Surrender

     I know people who are doing/have done some pretty amazing things. Seriously. I have friends who have worshipped God in the Tiger's Nest (a Buddhist temple) in Bhutan. I have friends who have travelled to North Korea with their eight month old baby. I have friends who have trekked through the mountains of Nepal, staying in remote villages. I have friends who have stayed overnight in the red light district in India, in order to pray throughout the night. I have friends who have ridden water buffalo to church. I have friends who have had dinner with men from Al Qaeda. YWAMers do crazy, insane, amazing things, let me tell you! Those are just a few of the things my friends here have done.
     It all comes down to God. I mean, what are the chances of a couple of American Christians sitting down for dinner with members of Al Qaeda. Really. That doesn't generally happen. But for my friends, on their outreach, it happened. If we just surrender our lives to God, we can do crazy, insane, amazing things and experience things that we never would have dreamed of experiencing! Take me, for example. I never, ever would have thought that I would be standing in Mexico, chatting with a member of the Mexican Mafia. Like really. Yet that happened. I never, ever would have thought that I would be living in America -especially not Wisconsin- literally building a preschool from scratch. Yet here I am.
     When we surrender our lives to God, our lives go places that we never ever would imagine.
     Over the past few months, I have been meeting with a couple other members of YWAM Madison staff to pray for the preschool and pray into the future of it. As you know, I'm leaving soon to go back home, and I won't be coming back (well... I will be coming back, but for visits, not to join staff again. Okay. Well. I can't say I WON'T join staff again, because if God asks me to, of course I will. But at this point, I don't foresee that happening). So the question that we have been asking God is what next. He called me to come here and start this thing, and I felt like I was supposed to pass it on to someone else after a short time. But it was January, then February, and we still had no one who was going to take over. I was leaving, and it was looking like that was it. That would be the end.
     Would I be angry if I came to Madison, started this preschool, left, and then that was the end of the YWAM Madison preschool? Would I be angry if what I pioneered ended with my commitment to it? No, because I know that I was obedient to what God asked of me. And I know that these current preschool children have benefited from it. If the only reason that God wanted this preschool was for these seven children, then it was worth it.
     Of course, we believe that God doesn't want the preschool to just end in two weeks, when I go home. We believe that this is something that God wants to continue and grow.
     And after our most recent prayer times, we have a much better idea of what God wants to do with this preschool next. No, it is not going to shut down after this one year -PD, the one who took over for me while I was home for Opa's funeral, is going to be heading it up next year!- which is no surprise to me.
     What IS a surprise to me is exactly how much God is growing this thing!
     During our prayer times, each and every one of us felt like we needed to take the next step, and we all felt that the next step was a full-time kindergarten next year. Every day, all day. Alongside a part time preschool, just like this year.
     When a couple of the parents had first mentioned to me their wish for a kindergarten next year, I laughed to myself, thinking 'Good luck, cause that is BIG. There is no way THAT will happen!' Yet here we are, praying more into a kindergarten and looking into what that entails and preparing for it.
     God is taking this small, seven-kid, part time preschool that He started through me, and He is taking it places already.
     God is faithful, and God is good, and God is ambitious, and God can do it!
     Blessings,
         Katie

This weekend, I went with my friend to Illinois. She has family there, and her mom was in town (from Oregon, where they are from), so we went to visit. On Sunday, they were my tour guides through Chicago. It was a beautiful day!

Right by Millennium Park, they have a fairly new playground and it is SO MUCH FUN! Best playground ever! Kenz and I had a lot of fun on those slides :) We could have spent the whole day just playing!

This slide. It was a bit small for us adults, but Kenzie and I were determined to go down it and it was so fun! LOVE this playground :)

Before we left, Kenzie's mom made Easter baskets for both of us and hid them for us to hunt for in the morning. Apparently, at 11:30 at night, this looked like a good hiding spot to her... :P The other one was not much harder to find...

On Friday it was bring-your-own-cup day at 711, so Kenz and I went for it! We never ended up even getting CLOSE to finish all of this slushie... But what we did have was delicious!

In Chicago, right by the pizza place where we ate lunch, we found the "Honorary Canada place". I couldn't NOT take a picture! :)