Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Life in Kansas City

We arrived in Kansas City, MO on January 5th.  We drove the 13 hours in 2 days and arrived in the afternoon.  We unloaded our moving truck, set up the beds, went to sleep, and woke up the next morning to drive to Wisconsin for our good friends' wedding.  Let's just say, it was a LONG week!  We had a great time in Madison celebrating the marriage of our friends we met on an outreach several years ago.  I was a bridesmaid and Nathan was a groomsmen.  We had a blast!  We returned to KC on Sunday the 9th, and began the process of unpacking and getting settled in our new home.  We found a ministry that has apartments on the campus, and they rent out to YWAM staff for a very reasonable price.  We had not seen the apartment before we moved in, but thankfully, it is awesome!! We are living in a one bedroom apartment in a complex with other YWAM staff and older missionaries.  It is very quiet and we love it.  The apartments are supposed to all be white, but ours was painted and it makes it feel very homey.  It took a few days to get all the furniture arranged, as we were trying to fit a 4 room amount of furniture into 2 rooms!  But, after a few tries, we did it!  And it looks perfect :)

The Monday after we got in from Wisconsin, we attended our first GX staff meeting at the new GX staff house/offices.  It was great to see everyone and start to get involved again.  I took on a few admin tasks, as GX is trying to put together a fundraiser this spring, and needed some flyers, invitations, and other info put together.  That same week Nathan attended a skateboard bible study that a friend he had known previously had started up.  He had a great time! Our apartment is about 2 min from the International House of Prayer.  I have been trying to commit about 2 hours per day to going to their prayer room and spending time worshipping and interceding.  Nathan has also been trying to go the same amount of time.

After our next GX staff meeting we began to feel even more settled in.  I am training in to help with finances with GX this coming Wednesday.  I don't know exactly all that I will be responsible for, but I am excited to be able to help with this area and look forward to being more involved with the ministry. I am also doing other admin tasks as needed.  Nathan has been attending the same bible study every week, and also has another one every other Thursday.  Both of them are great ministry opportunities for him and he is excited to build more relationships and really make an impact at the skate parks.  He also has started volunteering time working on the GX house, as there are many repairs that are still needed to be done.  He is also going to be leading worship at our "home group" that is going to be starting up next week.  The dancers of GX started rehearsing yesterday, and we will be trying to get into the dance studio a couple times a week to train and work on choreography.  We have also been spending time continuing to work on raising our monthly support.  We set our monthly budget at $1500 and currently have around $800 committed per month.  God has been faithful to meet our needs this month and we know that He will be faithful for the rest of our lives! But we are continuing to ask Him for creative ideas on raising support and pursuing those avenues.

Besides ministry stuff...we have been able to have friends over for dinner, Nathan went to a birthday party, we attended another birthday party as a family, we have gone to church, met friends for coffee, and are excited to be surrounded by so many awesome friends and look forward to making new ones.  Anna has started walking (you can see a video of it on my facebook page), she is talking a ton, and we are really enjoying living here as a family.