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Losing Jesus

“When the Passover Feast had ended, as their family was returning to Nazareth, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing Him to be in the group, they went a day’s journey, but then they began searching for Him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for Him. After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions…”

(Luke 2:43-46)

“They lost Jesus? Wouldn’t that make Jesus’ parents… bad… parents…?” Trevor looked around at all of us as he spoke, clearly choosing his words carefully.

Andrew, our TLC Bible teacher, and I locked eyes across the giant classroom table and smirked, clearly thinking the same thing—How do we navigate this? Andrew laughed and forced out an, “Uhm, yupp…” Before I stuck my foot in my mouth, adding, “I guess losing your kid for a few days probably wouldn’t qualify you for parent of the year…” (I’m nothing if not terribly awkward as a teacher.)

“What?!”
“How the heck would you not notice your kid wasn’t with you for a whole day?!”
“How do you leave your kid in a totally different city on accident?”

Questions and comments poured out before Andrew redirected the conversation back to the day’s study of Luke. But hours and weeks later, Trevor’s question stuck with me.

How often do I lose Jesus and go a whole day (or multiple days) before realizing that I’m not with Him?

It’s a murky question if you want to get all “theologically technical” about it. I know that, as a believer, His Spirit is always with me, but I can guarantee you that I’m not always with Him. Sometimes Jesus goes left while I wander right, completely lost in my own plans and short-sightedness. Sometimes, like Mary and Joseph, I keep walking long after He has stopped somewhere, and I don’t notice until I’m an embarrassing distance away.

My wandering is rarely intentional. (Although my heart occasionally reminds me that my sinful ability to run from God and hide in the darkness of my humanity is still well in tact.) No, usually I lose Jesus doing “good things”.

I’ve lost sight of Jesus in serving people, in religiosity, in the church, in my job, in relationships, in transition, in busy seasons, and all too often, in my own selfish ambition. It kills me to admit, but my heart is no where near stayed on Him the way I wish it was. You would think I would have this whole “following Jesus” thing down, since I’ve jokingly been called a “professional Christian”, or more commonly, a missionary. But the hymn “Come Thou Fount” is still the one written in and on my heart: I’m prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

And unfortunately, I typically don’t realize I’ve wandered away until I try to quiet myself before Him and feel distant, confused, or alone. In this place my prayers are stilted and repetitive. I feel stuck, frustrated that I can’t find Him or figure out how my heart got so far away from Him in such a short time. It’s in those moments that I’m reminded that finding Jesus isn’t something I can do in my own power. It’s not that God has not hidden Himself, but I can’t find my way back to Him on my own anymore than I could’ve originally reunited myself to God while I was yet a sinner. That is why Christ had to come– to reunite our flighty, sinful hearts with His complete, steady One.

I sat the tiny attic space above my bedroom that I’ve affectionately deemed as my “Jesus Loft” last week. After a whirlwind few days, I felt frustratingly far from God. I journaled. I read. I tried to sing to my favorite worship songs downloaded on my phone. Yet nothing seemed to draw me back into intimacy with His heart.

Exasperated, I chucked my pen across the loft and said out loud, “I give up. I don’t know where You went or how I walked off for the trillionth time. But I need you. I’m sorry I suck at following You, but I need You to come back for me. I lost You somewhere and I need You to find me yet again.”

I wish I could say that the heavens opened up that night or that my house shook with the audible voice of God, but the truth is that sometimes you just need to pray and go to sleep, trusting that Jesus will come for you in Love and His perfect timing.

After a few days of trying to be obedient in faith and praying my weird, stilted prayers (still feeling rather blah), Jesus met me in the lyrics of Steffany Gretzinger’s “Pieces” while I stood at my kitchen sink and washed perfectly ordinary dinner dishes.

Daughter, I don’t give My heart in pieces.
I don’t hide Myself to tease you.

My love’s not fractured
It’s not a troubled mind
It isn’t anxious, it’s not the restless kind
My love’s not passive
It’s never disengaged
It’s always present
It hangs on every word I say
Love keeps its promises, it keeps its word
It honors what’s sacred, cause its vows are good
My love’s not broken
It’s not insecure
My love’s not selfish, My love is pure.

As the song goes, His Love is always present, never disengaged. Even when we feel lost or He feels far off, He is nearer than we can see or believe. I don’t understand the phenomenon of His Love, but the cry of my heart stems from exactly that place of confusion. It’s a cry of frustration at my lack of faith and understanding— one that imitates the father of the demon possessed boy Jesus encountered in Mark 9. It’s a prayer that seems so repetitive and so over prayed as someone who feels like she should have it all together, but simply doesn’t…

Lord, make my heart believe.

Would You help me to see and know that Your love is always present, always pursuing me, never broken or disengaged?

Jesus, we long to believe that while we may lose You, You have never lost us. You are always pursuing us with Your perfect love, Your sweet Hesed.

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
(Luke 19:10)

 

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When the proverbial plane crashes

I knew the Lord had brought me to Alaska, but the end of first semester was a train wreck. (Or to be more “bush-correct”, you could say it was a proverbial plane crash.) By the time it was over, I was beyond burnt out. I was struggling with what I can now recognize as compassion fatigue and PTSD. I was spiritually overwhelmed, constantly feeling like I was losing the battle against the strongholds of addiction that raged in my house. By the time I’d realized just how far in over my head I was, it was too late. My little TLC plane had fallen out of the sky and was in flames around me.

I sat in our house with my face down on my kitchen table and my hands entangled in my hair, sobbing at one in the morning. Every few minutes I would catch a word or two from the serious conversation between my boss and one of my students in the other room.

I pulled my face up off the table and caught a glimpse of myself in the window. The woman staring back at me was gaunt; the way her black mascara had dripped over her sunken-in cheeks scared me. I stared in shock. Who is that woman in the window? That can’t possibly be what I look like. I tried to turn my head to examine myself from another angle but my muscles were so tense my neck wouldn’t turn. Instead I laid my forehead back on the table and ugly-cried until my stomach hurt. What are you doing Lord?

Eventually I ran out of tears and simply stared at the grain of the wood in my table. I couldn’t figure out where my “good” God was. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that He would ever lead me (or had actually led me) somewhere that felt so unsafe.

Lord, have mercy. Please. Where are you? I pleaded on repeat, as if those were the only words I knew. The first half of David’s Psalm 77 rang in my ears.

My boss eventually emerged from the other room. Lowering himself into the chair next to mine, he asked how I was doing. Unhealthy. Unsafe. They were the only words I could choke out, even though I knew they didn’t make sense as an answer to his question. I tried to focus on the logistics of what I needed to do with my student, but as his lips moved, my brain wandered. I’m ‘doing Your work’, Lord. You brought me here. You gave these girls to me, and me to these girls. Yet I feel like I’m dying. How could you let this happen?

It’s every missionary’s worst nightmare—that moment when the prayers for protection and safety, the ones that people back at home prayed over you before you left, seem to have worn off.

In that moment I was left to wrestle with the fact that because God is sovereign, that this was exactly where He wanted me. He knew this would happen. He knew I would feel unsafe. He knew it would be dark and I wouldn’t be able to sense His presence, but somehow I had to trust that He was still there…

He had called me to the depths of myself—my deepest fears and wounds—in His loving goodness, for His ultimate glory. I knew the theology, yet there I was, weeping, begging God to show up and replace my suffering with a feeling of safety, even though I’d always said I would do whatever it took for the people around me to know the love of Christ…

~~~

Around these parts, we pray for our pilots in church on Sunday and before almost every meal. To us they’re not just pilots—they’re family, my friends, my friends’ husbands, my bosses, my students, me.

I’ve learned a lot about trusting the sovereignty of God from hearing pilots and their loved ones pray. Our pilots all have their fair share of plane crash stories—some minor, some major, all mildly terrifying. Yet when they pray, they ask for wisdom as they fly, not for safety, even though many of them understand what it feels like to be in a plane that’s going down.FlyingSidewaysThese men and women have been there; they’ve felt a complete lack of safety akin to what I felt in December.

They’ve all said, “Yes Lord, I want to follow you. I want to serve the people of Southwest Alaska by bringing them their groceries, the fuel they need to survive, and their loved ones, no matter the cost.” (After all, none of us could live and minister where we do if it wasn’t for our valiant bush pilots.) And thus, we cover our pilots in prayer, just as my church family in Colorado prayed for me as they sent me out as a missionary.

But even within that covering of prayer, many of them have walked away from a plane with it’s landing gear folded or it’s wings ripped off.

They know what it’s like to question God’s plan with every fiber of their being while simultaneously fighting to trust the theology and truth of His sovereignty. They’ve managed to praise God just moments after feeling the least safe they’ve felt in their lives. And they still wake up every morning and fly despite all of this because that’s what God’s called them to– even when it feels dangerous.

The prayers of our pilots have challenged me to stop praying for safety, and instead pray to be exactly where God wants me to be— even if it seems horrible and hard, maybe even traumatic at times.

What if we all prayed that way? For wisdom rather than safety, for His will rather than our own? It seems strangely reminiscent of The Lord’s Prayer if you ask me…

After all, Jesus never promised His disciples they wouldn’t suffer or be unsafe (Look at the life of Paul if you doubt me.) Similarly, the Lord never promised David that life, even life as a king, would be easy. (The beginning of Psalm 77 is pretty solid evidence that it wasn’t.) But God did promise He would be David’s refuge when the excrement hit the stone-age ventilation system… He never promised me that living in Alaska would feel safe, but through His word He has promised to be my refuge and physician when my proverbial plane crashes and I’m left climbing from the burning wreckage.

~~~

I woke up the morning after our proverbial plane crash, disheartened and dehydrated from crying every spare ounce of fluid out of my body. But being the stubborn woman I am, I was determined to salvage something (anything) from the wreckage. I threw my Bible and journal on the table I’d wept on just hours before, and got brutally honest with the Lord: “I don’t feel safe. I need to feel safe if You want me to stay here.”

Do you? Is safety the call I’ve put on your life, Kacy?

Etched below God’s rhetorical question in my journal are the words that I pray I’ll be able to live my life by, everyday–

Alright Lord, things might not “get better”. I’m coming to terms with that. It’s a very real possibility that You’ll continue to ask me to walk into (and live in) places that are hard and desolate, almost completely devoid of light, and call me to expose all of my pain so Your light might shine through this brokenness.

You might not deliver me from living in an unsafe environment, but I know this mess is a part of Your plan. And Abba, if You are going to use this hot mess to draw people in and glorify Yourself, then dammit, this is exactly where I want to be; safety or no safety…

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsake; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in You.”

(2 Corinthians 4:8-12)

 

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25 Ways You Know You Live in the Alaskan Bush

It only seems right that the first person to ever “guest post” on this site would be the lovely and talented Kathryn Bronn. After all, she’s been one of the greatest creative cheerleaders in my life, regardless of whether I’ve been in a season of slathering melted crayons on canvas in my living room with a blow drier, or being glued to my laptop, furiously typing out everything I feel like the Lord has placed on my heart. Oh, and did I mention she’s the way Jesus originally duped me into visiting (and later moving to) Alaska? Yeah. She’s kinda been a big deal in my life over the last few years. For her friendship and creative partnership, I am eternally thankful.

1397130_10208479645409207_920408222672515338_oKaBronn James, as I like to call her, is a native Coloradoan who moved to California to escape the cold, before the Lord laughed at her and placed her in the middle of the Alaskan Bush for two winters. She’s a sun obsessed city girl rejoicing that the Lord is moving her to be a Reach Global missionary in Costa Rica. (I recommend following her blog and supporting her ministry as she prepares to head south of the border.) However, until that day comes, I’m simply thankful for the nights we can sit at her kitchen island and collaborate on lists about the hilarity of the bush that has somehow become our reality.

~

“Since I want to take the time to fully appreciate the quirks of Alaskan Bush Life before I move to civilization, I have composed a list of 25 of my favorite common occurrences (with a little extra help from some neighbors).  YOU KNOW YOU LIVE IN THE ALASKAN BUSH WHEN:

When all the 2 year olds say “99”, “Navajo” or “Caravan” as their first words, rather than just “airplane” like all other children.

SteveHavs
Processing a moose: with both the baby and the pistol holstered.

 

When all major life decisions and purchases revolve around “Does it come with free shipping on Amazon Prime?”

When everyday things for city folk are huge luxuries and treats: donuts, ice cream, deli fried chicken, fancy coffee creamers.

When the speaker in church uses very specific aviation analogies for Bible stories and every single person nods in complete understanding.

When it’s completely acceptable to wear waders to church, or your “good Carhharts”.

When it’s completely normal, everyday, nothing special to see 6 people, a dog, and a kitchen sink on a 4wheeler driving down the runway.

When grown men drop everything to watch the fuel plane land, just one more time, because it’s huge and seriously awesome.

When we all count our days until the internet rolls over, because bush internet is LAME and way worse than any third-world country.  And it’s very limited.

MailRun
Mail day would not be complete without a beaver hat or sitting in the Amazon box of dog food.

When it snows and you know that no airplanes are coming in that day: no groceries, no mail, no Amazon Prime. Only weeping in every house.

When there are exactly 5 subjects the men talk about: hunting, fishing, airplanes, guns, and their women.

When the typical “Friday Night Out on the Town”/”Date Night” consists of a school basketball game.

When you can walk into the General with a rifle and no one bats an eye.

When it’s completely commonplace to see a 10 year old driving a snow machine with a huge sled attached, toting his 7 siblings and/or cousins.

When the rhythms of life revolve around the hunting seasons and salmon season.

When you not only keep the front door unlocked, but you don’t actually know where the key is? Do you have a key?

CeremonialBurning
Spring cleaning with a side of s’mores, anyone?

When burning things is a perfectly legitimate solution to cleaning house, especially if you don’t want to pay to ship things out to town.

When you (and every 5 year old in town) can identify airplanes by either their pilot or their tail number. “Oh, there goes Lyle.”

Furthermore, when you also feel free to ask what said pilot is up to as you identify him. “Oh, there goes Lyle, I wonder why he’s flying to town at this hour?  I wonder if everything is okay.” “Oh, there’s Levi, he just got his license and can’t get enough time up in the air.”

When there are more guns in homes than most anywhere else, with greater justification than anywhere else too.  Hello, brown bears.  Caribou for dinner.  Moose, so delicious.

When the children say “Mooommmm, do we have to eat SALMON AGAIN??”, and we who were not raised here say, “Shut your mouths, this is WILD CAUGHT ALASKAN SOCKEYE, and it’s stupid expensive everywhere else in the country.”

MooseProcessingD
Where even the children put on their “game faces” for moose processing. We’ve all got to eat, people.

When the men compare who has more animal skins and pelts hanging in their house.  And mounted heads.  PETA would just DIE if they saw any home here.

When everyone is out running around in the dark yelling like children because the Northern Lights are out. BEST. THING. EVER.

When carrying a blowtorch and a hatchet around in public is not even questioned.  For any reason, ever.

When mud season has completely different connotations than anywhere else in the world. 6 inches deep of MUD. For 2 months.

When Xtra Tuffs or Crocs are considered appropriate footwear for any occasion. In fact, they are rather fashionable.  Why would we need any different shoes?

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Muddy, messy, and grace[full]

It was one of those days from the second my feet hit the floor… ten minutes late.

I shot out of bed after realizing that I’d slept through my alarm. I sprinted for the shower, then ran downstairs, tossing on clothes and running a brush through my sopping hair. I couldn’t find my glasses, and well, without my glasses I couldn’t see to find my glasses… (Life is full of vicious cycles such as this at 5:45 in the morning.) I felt through my blurry medicine cabinet, popped contacts in my eyes, and flew out the door.

I was late to Bible study (barely, but none-the-less). From Bible study I raced to work where I sat in a classroom of screaming little ones– all sick from the cold going around the Street School. After a few hours of cranky babes and being thrown up on twice, the dismissal bell rang and I left as quickly as my frazzled feet would carry me.

I dropped off one of my students on my way home and raced inside to change into my running clothes. Two miles later, I was happily out of breath, running just barely behind schedule. I ran inside my front door and grabbed my water bottle, remembering that I needed to get to the bank before they closed. After digging through my purse for a minute, I realized I’d left my wallet in the car earlier in my haste to change out of my work clothes.

I glanced at the time. 4:45. Perfect. I’ve got 15 minutes to get 3 blocks to the bank before they close. Easyyyyy.

I ran out the back door of the Yarrow House, locking it behind me. Just as I slammed it shut and took a step off the porch, it hit me.

My keys were inside the house… the house that I’d just locked myself out of.

After a few frantic texts to my roommates, it became apparent that I wasn’t getting in the house or into my car for at least an hour.

Well, the garden needs to be weeded and at least the shed’s not locked today… I thought. If I’m not gonna make it to the bank, I might as well be productive in a different way. So I sat and dug dandelions out of the little fenced off dirt plot in the yard, laughing out the majority of my frustration.

As I laughed and yanked the weeds out of the earth, my wild post-run hair fell down over my eyes. I attempted to sweep it out of my face with the back of my hand and I realized I’d made a mistake just as everything went blurry.

I’d swept my contact right out of my eye, into the dirt. With no way to make it inside to rinse it off, I declared it a loss and buried it with my finger.

Growing more frustrated with my situation, yet still determined to make the most out of my time locked out of the house, I shut my contact-less eye, squinted at the soil, and continued to pull weeds.

Alright God… Not funny. I have a million and one things to do to prep for Alaska and a million and two things on my mind, and now I’m essentially a prisoner in my own backyard– a sweaty, windswept, partially blind, mud caked prisoner.

That was not how I saw my Tuesday going.

The night before, I’d laid out my clothes with grand plans of being graceful, put-together, professional, and productive… the type of woman I usually feel like I should be. But my Tuesday had been a not-so-delicate reminder that that is not the kind of woman God has created me to be.

I’m perpetually late. My clothes usually don’t match. My glasses (if I can even find them) usually have tiny finger prints covering them from working with tiny humans and their mommas all day. I’m spacey and lose things more often than I find them. I’ve been described as a hail storm– wild, unpredictable, and noisy– when I sprint into a room just a few moments behind schedule. I’m a hot freaking mess, and most of the time I’m okay with that.

However, even on my best, most confident days, comparison can creep in and leave me feeling insecure and worth-less (not worthless) because I am not some put together, graceful princess.

As I sat, barefoot in my weedless garden that afternoon, aimlessly tracing lines in the dirt, I thought about all the people I consider to be graceful and it dawned on me that, dang it, I am graceful. Or at least I strive to be grace full; full of grace.

It’s an awkward kind of grace for sure, but it’s there. And it’s there despite all my clumsiness, tardiness, blindness, and well… general mudiness…

Grace is in there somewhere because Jesus is.

It’s not the type of grace that I could exude or perfect by being timely, well dressed, or less of an overall space case. No, it’s the kind of grace that is purely a gift from God because of who Jesus is and what He has done for me, for all of us, on the cross:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth... For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1: 14, 16)

Jesus came to this mess of an earth, lived a perfect life, died a death that I deserved, and then conquered death to raise Himself back to life. It’s the gospel of perfect love and grace that I hear all the time. Yet somehow I forget it’s just as true for me, (the one who simply can’t seem to get anything together, ever) as it is for the ones I constantly compare myself to.

I may not be able to get my ducks in a row or be graceful by the world’s standards, but I’m sticking to my revelation that I am indeed, full of grace because He has allowed me to live out of His fullness. Even though, I’m weak and a mess, in the awareness of my disheveled state I’m able to rely on His strength and perfection by and because of His grace to me.

Theodore Roosevelt wisely said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I know that to be far too true, but I’m slowly realizing that if I let it, comparison can also kill my awareness of His grace…

—

263 days after writing this, I found myself walking down an airplane runway in Port Alsworth with Kathryn. As we meandered our way to a friends’ house, we talked about the unpublished draft of this very blog, laughing at how dramatically different my life looks a year later, but how much of a mess I still am.

This draft mentally resurfaced on our walk because I was wearing contacts yet again, as I’d woken up that late morning (way after my four alarms) unable to find my glasses. (Which I swear had to have been stolen from my room in the middle of the night by gypsies or something, because their location still escapes me…)

The million and one things that were on my frazzled mind in that garden have all been worked out in the beautiful sovereignty and grace of the Lord. Clearly, I eventually made it back into my house that evening and to the bank sometime later that week. The million and two support letters that the Lord used to bring me to Alaska were sent out, perhaps a few days (or weeks) later than I’d intended, but that didn’t impede upon God’s faithful provision or plan.

Sure, I’m still a hail-storm of a human. And no, maybe I don’t have a car that I can lock myself out of these days, but I did almost back a 4-wheeler into a house last night… I digress to simply say (mostly to remind my own fickle heart) that there’s nothing I (or you) could ever do to disrupt the grace-full sovereignty of God in His bigger story or tiny details.

While I’m reminded daily of my shortcomings and weaknesses, that has never stopped God from reminding my hot mess of a self that everything is accomplished by His grace and goodness, not the world’s expectations of what grace should look like in me.

Glory be to God.

“For You are good, You are good, when there’s nothing good in me…”

(“Forever Reign”, Hillsong United)

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To the ends of the earth…

Y’all—

Can I just say, I had no idea what God had in store when I agreed to move to Alaska…

I knew I was coming here to teach, mentor, and disciple somewhere between 5 to 10 Native Alaskan teenagers and young adults. I knew I would live with my girls and “mom the daylights outta ‘em” just as I’ve done with about every student I’ve ever had. And after many nights of freaking out and anxiously crying to my roommates in Denver, I knew I would love them (and hoped that they would learn to love me too…).

Now, let’s go over a few of the things I didn’t know I was in for: I didn’t know I would move here, end up in ground school with one of my students, and fall in love with flying. I didn’t know I would learn to love bush life more than city life. I had no idea the depths of loneliness that come with bush life, and conversely, the depth of relationship with God that occurs when you have nothing to distract your heart and mind. I didn’t know I would learn to butcher moose, end up volunteering in the local K-12 school, or that the Lord would transform my ministry from working exclusively with my Native TLC students to becoming a co-leader for both the Lake Clark Bible Church (LCBC) Cambodia teen mission team and the Outfitters for Christ (OFC) Thailand missions team. (Try saying that 5 times fast…Woof.)

But here I am—being called into what seems like the wildest season of God’s plan for my life yet… (Funny how He somehow one-upped Himself after moving me to a village.)

SelinaCambodia
One of my darling LCBC teens; they’re all so pumped about what God is doing!

On June 8th, I plan to board a plane with 13 LCBC high schoolers and we’ll be off for a whirlwind two weeks of teaching and sharing the Gospel in the predominately Buddhist, post-Khmer Rouge terrorized country of Cambodia. Our mission while in Cambodia will be to support local missionaries who have established churches, Christian schools, and orphanages in the last twenty years to bring the hope of Jesus to Cambodia. Our team will specifically be sharing the gospel while teaching English to school-age children and teenagers in both Christian and public schools. (For many, knowing English can be a skill that will later transform their lives, as English is rapidly becoming the trade language of most of Southeast Asia.)

On June 22nd, I’ll bid my LCBC teens farewell and board a plane to Thailand where I’ll meet up with a team of fellow Coloradoans—a beautiful mixture of Denver Street School alumni and Outfitters for Christ interns that I’ve had the honor to work with and disciple over the last few summers. Similar to what I’ll be doing in Cambodia, our DSS/OFC team will be teaching English in local orphanages, leading short vacation Bible schools for kiddos in smaller towns, and just generally serving the long-term “boots on the ground” missionaries that we are partnering with in whatever ways they need most.

My personal heart within the two larger missions for the month is simply to love on the people God places in front of me—fellow weary missionaries, house-moms, students, and orphans alike. After having served in a live-in ministry and discipleship setting for the last year here at TLC, I understand the need for a listening ear, a warm cup of tea, and a hug on a new level– and that is what I hope to provide for those in need of such a personal touch of Jesus’ love.

In addition to listening and loving, I’m excited to see how the Lord will transform the lives of the young people I’ve fallen in love with over the last several years—both here in Alaska and back in Colorado— as He pushes them to new depths of relationship with Himself, outside of their comfort zones and familiar settings.

I’ve been so richly blessed by your prayers and support as I’ve lived out Jesus’ calling on my life this year in Alaska. If I’m being honest, I’ve felt so overwhelmed by your generosity that I couldn’t imagine asking more of you, my wonderful community. But as I step out in faith, deeply knowing that the Lord is calling me to Southeast Asia for the month of June, I’m asking you to consider partnering with me, yet again, in this amazing opportunity to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. I need to raise a mere $800 per trip ($1,600 total) to cover my in- (and inter-) country costs for the month of June.

Would you please consider partnering with Jesus and I as we raise up and disciple future leaders of the church here in Alaska, back in Colorado, and across Southeast Asia?

As always, thank you for your partnership in spreading the Good News of our Sweet Jesus.

Your grateful sister,

Kacy Lou

If you’re interested in partnering with me as I head to Cambodia with some of my favorite Alaskan teens, donations can be made through Lake Clark Bible Church’s website and simply earmarked Cambodia – Leyba.

Or…

If you’re interested in partnering with me as I head to Thailand with my DSS alumni and OFC interns, donations can be made on the Outfitters for Christ website and earmarked Thailand – Leyba.

[If you have any questions about my work here in Alaska, or about either of these upcoming trips, I would love to talk to you! My e-mail is KacyLouLeyba@gmail.com; I’m generally fairly quick in response. (Unless our internet is out because of weather or other weird village flukes.)]

*All donations made through either website and earmarked appropriately will go directly to the support of our missions trips and will be receipted as tax-deductible for the 2016 tax year.

Current prayer requests as I head into this wild season with Jesus:

Please join me as I pray…

  • That both the LCBC teen missions team and our OFC team will be so enthralled with who Jesus is and what He has done for us that it overflows in the team unity and strength that can only be found in Him.
  • For a heart for God’s people, regardless of nationality, race, age, or geographic location, to be developed within my students.
  • That we will be able to create effective English lessons for kiddos ages 3 to 18 with love and energy.
  • That our teams will have strength and endurance through hot weather and long days of teaching (and within the hours of Alaskan/Cambodia Coloradoan/Thai teen bonding time in the evenings).
  • For all of the details (passports, visas, inter-state communication as the OFC team and I plan/train together long-distance) to come together, as I know only Jesus could do.