August?!

Our school - after the ceremonial welcome to the students

Hi dear followers!

How did it get to be August already?! We've been here in NZ for about a month and a half now, and it's been busy!

The annual creekside gathering on my parents' farm happened this past weekend, and I'm going to copy and paste the update I sent to them here:

We are settling into life in New Zealand on the Marine Reach YWAM base. After arriving in early July, we completed two weeks of staff training in preparation for the Discipleship Training School  (focusing on what we want the culture of the Discipleship Training School to be, and how to achieve that culture). We welcomed 28 students in the middle of July and jumped into the challenging and rewarding process of Discipling, Training, and Schooling them to know God, be known by God, learn to hear his voice for themselves, and live in an intentional community.

We have completed three weeks of lectures with the students (in addition to the orientation/telling our life stories week with which we launched the school). The lecture topics have focused on the Character and Nature of God (looking in depth at the nature of each member of the God-head, and seeing how the Bible displays God's character), Hearing God's Voice (looking at how the scriptures reveal God as a communicative God that desires a personal relationship with his children and through that relationship communicates with each of us individually - and then practicing listening to Him!), and this past week was Relationships week (focusing on the foundation of all relationships that we as Christians are called to exhibit in our interactions with others - honor, love, trust, forgiveness, understanding, etc).

I (Dani) am meeting weekly (or more!) for one-on-one mentorship time with two young ladies (Nicole from Hawaii and Elise from Minnesota). These girls have embraced the opportunity to allow God to do significant work in their hearts and lives, and it is so exciting to spend time with them, pray for them, and partner with the Holy Spirit in challenging and encouraging them. One of my favorite parts about discipling is how much I get to practice relying on the Holy Spirit for directing my time with them: "Lord, should I ask them about that incident they just mentioned, or should I focus on something else?" He is so faithful to respond and give me sensitivity to the issues and topics he wants to bring up!

Gabe is meeting with a young guy named Dave from the U.K. for his mentoring role. They've also had some great progress in seeing God work already.

Yesterday our students found out the locations of where they will go on outreach (7 teams, heading to 4 different countries!). Gabe and I are not assigned to lead a team because of the timing of outreach in respect to our pregnancy, but as of now, we have our midwife's and our DTS director's approval to go to Vanuatu and help staff the satellite branch/medical clinic of our ministry located just outside the capital city of Port Vila. We will be able to help host the teams of students in Vanuatu as they come through the clinic and contribute to the ministry efforts there while also being under the care of the nurses at the clinic and able to keep in communication with my midwife here in NZ.

We will head out for outreach the first week of October, so between now and then we will continue to have weekly lecture topics with the students, continue discipling, and begin preparing the students for outreach and their roles within that. We'll all return to New Zealand around the beginning of December for reentry week and a grand reunion before the students launch to various parts of the world (either returning to their home nations or continuing on to other adventures), and Gabe and I will settle down(ish) to meet this baby hopefully just after the New Year and jump into parenting about the time new students start arriving for the January school.

Prayer requests:

PRAISE over working with a kind, compassionate, capable, accommodating midwife

Pray for continued good health for the baby and me (we have an ultrasound scheduled next week - we're excited to "see" this little one, although we're waiting to find out the gender until we meet him or her face-to-face)

PRAISE for being a part of a vibrant and caring community that is coming alongside us and loving us well in this pregnancy season

Pray for Gabe's quick trip home to the US for his grandfather's memorial service coming up shortly - smooth travels and rich time to honor the Godly legacy of his grandpa

PRAISE for all God is doing in our students and how faithful he is to complete the work which he has started

Pray for discernment, wisdom and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit in our discipling roles

As always, we appreciate so much your prayers, following along with our adventures, and encouragement. It's a privilege to walk alongside you (even just virtually!) in this life!

- Dani

June Schedule and Prayer Need

Hi Friends,

We're already 5 days into June, which means our departure date for New Zealand is FAST approaching!

We've been plugging away the past few months on our jobs (Dani finishes hers this week, Gabe has had more painting jobs offers than he has time to do), and visa paperwork (more about that below), working on building our financial support (more about that below as well), and trying to be actively involved in our community and families here in the beautiful PNW.

Our June schedule is a pretty busy one.  Here's what's happening:

Today-Thursday, June 8th: Gabe's in Montana on a very rare chance to reconnect with friends from his first YWAM Discipleship Training School in Panama.
Friday, June 9th: Dani's last day of work AND her little brother and sister graduate high school
Saturday, June 10th: Grad party prep/final hang out with Dani's sister and brother-in-law that live in Seattle.
Sunday, June 11th: Our last confirmed Sunday with our church family (we're meeting at the Roxy building in Longview for a potluck and work party - completely unrelated to our leaving, it just happens to have worked out that way!), Graduation celebration at Coal Creek for Max and Olivia, and then 3-5 Graduation Party at Grandma Sonel's for Max and Olivia (and a convenient final meet-and-greet for us).
Monday, June 12th: pack/catch up day
Tuesday, June 13th-Sunday June 25th: we're traveling to Minnesota, then on to Pittsburgh to photograph a wedding, then up to upstate New York to visit Gabe's sister and her family, then down to Atlanta to photograph another wedding, and then home - hopefully by the end of the service at our church to say our final goodbyes.
Sunday June 25th: tentative date for a final Kirkwood family gathering
Monday, June 26th-Friday, June 30th: purge our stuff, clean our room, reload stuff we're keeping but leaving here in storage in our storage "unit" at Grandma's, pack our bags for the next 18 months, any final purchases stateside, maybe a dentist visit, and final goodbyes to our parents and local siblings.
Saturday, July 1st: early morning flight out of PDX.

So, that's a slow schedule ;)

If you are wanting to see us but haven't been able to, we're pretty low on dinner date availability, unfortunately.  Some alternative ideas might be (if you are friends with the Shulke family) to try to see us at Max and Olivia's graduation party Sunday afternoon, or to come by the Roxy theater from 10-11:30 Sunday morning this week, or if you have ties to Coal Creek Church, swing by there from 12-1:30 Sunday afternoon.  If those don't work, shoot us an email or text message or FB message Dani, and we'll really try to make something happen!  We definitely want to try to connect with as many of you as possible (and soak up being ABLE to connect in person!)!  However, we're also try to be reasonable about what is actually possible for us to do.

PRAYER NEED: On a different topic, we would LOVE your prayers regarding our visa paperwork!  It is currently in Washington DC - along with our passports - as it goes through the process to get us approved for a 2-year religious workers work visa.  This is really the best visa for what we're doing - we're old enough that we can't apply for the 1-year youth-oriented working holiday visa, there's a possibility that being on this visa we would be eligible to receive nationalized health care, which would be awesome, and since we'll need to be coming in and out of the country a few times due to outreaches, it would just be the best in the long run to have this visa and not have to constantly keep to a 90-day limit inside New Zealand.

As it stands now, we need that paperwork and our passports back no later than Friday, June 30th's mail delivery so we can get on the flight July 1st.  According to the projected timelines on the embassy website for processing paperwork, our paperwork should finish processing sometime the first week of July.  So.... PLEASE be praying for that whole process to be accomplished with incredible speed and efficiency - faster than normal! - for the visa to get approved, and for all of that to just fall smoothly into place.  We know God can do stuff like this - he got my passport back to me with time to spare before we left for Thailand, and he made it all work out when we were leaving Thailand with the confusing entry and exit dates and we didn't have to pay an overstay fee, so we're trusting that if the best thing is for us to have that paperwork and passports back, it will come to us.  But we'd love your prayers along those lines!

Financial Support Update: As of today, we are 2/3 of the way to our "we think we can survive on this" monthly budget goals!  Praise the LORD!!!  That amount, in addition to some generous one-time gifts and what we've been able to make, puts us at about 90% of our financial support.  Even as I type that, I can hardly fathom how that has worked - God has truly been so faithful to us, and we are SO grateful for each of you who have joined us in this journey of faith... Because it totally is! We know how pledging to support someone for a monthly amount or giving away a one-time chunk of money is an act of faith!

We would still LOVE to have you join us as financial supporters if that's something you've been interested in - one thing we'd really like to be able to do relatively soon after we get to NZ is purchase a used car (which was not in our "survival" budget - we'd need a few hundred dollars more per month to be able to pull it off).  Since we're planning to be in NZ for 18 months, we'd really like to be able to get involved in our church and make connections beyond just the base.  The base is located out in the country, so there isn't the option of public transportation.  Hitching rides to and from town is possible, and we'll do that if we need to initially, but a car would make life a lot more simple.

We also will be adding a family member to our lives sometime between Christmas and the end of January, and we've heard that babies have a way of costing some money! So, our "survival" budget might need to make some changes when we think about adding in costs of a car seat, getting a supply of cloth "nappies," some clothes (fortunately, New Zealand has LOTS of thrift stores!), and covering medical costs of prenatal care and having a baby (if we're not eligible for nationalized health care). This, of course, is a whole new faith journey in our lives which we would love your prayers for as well.

Thanks for checking in and journeying along with us.  If you have questions, feel free to shoot us an email or contact us some other way!

- Dani for the Kirkwoods

6 years, work, and 30%!

Hi friends!

Yesterday marked 6 years of us being "a thing." Yes, I know, photos of the two of us is pretty overdone on this blog, but pardon my sentimentality!

This picture was taken during our first summer dating together.  We started dating at Long Beach on March 23, 2011, and this was taken a few months later when Gabe was working down at Cannon Beach.

I (Dani) couldn't ask for a better guy to spend my life with! It just keeps getting better and better :)

Work update:
We're enjoying our jobs a great deal!

I am SO enjoying being a teacher but with normal hours!  Yesterday I wasn't feeling well, so I took the day off from work, and when I showed up today, my supervisor was surprised to see me.  "Dani, feel free to leave whenever you need to.  Just go home if you start not feeling well," he said.  By 10:30, he was back in the library and saw me running around. "How are you feeling?" When I admitted I was starting to fade, he said, "Just go home! Go rest up and take care of yourself." Who gets to have that kind of a supervisor?! I feel so taken care of!

Gabe, meanwhile, is rising to the challenge of 3 weeks left of tax season.  His boss took today off to go get his heart stopped and restarted (for real!), so Gabe had a bit of a quiet day today to get caught up on bookwork, but that's pretty rare.  It's been fairly non-stop all this week, and he anticipates next week being similar.  He's handling the Monday-Saturday work week pretty well, but we appreciate your prayers for energy and grace!

On the financial support raising side of things, we are 30% of the way to finding 30 people who have committed to giving to us on a monthly basis while we're in New Zealand.  We are SO grateful for these dear friends' generosity, encouragement, and willingness to sacrifice for us to be able to do what we believe God has called us to do.  And we are so thankful for God's faithfulness in every step of this journey.  He has proven to us again and again that he is trustworthy and faithful.  We're just trying to be trustworthy and faithful in return to him!

Gabe's sister and her husband had a baby this past weekend, so we're holding down the fort here in Longview while Gabe's Mom is back in New York with them and Gabe's Dad prepares to fly back next week. If you want to come up for dinner while they're gone, let us know and we'll try to get something on the calendar.  We'll have a big house to ourselves!

Feelin' the Love

It's been a beast of a week - and it's only Tuesday! - but in the middle of PILES of paperwork to grade, data to analyze, activities to plan, and some (hopefully calming down...) work environment strain, I am choosing to recognize and - through that recognition - feel the love around me.

Gabe and I play a game sometimes, and today I taught it to a few of my students.  They seemed to be struggling with their attitude a little today - as was I - and I thought it would be timely for both me and them to play.  It's a very simple activity: it's called the Thankfulness Game.  The goal is to be the last one to say something you're thankful for.  You can't copy the other person, and you can't repeat yourself.

As I was teaching my students, hoping it would improve their moods, I found my strategy working on me, too (no surprise!).  I remembered to be grateful for things like a warm jacket, a car to drive, extra supplies in the storage room, people that have experience and heart that I get to work with, electricity, being close to family and friends, a beautiful sunrise this morning, a dry winter day, a husband full of compassion, and SO many others individual blessings.

This afternoon, when I opened my email, I was reminded of the wonderful "whanau" we have in NZ ready to welcome us, and how we get to see God starting to provide people to pledge financial support for our needs, and my sweet Mom who remembered to shoot me a Valentine's Day email with a little word of encouragement.

Today hasn't been filled with chocolate and roses and champagne (and that's perfectly OK - we've never been big on celebrating Valentine's Day as a couple!), and honestly, it hasn't been restful, relaxing, or stress-free, but I do feel loved.  I know I am remembered, cared for, appreciated, and enjoyed by the Creator of the Universe and people dear to my heart.

And that's worth being thankful for!

- dani

Monthly Financial Support

One of our tasks while we are home is to raise monthly financial support to go back to New Zealand in June to staff as missionaries with YWAM Marine Reach.

For the past 21 months, we've been living off of our savings, a small amount of monthly support from our church and a few family and friends, and (while we were in Thailand) our teaching stipend.

As a result, our savings has done its job of getting us through our vision trip and safely home.  Praise the Lord!  We're both working full-time jobs right now, and God has blessed us with multiple ways to save money, so we'll be stockpiling a good chunk of our income, which will go toward paying monthly expenses over the 18 months we've committed to YWAM, but we're still needing to raise support for the remaining funds.

So far, we have about 10% of the funding we've set as our target income pledged from our church and a handful of family and friends.

Would you consider asking the Lord if he would like you to partner with us in this way?

We trust that if God is opening this door for us to serve and minister with YWAM, he will provide what we need, but we also know that He often uses His church body to minister to different members.  We believe he will let you know if you're supposed to be part of investing in our ministry - we have no desire to coerce or manipulate or guilt anyone into giving!  So please, pray about it and seek HIS leading!  

We do, however, believe that God has directed us to be open about our desire and need for financial support, so that people who are willing might be able to give.  He's directed us to Exodus 35 as a reminder that he is the one that prompts hearts to give - Moses just shared the vision and the need.

Our great desire is to have financial support flow through relationship - for that reason, we are asking God to put on the heart of 30 people we know and that HE would desire for us to be in relationship with to pledge to support us at the rate of $50.00 per month.  

That would equal out to $50.00 per day toward our financial support, which would definitely get us a good chunk of the way toward our target support.  

We believe that the transfer of money will be a tangible way of strengthening a relationship - it will remind the givers to pray for us, read communication from us, and generally be not only financially but also emotionally invested in us and our work.  Likewise, as we receive that gift each month, it reminds us to pray for our supporters, reach out to them and communicate directly with them, and seek to be in intentional relationship with them also.  Our hope is that such a partnership would be far beyond simply financial but would truly be just one aspect of a friendship and spiritual partnership in what God is ultimately doing through ALL of us, as well!

We would love to hear from you if you have questions about financially supporting us.  Please feel free to email, call, or talk with us in person.  Again, we genuinely desire for relationships to be the foundation of all we do, so we look forward to any conversations that will build a relationship with you!

Love,
Gabe and Dani

New Zealand Road Trip, Home, and Jobs

Hello friends! Sorry for the long absence from the blog.  Your reward for your patiences is (FINALLY!) some photos in this update!  

We're in the USA, as you might know/have gathered, and we're back in the land of high speed (we mean REALLY high speed!!!) internet.  And we have a repaired computer track pad, so we can click-and-drag again.  This combination of fabulous features mean, like, a whole new world is opened with blogging!

So, where did we leave off?  We came back to New Zealand from outreach at the end of November.  The last week of DTS was a flurry of final hang outs and packing and cleaning and preparing for departure.

We had graduation - an energy-filled night of praise, worship, and honoring God for all he had done.  I think we all sang ourselves hoarse.  It was memorable - and great!

All dressed up for graduation!

After graduation, thanks to our awesome friend Emily, we had access to a car for a week, so we got to do a little touring around NZ.  We had some great adventures - meeting up with our friend Vince in Auckland,  eating granola for a week straight, sleeping in (first) a leaky tent on a single, tiny, blow-up camp pad, and then in the car, and then finally in a friend's gracious mother's spare room (Thanks again to our New Zealand Mother!!!).  We learned almond milk lasts a ridiculously long time without being refrigerated, it really is OK to trespass through people's sheep fields to reach amazing clifftop viewpoints, and morning coffee at a coffee shop after a long night in a tent just REALLY improves the day!

Gabe, on the cliff top, climbing over the sheep fence.
(Our guidebook, literally, directed us to this climb-over spot!)

Gabe's bed one rainy night. I curled up in the back seat...
Not the most comfortable, but definitely cheap!

With Sacha, our friend we made in Thailand.  We stayed with her
Mum for 4 nights and then got to road trip through the North Island.

And then, the day before our 4th wedding anniversary, we caught a bus, then a plane, then another plane, and then started the day over again as we crossed the international date line, and landed in Portland 4 hours BEFORE we left New Zealand - go us!

Here we are in the airport, so excited to go home - and so tan! ;)

We landed, and as we descended down through the clouds, we broke through to a beautiful dusting of white snow that had freshly fallen the night before.  I was SO excited to emerge into a winter wonderland!

Driving home!

We had a beautiful Christmas with our families - a full 2 weeks with Gabe's siblings from the East Coast, and a beach trip, and then a delightful weekend with my family.

The Kirkwood family out at the beach on a beautiful winter day.

 Gabe had a job lined up before we left New Zealand to work for the tax preparer's office, which started up a week after we said goodbye to all the family.  I, meanwhile, met with a local school district, was offered a full-time teaching job (I'd gone in to see if I could pick up a couple days subbing every so often), was conditionally certified to teach, and started my job the week after Gabe did.  

As if that wasn't enough amazing, providential blessings, Gabe's boss generously adjusted Gabe's work hours so that we can commute together to work and be on the same schedule!  

Whew!  So, it's been a whirlwind of 2 months, but so memory-filled and sweet.  And God continues to just go before us and provide all we need and so much more - it's really incredible to just continue to be a recipient of His grace, His kindness, His generosity!  We continually find ourselves just amazed by all that He does for us.

Vanuatu - Outreach Stories: Leno and Praying for Freedom

One of the common activities we do on outreach is "Treasure Hunting."

We've all been taught on the subject of "Hearing God's Voice" - obviously, the Lord communicates with us through his written word (the Bible), and that source of gaining communication from God is what reveals to us the foundations of the character and nature of God.  However, we also have the Holy Spirit - God's Spirit, 1/3 of the God-head - living inside of us, and Jesus called him "the comforter" and "the counselor."  During lecture phase, we're taught to practice "tuning in" to the constant communication that the Holy Spirit is directing toward our internal ears.  In truth, we've learned hearing God's voice is a lot more about silencing all the OTHER voices and listening to his "still, small voice."

Anyhow, when we Treasure Hunt, we essentially set aside some time to go out in twos or threes and meet people and pray for them, but first, we spend a few minutes asking the Holy Spirit to give us some clues or provide guidance and direction during our ministry time.

Often times, in our pairs or trios, one person will get a picture of someone wearing a certain color, or they'll get a sense for a particular place we should go to, or they might even hear a word that is some form of description for someone.  It's always fun to share back what each of us got from the Holy Spirit and then head out in search of these clues to locate our "treasures."

Gabe and I were doing an afternoon treasure hunt one day in the second village that our team visited. The day before we had gone out to treasure hunt and honestly had a pretty discouraging day - not many people were around the village, and the few that were didn't seem interested in engaging (one guy saw us coming, responded "Hi" to our hello, and then turned and took off in the other direction... awkward!)

So we had a couple clues from the day before we were still holding on to - I'd gotten a picture of a big banyan tree, and I felt like we supposed to look for people under trees, and Gabe had a picture of a guy in a blue shirt.

We headed out and greeted some people, played with some kids, prayed for a woman with mastitis and prayed a blessing over her newborn daughter.  But it was about an hour into our time that we finally saw someone under a big banyan tree - it was a guy named Leno that Gabe had met a few days prior, and he was limping slowly under the tree.

I greeted him and asked why he was limping.  He relayed that he had twisted his ankle the day before and it was painful to walk on. We asked if we could pray for him, so we sat down on a rough bench under the tree and laid hands on his swollen ankle and prayed.

After we finished praying, I asked him to move his foot around and see if the ankle felt better.  He said it did, so I asked if he could stand on it for me.  He did, and the look of surprise on his face was super fun to see.  I asked if it was better, and he said, "Yes."  Then Gabe asked, "Is it a little better or a lot better?"  And he grinned and said, "It's a lot better!"  He was putting weight on it and not needing to wince or limp from the pain.

He told us, "I want to come to your youth meeting tomorrow night.  I am very interested to hear what you say.  I would like to come!"  So we invited him, conversed a little more, and then headed on our way.

We were running out of time, and we decided to do one final walk up and down a street - prayer walking, while also looking for a guy in a blue shirt - before we headed back to our camp.

As we came around a corner, we saw a group of guys sitting under a big banyan tree, and one of them was wearing a blue shirt.

"Let's go!" I told Gabe, and we approached the guys and greeted them.  The man in the blue shirt was named Romeo, and we shared how we were out walking around the village and praying for people and looking for him, because we felt God had said we were to pray for a man in a blue shirt, and he was the first man in a blue shirt we'd seen that day.  So we asked if there was anything we could pray for.

He turned to his friends and talked for a few minutes, and then turned back to us.

"Yes," he said seriously.  "I need prayer.  We need prayer.  This is my father, this is my father-in-law, this is my brother, this is my nephew, " - he introduced the guys around him - "and our grandfathers lived in this village and put a curse on us.  They cursed us to not have hearts that are toward our families, good hearts for our families.  So we want to have good hearts, but we are under this curse and cannot have good hearts.  Can you pray for this?"

I was touched by his sincerity and his desire to experience freedom with his family members, so Gabe and I assured him that yes, indeed, we could pray for that.

I reminded him - this is a Catholic village and most people go to mass regularly - that the Bible says Jesus became a curse FOR us, so the work that Jesus did on the cross, dying for our sins and for the penalty of our sins, also means that Jesus's resurrection is an indication that all curses can be broken by the power that Jesus has.  Since we, as God's children, have free access into the throne room of God, we can ask him to break this curse.

So we prayed and did that, and as we finished and I opened my eyes, Leno was sitting on the end of the bench.  He had come up while we were praying.

Gabe and I said goodbye because we were going to be late back to our camp, but we were so excited as we left because we knew that if Leno started talking to these guys and shared what had happened to his ankle, it would be an encouragement to the guys that praying in Jesus's name has real power, and just as Leno was healed in the physical realm, perhaps it would inspire their faith that something had truly just happened in the spiritual realm as well.