Vision and Purpose

Tuesday 9/17 was a BIG DAY!

We got into class, had worship then were given our charge for the day. I say charge because it wasn't an assignment but a charge to search your heart and listen to God to tell us about our self.

We did a Cleansing and Filling packet and it was full of scripture and questions to search our hearts of sins that we might be committing and need to be reconciled of it.

It was so cool how God gave us all the time and spoke truth to us through the packet. It was an amazing reflecting time to focus on God and repent of sins and start afresh and encouraged.

We then headed off to a camping site on Table Rock Lake. I got the privilege to spend time with girls while putting up our tent and hammocks for the night. After everyone was all settled in we had sloppy joes for dinner. They were so good, and I got to share how Dan and I met and our engagement story to a group of girls. I love doing that!

After dinner the fun really began. We all had written our testimonies out the night before and knew that we would begin to share them in front of everyone starting tonight. It was so cool. We spent two hours listening to testimony after testimony and just to hear God get bragged on in every life story. Yes, we are all broken but we have the opportunity to share how God was for us and what He taught us through it. My Testimony is going to be attached at the end of this post. Feel free to read it if you would like.

One thing I loved in writing out my testimony was the helpful tips from The Institute on how to do it well. I am going to share them with you and challenge you to write out your testimony so you can be ready at anytime to share how amazing God is and prove it through your life.

Four parts to a Testimony

1. What my life was like before I met Christ. (Least time)

2. How I realized I needed Christ. (More time)

3. How I committed by life to Christ. (Even more time)

4. The difference Christ has made in my life. (Most time)
By answering these four questions you have your full life story, and guess what you can make your testimony around 5 minutes long. That is so great to share with anyone.

Wednesday morning we started with breakfast and straight into listening to testimonies. Lunch was a community picnic on the K-1 upper fields. It was fun to see all the different Kanakuk Kamps office works and families that live in the community. They welcomed us to the community. The next part of our busy day was going around in a smaller group and talking about different parts of campus that relate to student life or our campus jobs. The four rotations were internship description, mail, kitchen, and champ cabana (which is what they call the competition with cleaning our dorm rooms). Following that we got to have some recreational fun by playing games of whiffle ball, softball, and kickball. After having friendly competition and becoming all sweaty we headed to the Chancey's home (president of Institute) to have a ice cream social and finish up the rest of the Institute.

Thursday was one of my favorite days so far. I am going to give the high points then focus on my favorite part of the day. We started by doing a campus job draft and then training in that job. We have an amazing opportunity to spend this year here in Branson and going through this program for $10,000. That is not how much this program costs but through having campus jobs we are working for our education. It is so fun. My job was predestined as we're a lot of peoples, and mine is Kitchen Manager on Thursday. So, I help cleaning the kitchen after lunch and dinner on Thursdays. For lunch that day we went on a little trip to Springfield, MO to my favorite restaurant Chick-fil-A! I was so excited!!! Following that we had the awesome opportunity to spend the next four hours outdoors and with The Lord! Our charge was to write out a vision, philosophy of life, and a purpose. This was great but so hard. This was my favorite part of the day and will expand at the end of post. After our time with The Lord we went to Incredible pizza and had there buffet to eat and had a fun time doing some karaoke with old 90s music. It was hilarious! After that we got back in our cars and headed back to our Hawaii retreat home.

Now to expand on the charge we were given for the day. Our vision, philosophy of life, and purpose. As I said this was great but hard. It was a wonderful time with The Lord but hard to really pinpoint what I really wanted mine to be. Our afternoon consisted of two locations to reflect and dig into God's Word to answer these questions. The first location was a cemetery. Now don't freak out, it wasn't morbid or weird. It honestly was very respectful and eye opening. We were told to think about what would you want written on your tomb stone once you leave this world? What do you want your legacy to be? As you walk around look for the vision, philosophy of life, and purpose written on the tomb stones of these people you don't even know. This was a very hard time for me. I am an emotional human being so I did cry reading the names of people and hurting for the people they left behind. And along with grieving for the people and searching the tombstone of the people who have left this place I was encouraged to not take thesis charge lightly. This was a cemetery that was for the military and there were many grave that were marked "Unknown Soldier". Looking at all of them I struggled with a lot of hurt. I hurt deeply for the families that didn't get to say goodbye to their loved one and through that didn't get to write their purpose of life on their tombstone. Instead these soldiers gave their lives and they are unknown to us. I started to reflex also how I want my charge to have an eternal mindset and not just for this world. How yes I want to be a respectful and encouraging wife, an incredible mom, a teacher of music, and so much more, but through all of that I want to be a disciple of Christ and spread His name. Our second location was a park and this was more of sitting and listening and searching through God's Word to put the words together for each statement. 

I have not finished this charge still working on finalizing all the words and flow of each statement. I want to leave you with this. If you haven't thought about why you are here on earth then you will perish. Proverbs 29:18 says just that "Where there is no vision the people perish". With that I encourage you to definitely think if not also write out your vision, philosophy of life, and purpose. This is how they explained and the question to answer for each part.

Vision = WHAT you want to accomplish

Philosophy of life = HOW you expect to be able to fulfill what God has called you to do

Purpose = WHY you are bringing these dreams a reality

I hope you have been encouraged and truly reflect on your story God has given you to share His name and what is your vision and purpose for this life here.

Arriving & First Two Days

When Dan and I arrived in Missouri from our 5 hour long trip with no stops and packing the night before, I was beyond excited to finally be in the town of Branson. When we arrived we were given our room and told to get moved in and meet for dinner at 6 o'clock. That didn't give us much time since we had arrived at 3 o'clock. Furthermore, we packed up a van and my car full of things to put in our small hotel style dorm room. I look at it now and really have no idea how everything fit. We didn't get full unpacked because we couldn't decide where to place the furniture for the longest time, but finally got somewhat organized and headed to dinner. That night was food and fellowship with the Institute class. We played games such as fish bowl and picture telephone and tried to learn all the names of our fellow class mates. And that was really it for our arrival.

Our first full day we got straight to it. We dug into God's Word and had some fun building our community. We had two amazing speakers that day. One being Chad Hampsch, he is the Vice President of The Institute, and he talked with us about the first core value for The Institute TRUTH. The other being Joe White, he is the president of Kanakuk Kamps. Both very knowledgeable and gifted in speaking but have two different approaches.

The high points of Chad's talk were these.

There are four factors of how people make decisions

1. Tradition

2. Reason

3. Experience

4. Emotion

And these factors rein true throughout history and by know what factor your generation uses to make decisions is huge to help you be able to share the gospel. Our generation believes that tradition is old fashion and silly so don't follow the traditions. Our generation believes that reason is nonexistent to the point of irrelevance. This is why you have the statements like, it feels right to do this, it may be right for you but not for me. He focused on two scriptures after this - John 18:28-38, which states that Jesus is the truth and then 1Kings 18:20-39, which asks worshippers of idols how long they will hesitate between two opinions?. It was powerful to think about if I am hesitant to take truth lightly and not seek it out. He left us with what his prayer is for us here at The Institute "to move away from opinion which is based on you and go to conviction which is based on truth." Powerful huh. 

The high points of Joe's talk were these.

He quoted the full book of Ephesians to use from memory. It was incredible. He then gave us a quick overview of the full book.

Chapter 1- to the saints - chosen by God

Chapter 2- saved by grace for a poetic mission

Chapter 3- a mystery fulfilled: designed for worship

Chapter 4- gifted to equip: set apart for Godly living

Chapter 5- filled with the spirit: a marriage designed

Chapter 6- fully armored to flight and overcome

He then encouraged us through these things.

Effective Bible study, Read it like...

1. A Love Letter

2. It is the First Time

3. Imaginatively

4. Prayerfully

5. Studiously

6. Intimately

M&Ms of the Bible are Memorize and Meditate

Walking in the Spirit is like breathing

Exhaling is confession and Inhaling is where Christ takes the thrown again.

After the speakers we spent the afternoon at Moonshine Beach on Table Rock Lake. We played recreational games at the beach and then had a cookout there with burgers to eat.

On Monday it yet again was another packed day.

We had Keith Chancey talk to us at two different times of the day about the nest two core values of The Institute - discipleship and character. We went over our full handbook and set great expectations for the year. We had an 80s skate party at the Branson Skating Rink and then had dinner at Fudruckers.

The high points of Keith's talk over discipleship were these.

Matthew 4:17-19

The first word Jesus says in his ministry is "Repent" - verse 17

Then come discipleship in how Jesus asks men to follow him - verse 19

Follow Me in Greek is "Deute" which is to come here or come now or to perform a certain action.

The high points of Keith's talk over character were these.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

Galatians 6:7

Philippians 2:3-11

Our character is worth so much more than our personality. He compared it to an iceberg analogy of your personality is the part that you can see and your character is the big part you can't see. Your character is what makes you a great follower of Christ so be aware if it.

Well gang that is it for this post. I know it is long and they will be long until Sunday when I get everyone caught up with what I have learned so far. I will share about the next three days tomorrow! Be encouraged by the truth we live by and the example that we can follow and that He wants a relationship with us. 

Philippians 2:3-11

The Beginning

I don't even know how I am suppose to start up a blog, I am learning every aspect right now. I am just going to go straight to it. 

First and Foremost this blog is to keep friends and family in the loop with what I am doing this year. I am not a professional blogger. This actually is my very first one ever! I am very excited about that, but just to give you a good expectation of what to expect from it. I am not an English major and it is actually my worse subject. However, I will try my very best to make complete sentences that are written with correct grammar. Luckily there is spell check when I am typing up my post.

With that said I am very excited to post how my life at the Kanakuk Institute is this year. So I will get straight to finishing up my first blog post!

Wow, I have been on the Kanakuk Institute Campus for 11 days now. It literally feels like I have been here for months, in a good way. My Husband put it this way when we were talking one night after class, "We are standing in front of a fire hydrant with the water just shoot out at us. The information is great, however, it is coming so fast we can't absorb it all or even begin to process everything we are learning because the next day it is exactly like the day before." This was a complement not a negative thought of how that particular day ended. I am really enjoying what they have taught us so far but we all are in the process of learning how to process with how fast pace the program is.

Here are some of the basics of this program if you do not know.

We are living in Branson, MO on the family camp campus for Kanakuk Kamps called K-Kaua'i.

This is an 8-month program focused on "Equipping young men and women with biblical skill for a lifetime of ministry". 2 Timothy 2:2 which states, "And these things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also." is another way to say what we will be learning here. To hear from the teachers that come to teach and be entrusted the gospel and then we can then be able to teach others also. There are many other parts to this program and will explain them throughout the rest of this week in different posts.

I will be posting again tomorrow and catching you up on what we have done the past 11 days and by next week I hope to have you fully caught up so when I post it is current.

I am very excited for the year to come. I hope you enjoy reading about what I am doing and learning here. While you read be in prayer, be challenged, and be encouraged to seek God more in your stage of life as well.

Talk with you each tomorrow!

2 Timothy 2:1-7