Solomon Islands: Wait, what?!?

This week we've taken a bit of time off. Our Vanuatu tourist visa ran out, and we were asked to renew it. That meant another fee and a bit of paperwork. So, we decided instead to put that money toward plane tickets, leave the country briefly, and get another free tourist visa upon re-entry into Vanuatu.

So, yesterday we packed one backpack for both of us, drove to the almost-empty airport of Port Vila, boarded a Boeing 737 with about 20 other passengers (including a super pumped-up French weightlifting team) and about 200 empty seats... and flew to the Solomon Islands!

We were greeted by Andrew, our brother in law who had managed to keep the whole thing under wraps, and finally, we bounced our way down the dirt road to our astonished (slightly confused) niece Nicola and nephew Anthony, and Dani's very surprised sister Megan. Much smiling, laughing, and catch-up time has ensued since that moment.

Now to enjoy one of life's rare treasures - unexpected time with family! I could say more, but duty calls and we're all off for an ice cream outing!

- Gabe

Vanuatu: and the unpredictable process of healing

I'm often surprised by what God prioritizes, and when He decides to interrupt my agenda for something He knows is far more important.

Take the last few weeks for example: I see there is painting, pruning, plumbing, building, and serving to do here in Vanuatu - so as Dani shops for our supplies and cooks her heart out (tonight was incredible homemade pizza!!!) and the nurses here and DTS School students run medical clinics, I throw myself into the practical work.

What I don't always see is fatherhood, careening towards me, every day a little closer.

Luckily there is one who sees, and He knows how to prepare.
So, as God would have it, every day I find myself feeling oddly strong emotions at less-than-convenient times. And when I've had enough of running away from how I feel by accomplishing tasks, I finally ask:

Father, why do I feel so insufficient?

...and in my heart I sense a subtle response.

"Because, Gabe, this situation reminds you of being a little boy who never felt like he lived up to people's expectations."

Well what do you want me to do with THAT?!?
(Is usually my incredulous response)

"I want you to learn to like him. I want you to like Gabe Kirkwood. Not just the "young man Gabe" - the one who performs well, and smiles warmly, and earns people's respect..."

"I want you to like the 'little boy Gabe Kirkwood', the one who hadn't quite figured that stuff out. The one who made mistakes, who didn't usually get it right."

Why? Why is this important now?

"Because you just may have a little boy soon, and if you do, he's going to be a lot like the boy you were!"

"...And because I have ALWAYS liked the little boy you were. Forgive yourself for everything you couldn't be... So you can love and accept your child with open arms, the way I've always accepted you."

Vanuatu - Life in the Valley

A flurry of activity has happened since I posted last week!  We've said goodbye to our teams bound for Israel, Honk Kong, and India, packed, flown to the island of Efate (Vanuatu) with the remaining teams, re-established connections with friends here, and moved into the apartment we'll stay at for the duration of our outreach.

We are situated in a lush jungle valley called Teouma which is outside Port Vila, the capital and largest urban center in Vanuatu.  Just a couple of dirt roads away from us is our organization's "Family Care Centre" (the "FCC"), where we spend most of our days.  The FCC is a facility offers multiple clinics each week, giving free primary healthcare to anyone who walks in! 

I have been able to take charge of household projects, planting trees, painting furniture, and doing the odd carpentry/maintenance jobs, and Dani has been cooking up an incredible array of delicious and healthy meals!

All in all, it has been wonderful to take care of the practical household needs for Anna and Mel (the FCC's two nurses and only current long-term staff) so that they (and our outreach teams) can focus all their energy on their patients, giving love, connection, and practical medical care to whoever comes in.

Although it's very different from our last outreach (which was in the bush out in the outer islands) we both feel privileged to be here, and when we asked God to guide us to a verse in the Bible that can direct our purpose and focus our efforts here, the last verse that He used to speak to me was Matthew 20:28...

Here Jesus explained that He did not come to be served, but to serve others, and to pour out His life.  It is good and freeing to do simple tasks to serve other people and release them into effective work!

Thanks for your prayers, we appreciate our friends and family!

New Zealand: Visas, Vaccines, and Vanuatu - Staff Adventures!

Thus ends a long period of blog silence!  And although our blog has been uncharacteristically quiet, our lives have been anything but!

Time has flown since we received our NZ visas and stepped on that plane that carried us away from the US of A, through midwife appointments and ultrasounds, mentoring students and a memorial service (Gabe's Grandpa passed away in August), absorbing as many useful skills and spiritual insights as possible from our incredible guest teachers, and preparing for another outreach with our students and staff - with sights set on Vanuatu, Israel, Hong Kong, and India.

Dani has logged the students' vaccine records, sorted, transported, and ensured that each one has received all the immunizations they need to travel to their international locations.  Gabe has been busy with various painting, planting, and re-modeling projects:

As well as coordination of a simulated medical clinic where students got to practice the medical skills they'll use at their destinations.

Lecture phase has been wonderful, as we serve side-by-side, learning how to help students, heal, grow, and become healthy followers of Christ, ready for months of pouring themselves out, serving and healing people of the nations.

As I sit here with amongst piles of clothes and bags, with varied outreach supplies strewn across the floor, I am struck by the strange and transient nature of our life.  Are we ready to go and share the love and truths that have changed our hearts?  Have we given our students all they need to be successful?  Are we ready to be parents?  How in the world does time go so fast?

In light of questions (be they light and ordinary, or the sort that feel overwhelming) I am convinced that God is constant and utterly unchanging, faithful in his love toward us, and I know every good gift comes from him.  I believe He will help us (as we are going to Vanuatu aiming to make Him happy), guide us to the good works He prepared for us in advance, do miracles to prove His love and wonder, and that He will meet with His children.

It's going to be a good outreach.  

Wherever you are, invite Him to pull you into the present, and refresh you by doing something more, something better than what you were expecting from today.

Until next week,
-Gabe (and Dani!)

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!