 week local outreach called Impact Summer with just under 200 YWAMer's from around Australia joining in. Sadly I came down with a bad case of tonsillitis and was unable to participate for about a week and a half. The last few days were a blast though. It was amazing to see people going into Byron Bay everyday and sharing the love of Jesus! The girls did fantastic! Not only were they being stretched in  evangelism but also helping to host everyone staying at the base. After that we had a few days before heading off to Turkey! During that time we moved out of our staff house and onto the base, and gave everything a nice deep clean. During one of the cleaning day I bit into some chocolate and felt a crack in my mouth.

THE TOOTH INCIDENT

 The next day my tooth fell out! Leaving me with just 24 hours to either find a retainer to hold the gap in my teeth or not go to Turkey and fly back to America and have it fixed right away. Needless to say it was not how I imagined my last day before outreach. I spent a lot of time crying, praying, and on the phone with my dentist and mum in America.

Thankfully I was able to find a dentist in a town about an house from here who was able to take molds and make a retainer with a false tooth all in one day! This process normally takes 1-2 weeks. It was a huge blessing that he was able to make it in time! Though it did cost a pretty penny..

Aino was not please with me...

Hopefully I will get a real tooth later this year.


TURKEY!




Off to Turkey we go! Travels there couldn't have gone any smoother.

We spent the next 5 weeks pouring into our ministries in Istanbul. At times it was challenging spending four weeks doing the same thing, but at the end of it we could really see the benefit of being able to take relationships deeper and deeper each week. We spent a lot of time withing with refugees, mostly Syrian. We spent Monday, Thursday and Saturdays helping to run a Mom and Tots program and a Tea House where we were able to serve them and listen to their stories. Wednesdays we did street evangelism and creative outreach. Sundays was church then we would minister to a Turkish friend that we made. Tuesdays as always a mix we did a variety of things. From working at the BCC to going to a school and teaching English.

During our time we took a faith trip out East. The East is known as the:

BLACK HOLE

There are little to no believers the further East you go. Erizican where we went to had no known believers. We decided to go to there after much prayer and a vision Carlee received during those times.

In our weakness He is glorified!

Leaving the University.

The class Carlee and I taught in.

This was one of the highlights of our trip. It was a challenge to get there. Flights don't leave very often and getting back to the west was even more challenging. We finally got everything book. We were to fly out EARLY and have 3 days of ministry then fly to Ankara then bus overnight to Selcuk our next stop. The day or departure and we all got up at 1 am and find out the flight was cancelled. We decided to go to the airport just to see if a new flight would go out. We ended up getting the same flight the next day. We went home tried to get some rest and prayed for our trip. The next morning we got up at 1 again got on out flight and before we knew it had landed in Erzican. We hit the streets prayer walking and every step was prepared by God. The next two days were full of his presence and peace. We connected with a local American Culture Club, met the head guy running it. We set up a meeting for the following morning and agreed to teach for half the day. We also went to the University just outside the city and were able to share the gospel with a few students there. The teaching went as well as we could hope. We got to go into the women's dorms for the university that night as well :). Carlee and I were able to share with about Jesus and his love for the women there and so much more! It was so cool to see how God was just making the doors swing wide open. We got MANY words about the city and what was to come. Joy will be restored, life and life abundantly, even a changing in the physical to seeing the flowers and grass once again grow in the valley. There are so many stories to share if you would like to hear more please let me know :). We were one of the first teams to visit there in a while and really set up good connections for future teams. Just before we left Turkey to go back to Australia we heard from out contact that TWO more teams will be headed there in June.

In Ephesus!

GRADUATION!

Mel, Johanna, Aino, Trayza, Danica, Erica, Charlotte, Myself, Carlee, Sydney.

We got back home had 2.5 days of debrief then graduation for the girls :) It was a crazy busy time and I'm still processing all the happened during the school. I can not say enough what an honour it was to walk along side these incredible world changing women for the last 6 months. I was not perfect, I messed up, I cried a lot, it was the hardest thing I've ever done and I'd do it all again in a heat beat. The beauty was we all were cheering each other along. We had grace for each other. We all had one goal to LOVE Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind, and to share his love with the person in front of us.

 2 days after graduation all the Byron Bay staff left for a INCREDIBLE conference in New Castle called The School of Circuit Riders. It was an amazing time of learning, growing, refreshment, AMAZING worship, and sharing Gods love with people!

Sept School Staff. Carlee Mel and Myself

Tiff (base director) praying for Char

You can get the worship leaders CD for free at: http://www.davidbrymer.com/

and the teaching at: http://ywamnewcastle.com/category/podcast/

What is next???

Now I will transition to base staff for the next few weeks. This week and next we are hosting teams for lectures/outreach. Then carrying on with base life and all things to keep the base running smoothly. We have lots of vision on where we know God would like to take the base. I will be helping out in the creative communications department and then training under Mel to eventually take on the role of Visas/immigration coordinator.

America!

Sam and I are blessed to be able to take some time off and will be State side from April 23- June 05! Our time will be split between CA, AZ and CO mostly. We are very excited to come visit. It will be Sam's first time in America :D. Of course I am thrilled to see my family and friends again :). As well as have the chance to speak at my local church about what we do!

JULY SCHOOL :)

Besides being my favorite and also birthday month ;). I will be staffing on the July Adventure DTS. I am very excited to join the staff for this school. It runs from July-December. Our staff team consists of Kevin (base director), Sam, myself, Richard (last July staff) and Cherie (my flat mate and her first time staffing a school). Right now we have 4 students but are praying for more!

Prayer Points:

• More students for July DTS
• More students for Sept DTS
• Next two weeks of outreach will be fruitful
• Finical support
• Right now I am only receiving 120 out of 800 dollars a month needed. I am trusting God that he will provide but also have a lot of big expenses coming up. I need a new Visa in July as well as health insurance. Outreach is 4,000 for each school. As well as normal month to month costs for rent, food, communication, utilities, gas, etc. Please be praying for support and consider a one time or monthly gift.

Well that's all for now :). I will be updating regularly now that I am back home. Love you lots!!

Amost 50% done.

Confidence is the key and the thing Satan attacks the most. Once we realize who we are as sons and daughters of Zion and stand firm in that nothing can stop us. Getting to that point where we know and don't look back and listen to the whispered lies is the battle of a life time. 

That has been a huge battle this whole DTS but mainly this last two weeks. I am just now starting to see/hear in my heart what the staff here have been saying, which of course means attacks have been happening. We had Holy Spirit week last week, it was really good ministry time and God was doing a lot of healing in me, also gently rebuking me for not walking as the Woman he made me to be but also speaking so much love and filling me with a confidence to be that woman. Really asking me to trust Him and to trust other people and not to be as self-reliant.

We are almost done with the first phase of the DTS. We have 2 weeks left in lectures, the topic are Spiritual warfare and Missions/biblical world view. Then Christmas break! I will be going down to Coffs Harbour for our Christmas break to spend it with my boyfriend and his family.

After Christmas we will facilitate a local outreach here in Byron called Impact Summer it is a evangelism camp the base does every year. We then will leave for Turkey January 16th! Our team still needs a couple thousand dollars in order for everyone to go and eat while there.

 

Hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving! We were involved with a  local outreach called Red Frogs during Thanksgiving. I LOVED it. I was tired by the end but enjoyed every minute of it, even while standing in the pouring rain. Red Frogs is a ministry to keep the High School graduates safe during a week of partying. It was crazy and I don't know how to explain it other then a mix of the film Project X and Spring break in America all with 17 and 18 year olds.

I LOVE JESUS.

Lordship and Fear of the Lord.

That was our topic this week. What does it really mean to have Jesus as Lord of our lives? Do we even have him as Lord of our life? So often we turn to comforts as an easy way out when things get hard we turn to idols. It challenged me to think of what I really hold closest to me, is Jesus really Lord of my whole life? During a 14 hour ministry day on Friday I can say: Yes, Jesus is Lord over my life! I have given him everything, my future, my family, my friends, my stuff, my future family, my life. I laid them all down to Him I gave him everything. I totally and completely recognized that he is Lord. Don't get me wrong he has always been Lord over my life, I just hadn't given him EVERYTHING, part of me gave Him my life, my future etc, but part of me was still thinking "No, I can do this better." It was a lack of trust in Him. A lack of trust in the great I AM, the Alpha and the Omega, Creator of this world. How stupid of me, to think that I would know better then my God who created me. It hurt to know that I hadn't given Him my all and my best, thank goodness for His grace. I am completely open to how God wants to use me, I trust Him and the plans that He has for me. In all this I knew I needed to make a commitment. SCARY but I had to I needed to. I needed to trust God. Since I got here I knew I was meant to stay here longer then just 2 schools, but I never made hard core dates I just said oh yea I'll stay longer. Now I have committed to 2 years at YWAM Byron Bay. The peace that came with that! Being obedient to God and what He has been saying to me the last 3 months. Committing to building community here in Byron and community with the greater YWAM bases. Committing to seeking ways to walk out a calling I have in my life. I committed to God, and committed to the people here. The truth is I don't know when I will see my family again, or friends, or even be back home. My eyes are on Jesus though and when my eyes are set on him all the worries fade away. They don't disappear but I know that Jesus will get me through ANYTHING as long as I keep him the center of my life. I still don't know what the next 2 years will hold for me. I am still praying about what school to staff next, learning how to be a disciple and disciple people at the same time, getting ready for out reach, and learning how to live life in community. It is by no means a cake-walk and easy all the time but I can always run to Jesus and He will get me though it all.

Glass Case

Crazy but we are already halfway through the lecture phase of the school. I can’t believe how quickly the first 6 weeks have gone by. We have three more weeks of lecture then we do part of our local outreach “Schoolies” then our last 3 weeks of lectures. After that we will do the other part of our local outreach “Impact Summer” then off to Turkey! Each week I have been learning so much. Here are some highlights:

Week 1: We activate things with are words. What am I using my words to create? I am the chosen and adopted child of God. Never let anything someone has done to  me be bigger then what Jesus did for me.

Week 2: Was on hearing Gods voice, a bit hard to put into words but I will try..God is always speaking to us in many many different ways. Are we listening? We should know his voice better than our own mothers, best friends, sibling, voices.

Week 3: Evangelism is all about LOVE. It’s about relating and not a transaction. There is a difference between being an evangelist and evangelism.  This week was amazing I really enjoyed it, lectures were challenging and I loved the speaker this week. * I have loved them all but really enjoyed Dave*

Week 4: Probably the most challenging week in thought for me. I was in and out lectures for various reasons which made it a bit hard to track the content. The main notes I have are we are called to live a holy life. We are only as holy as out thought life. When you hear truth but don’t apply it, it leads to a hard heart. Godly sorrow leads to repentance, worldly sorrow leads to regret and trying to find ways to do it again w/ consequence. Sin is short term fulfillment with long term bondage. God asks for short term sacrifice in exchange lifelong freedom. We ended the week with 6 hours of ministry time, which was beautiful.

This week is Identity and Destiny, I loved this week on my school and hope our girls love it as well. Next week we will travel north to the Gold Coast base and join with them for a week on Lordship and Fear of the Lord with Mark Parker who is a legend in YWAM.

These photo are from the lounge wall on base. The triangles go all around the room and are a count down till our Turkey outreach. 76 days! The taped off area is our "family wall" we just put pictures of our community in it makes it nice a homey for all of us. :)

The Great Provider

This is just a quick update.

Where to start the story..the beginning I guess will do.

Oct 10th Mel and I went to Flight Center to look at tickets for Turkey. We wanted to look at them now and hopefully book them while the cost was not to bad, and have time to get outreach fees in. We spent a good amount of time chatting with the travel agent Vanessa to get the best deal. By the end of the conversation we had tickets booked with one small hiccup we had to pay for them by the 15th or we would lose the great flights that we had. It was already after 2.30pm so we needed...

20,498.00 AUD in a little over 4 days

We went home and told the team and asked them to call/e-mail their parents/pastors to transfer funds. Sounds easy enough but most transfers take 3-4 days sometimes up to 5. Also it was Canadian Thanks-giving over the weekend so the banks toko a long weekend. Myself and another girl were making daily visits to the ATM (which sometimes was not nice to me). I had complete peace that it all would come in, but still we were praying. 

Monday morning we still did not have all the funds we needed. I still have faith that God would provide for the flights.

Today at lunch out lovely base director announced to us all that....

We all have flights to Turkey!!!


This is a season of learning and knowing in my heart without a doubt that God will provide for me when he has called me somewhere. Since my arrival time and time again He is showing me that I don't have to worry He has it all.

I hope you are well!