Special Announcement – 10/17/23
To The Nations!
Hey all! I hope this email finds you well! I am just writing this special announcement email to fill you in on a major update of what I’m going to be up to in the following 5 months! If you haven’t guessed it already, I am going back out to the nations! A lot has happened in this past week and a half or so regarding this decision so I will do my best to fill you in on what the Lord is doing and let you know how you can partner with it!
Hey all! I hope this email finds you well! I am just writing this special announcement email to fill you in on a major update of what I’m going to be up to in the following 5 months! If you haven’t guessed it already, I am going back out to the nations! A lot has happened in this past week and a half or so regarding this decision so I will do my best to fill you in on what the Lord is doing and let you know how you can partner with it!
First things first, in December I will be leading a team of 6 of my students alongside my co-leader! Making this decision and hearing the go-ahead from the Lord on it was a HUGE curveball for me. I came into this quarter feeling very confident that I wouldn’t be leading an outreach unless it was to somewhere that I have a deep heart for. At the time, the only team we were sending out was one going to Europe and South Africa which I knew I wasn’t called to be a part of. This wasn’t even an option until about a week ago!
It all happened because of a call to prayer initiated by our campus leadership specifically for our school. We were finding ourselves, as a school, in a hard position because we had a lot of interest in outreach from our students, but since we were only sending out one team it would’ve been very difficult for the leader of that team to manage so many students. As the University of the Nations, it’s never our heart to cap an outreach and tell students that they can’t go so our leadership asked our staff team to pray and ask the Lord about sending another team. I went into that prayer meeting so confident that I wasn’t going on outreach. When I thought about it, it just didn’t make sense for me to go but the second I sat down to pray, the Lord confirmed the call from that very moment for the following 48 hours.
First things first, in December I will be leading a team of 6 of my students alongside my co-leader! Making this decision and hearing the go-ahead from the Lord on it was a HUGE curveball for me. I came into this quarter feeling very confident that I wouldn’t be leading an outreach unless it was to somewhere that I have a deep heart for. At the time, the only team we were sending out was one going to Europe and South Africa which I knew I wasn’t called to be a part of. This wasn’t even an option until about a week ago!
It all happened because of a call to prayer initiated by our campus leadership specifically for our school. We were finding ourselves, as a school, in a hard position because we had a lot of interest in outreach from our students, but since we were only sending out one team it would’ve been very difficult for the leader of that team to manage so many students. As the University of the Nations, it’s never our heart to cap an outreach and tell students that they can’t go so our leadership asked our staff team to pray and ask the Lord about sending another team. I went into that prayer meeting so confident that I wasn’t going on outreach. When I thought about it, it just didn’t make sense for me to go but the second I sat down to pray, the Lord began confirming the call from that very moment for the following 48 hours.
As I said before, the timing of all of this doesn’t make any sense. None of my circumstances are perfectly lined up and in order and there are a lot of things that I need the Lord to provide in order for any of this to happen. In the face of all this though, I feel it as a call to place even greater dependence on the Lord and lean deep into who he is as a faithful father. When I was praying about actually pursuing this, I remember praying and literally saying word-for-word, “Lord I can’t do this unless you tell me to go by your Word”. I didn’t want to go if it wasn’t truly being spoken by him, but the second I prayed that prayer the Lord immediately spoke Luke 10. I wasn’t able to call to mind what this scripture said so I opened my Bible and this is what it says starting in verse 1…
Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two
“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to ho. And he said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves…”
It continues on with Jesus telling the appointed what they are to do as they go out. When I read this I knew, without a doubt that it was an absolute ‘yes’ from the Lord so I submitted the idea to my leaders and they quickly felt peace about approving it and that was that!
As I also mentioned before, I won’t be doing this outreach alone! I will be going with a team just like the other times I’ve gone out but this will be the first time where I am leading the team rather than joining as a student. My co-leader, Stephen will be helping me with planning what our ministry is going to look like by working with me in reaching out to contacts and seeing what opportunities are open for us. Since we just got our team announced literally one day ago, we are in the very early stages of planning and preparing for the outreach. All we know so far is that we have 6 students on our team and that we would like to focus on two main things in our ministry.
1.) Working together with the local YWAM bases/communities and helping them record and release the music that is being written on their bases
2.) Mixing live music and evangelism. Since both Stephen and I have experience with gigging/busking and have a huge passion for live music we want to pair it alongside evangelism by allowing the music we play publicly to open doors to evangelize.
Lastly, I would like to touch on what my personal preparation for this trip is going to look like. As always, with big missions trips comes a lot of fundraising but like I said before, I have full faith that the Lord is going to provide everything that is needed for this outreach to happen. I don’t have exact numbers for costs as of right now because we haven’t begun building our outreach budget but outreaches tend to range from $3,000-$5,000 depending on the location and the ministry you’ll be doing. In light of that, I am setting a goal of $6,000 to cover the entirety of the trip including my flight to wherever the Lord calls me next! As of right now I have no payment deadlines to meet but as this quarter progresses I will receive invoices and I will keep you all updated on what those look like.
As per usual, all ways in which you can partner financially with this outreach can be found on my website. If you have any questions about anything regarding this update newsletter please reach out! I would love to share more and also hear from you!
That’s all for now! Mahalo & Blessings!!
Kalani 🙂
As I said before, the timing of all of this doesn’t make any sense. None of my circumstances are perfectly lined up and in order and there are a lot of things that I need the Lord to provide in order for any of this to happen. In the face of all this though, I feel it as a call to place even greater dependence on the Lord and lean deep into who he is as a faithful father. When I was praying about actually pursuing this, I remember praying and literally saying word-for-word, “Lord I can’t do this unless you tell me to go by your Word”. I didn’t want to go if it wasn’t truly being spoken by him, but the second I prayed that prayer the Lord immediately spoke Luke 10. I wasn’t able to call to mind what this scripture said so I opened my Bible and this is what it says starting in verse 1…
Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two
“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to ho. And he said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves…”
It continues on with Jesus telling the appointed what they are to do as they go out. When I read this I knew, without a doubt that it was an absolute ‘yes’ from the Lord so I submitted the idea to my leaders and they quickly felt peace about approving it and that was that!
As I also mentioned before, I won’t be doing this outreach alone! I will be going with a team just like the other times I’ve gone out but this will be the first time where I am leading the team rather than joining as a student. My co-leader, Stephen will be helping me with planning what our ministry is going to look like by working with me in reaching out to contacts and seeing what opportunities are open for us. Since we just got our team announced literally one day ago, we are in the very early stages of planning and preparing for the outreach. All we know so far is that we have 6 students on our team and that we would like to focus on two main things in our ministry.
1.) Working together with the local YWAM bases/communities and helping them record and release the music that is being written on their bases
2.) Mixing live music and evangelism. Since both Stephen and I have experience with gigging/busking and have a huge passion for live music we want to pair it alongside evangelism by allowing the music we play publicly to open doors to evangelize.
Lastly, I would like to touch on what my personal preparation for this trip is going to look like. As always, with big missions trips comes a lot of fundraising but like I said before, I have full faith that the Lord is going to provide everything that is needed for this outreach to happen. I don’t have exact numbers for costs as of right now because we haven’t begun building our outreach budget but outreaches tend to range from $3,000-$5,000 depending on the location and the ministry you’ll be doing. In light of that, I am setting a goal of $6,000 to cover the entirety of the trip including my flight to wherever the Lord calls me next! As of right now I have no payment deadlines to meet but as this quarter progresses I will receive invoices and I will keep you all updated on what those look like.
As per usual, all ways in which you can partner financially with this outreach can be found on my website. If you have any questions about anything regarding this update newsletter please reach out! I would love to share more and also hear from you!
That’s all for now! Mahalo & Blessings!!
Kalani 🙂