09/23

Hello everyone. I hope that you are all doing well and that our great God is blessing you mightily. I am doing well today. I’ve just finished the first week at RAD here in Gainesville, GA. I got here last Sunday. It has been a long and challenging week.

There are five students including myself. Their names are Yvie, Matt, Wes (all from Jacksonville, FL) and Josh from Hartley, IA. Please keep them in your prayers. We are staying right now in the youth room at Lanier Hills Church in Gainesville. The biggest difficulty in these first days has been to adapt to the new environment. The focus of this week has been to get the five of us thinking of ourselves as a team. The word transparency is a favorite at RAD – we have been told that as students we will be pushed and required to reveal our true selves and be honest with one another about everything. I have never had an experience quite like this one. In just one week it feels like I have known these individuals for a long time. However, it is all still so fresh. I ask for your prayers for all five of us as a team – we are so excited and enthusiastic right now. We are nice to one another, say please and thank-you ;) and are all willing and working hard. But time will go by and conflict will come. Pray that our Father would protect our willingness to be here and participate, and that He would bless us in our desire to become fully His.

Our days are packed, and it seems like this has been the longest week of my life. At the beginning I didn’t know what to expect, and I still don’t. Part of the discipleship is that we are expected to handle things day by day. We have no knowledge of the schedule that is prepared for us or what we will be doing, even from just the time between breakfast and lunch. We have been receiving trainings throughout the week on various subjects.

One of the exercises that we students had to do at the beginning of the week was to prepare a personal willingness contract. This contract for me details what I am willing to put into this program. I’m going to share it with you and ask you to use it as a prayer guide when you remember me going before our Father:

September 17: “I want all that Jesus offered with His life. I want what is the truth. I am going to do whatever is necessary – submit, fight, walk, run, listen, speak. I am going to put my actions on just one path and seek the destruction of everything that comes between my life and the heart of my God.

I willingly accept the challenge, the difficulty and the pain, and I commit to open my heart as I pass through them to the work of my God in the life He has given me.

I will pursue all worthy examples, but above all others I will desire Jesus. He has put a desire in me for all that is His. This is the truth apart from all human definition, the life that flows from all that Jesus is. I will let Him be the one who sets my limits, and let Him be the one who defines for me the person that Jesus really is. I will let Him be the one who tells me who I am. I will stop asking and I will accept what He offers. I will recognize that my thoughts will never understand the greatness of His existence, but the Eternal God lives in my life, and He will mark my steps.

I want to be transformed into the life that He desired when He created me. I will do everything possible to dream, desire and live this, knowing that He will fill this life and make it be.”

This was hard for me to put on paper. As I am here writing to you, my struggle is with willingness. I am also struggling with doubt. We as students are journaling every day. When I write I have a lot to say, but when I try to express it verbally to others I have no words. Please pray for my willingness to be here and that I would be able to give 100% of myself. Also pray that I would grow in the truth of the Word.

The last thing I’ll share is the memory verse that my Father gave me for this month.

Psalms 30:8-12: “To you, O Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy: ‘What gain is there in my destruction, in my going down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me; O Lord, be my help.’ You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.”

Thank you for your prayers and support to me as my God guides me on this path to His heart. With all of my love, I desire for you the peace and blessing of the life of Jesus –

Katie