SEND House Notes

So, for the second week of February, Brittany and I went on a little recruiting trip to Kansas (Sunday to Thursday). We stayed with a student in her dorm for the first two nights and then at a guest house the second two. The girl was a friend of a son of a Regional Director for RMM. :-) I really loved the connection, and she was so awesome! We spent Monday at Bethel College. Tuesday was our "day off", so we went to the zoo with the YES Staff (who were also recruiting; YES is Eastern Mennonite's version of Reach). Wednesday and Thursday were spent at Hesston. Thursday night (all night) we drove back to Columbus, so Britt could go with Aaron and Todd to Hartville (her hometown) to do more recruiting. Basically, Brittany is now a professional Reach Recruiter.

The rest of this month has been good. Wendy covered it quite well. Last weekend's intensives were (in her words) intense! :-) But we made it through alive, and hopefully with more knowledge. We'll see when it comes to testing-time. We have one more lecture, two more mentoring classes and an exam for the Winter VLI quarter. I'm personally nervous for the final, but excited to have a week off, too. Oh, our Leadership Project Reports are due on Tuesday, so please pray that we'll be able to get those done!

If you would like to pray for us, we'd love you to! Please pray that we'd be organized and in good communication with each other. You can also pray for our relationships that we've been building at our community outreaches. And for the groups that come through the house. Presently, we have a group staying the night here, but at a conference during the day (Maple City Chapel). We have TWO groups next weekend, too. Servant Leadership Teams will be here Thursday and Friday, and Mechanicsburg Christian Fellowship will be here Friday and Saturday.

For personal prayer, please pray for my motivation with school work, and peace and focus. Thanks so much!

Blessings,
Kayla

Posted by SEND Staff at 05:24 PM | Permalink

on february 2nd, we started a month-long fast of fruits and vegetables for breakfast, and rice and beans for lunch and supper. the purpose of this fast is to pray for RMM's capital campaign to raise money for the renovations at the new 5th avenue training center, and to save as much money as possible from our food budget to donate to RMM.

we decided at the beginning of the month to take a break for two occasions: one was brittany's birthday, and the second was valentine's day. we went out to eat at applebee's for brittany's birthday and had a little party with birthday cake and a couple friends over afterwards. we hosted a valentine's day party on the 14th and had a group of friends over. i really enjoyed decorating and make appetizers and desserts for the party. after this past weekend (valentine's day weekend), we realized we weren't saving as much money as we wanted to because we were having to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, which aren't so cheap. so we decided to not buy anything else at all for the rest of the month, and instead decided to just eat what we already have here at the house. we also decided to accept left-over food from manna cafe and other places that offered food to us. i still make rice and beans for lunch and supper... until we run out, i guess. :) anyway, you can be praying with us for RMM and the capital campaign.

outreaches have been going well. i think aaron talked on here about kayla and i going to manna cafe on wednesdays and open shelter on thursdays, and brittany, cassandra and aaron going to blackburn recreational center on tuesdays and thursdays. on wednesdays, brittany and cassy have started babysitting for a 12-week Bible Study that the church we attend (Village Vineyard) is doing. this past wednesday was their first time, and they babysat 6 kids, but there will be more kids coming.

kayla and brittany were gone all of last week promoting REACH in kansas at hesston, bethel and tabor. they reported that it went well and there were a good number of interested young people, so that's exciting! we were glad to be re-united as a team when they got back.

this past week, we took our first VLI midterms. we had one midterm on interpreting scripture, and the other on the latter prophets I. it was a lot of information to remember, but i think overall, they both went well. kayla, aaron and brittany have been busy preparing and giving sermons in their preaching & teaching class, and cassy and i have both led service projects in our evangelism class. also for VLI, we are required to do leadership projects. brittany, kayla and i shopped for, put together and gave out 44 packed lunches to needy people, and that went really well. aaron and cassy gave out hot drinks at kroger, and are going to do the same at save-a-lot tomorrow night.

this weekend is our second VLI intensive. what are intensives like? they're uh... intense. :) the saturday class goes from 9 AM to 4:30 PM with a lunch break, and sunday from 2 PM to 7:30 PM. you can pray for that too, that we'll be able to stay focused.

thank you for your prayers and support!
-wendy for the staff

Posted by SEND Staff at 03:37 PM | Permalink

It's hard to believe that it's already been a whole month since we got here. Let's see what have we been up to? I'll tell you about outreach first. For outreach we are split up into two groups. Kayla and Wendy are helping out at mana cafe and Brittany, Cassy, and I are hanging out with the kids at Blackburn, a youth center near the house. Someimes we all go to mana but for the most part we're split up. At Blackburn we are voulentiering to help out with home work. The kids don't seem to be intrested in that so we have just been hanging out, playing basket ball, pool or ping pong. It's fun but sometimes it doesn't feel like we are very useful. You can pray for good ideas for us to do with the kids. We are now into the full swing of our school work with our mid term for VLI next week, and Prespectives started two Mondays ago. They are both really good classes. Prespectives is easier then VLI just because now we are auditing it. So we don't have to study, which is a big relief for us all. Right now we're learning about "the Glory of God", which has been refreshing. In VLI we are learning how to intreperet scripture. This has been really challenging not only with all the reading and asignments we have but also just learning to look at the Bible differently. I find myself applying what we've been learning without even thinking about it when I read my Bible now. All this stuff is good but sometimes it can be a little overwhelming.
Please pray for focus for school, for good relationships in our outreaches, for continued unity in our team, for continued vision.

Posted by SEND Staff at 10:46 AM | Permalink