Kauai and our island life.

It’s been way too long since we updated. Sorry. The last month has been crazy. We’ve been in Korea now for just under a month. But I tell you about Kauai first.

So, I (Lindsey) had a great time there. I ended up working at Duke’s. It’s a great restaurant and probably the busiest on the island. The first couple weeks I worked 3 times a week (sometimes 8 hour shifts) and that was a little too much restaurant for me. So I cut back to 1 or 2 shifts. All in all, really good job- but I didn’t move to Kauai to work at a restaurant- I really wanted to focus more on the internship.

The ::i’mPASSIONED:: group I started went really well. I had so much fun planning for it and teaching it. We ended up having between 9-15 people every week (which is really good for Kauai- and people sort of tend to run the opposite way when you throw out the word missionary). Most of them were very new to subject of missions, but all were interested. We ended up focusing a lot on unreached people groups (the Joshua Project is an awesome resource for this) and contextualization. Each week I would teach a little on a certain subject and have a discussion, plan some sort of activity to reinforce that, and watch a short 3 minute video on an unreached people group (after that we’d spend some time praying for the people group). It really helped open up their eyes (and mine!) to how big the world is and how much need is still out there.

I mean, there are 16,351 people groups in the world, and 6,641 of those people groups are currently unreached. This means they have probably never heard the name of Jesus and/or there is no church within their culture. Without the help of missionaries (from all over the world) they will never know the name of Christ! So- 40.9% of the world’s population are unreached. Man! Let’s get busy!

Anyway, my internship was great because I was able to practice doing what I kept saying I wanted to do. Now that I’ve gotten a taste of it, I can confidently say “I want to be a mission’s mobilizer! (or missions pastor or missionary)” And, of course, now I have a lot more to put on my resume and have a lot more to say in an interview.

Luke also had a really great time doing his internship. He was able to lead almost every week after his dad had his surgery. The weeks that he didn’t lead, he got some practice running sound and facilitating. Also, he got to lead the practices. Most of the time when he’s been in charge of the worship there hasn’t been anytime beforehand to hold a practice. So, it was nice to learn how to run them and get a feel for it. This, also, will be good for his resume later when we get back from Korea. He really feels called to be a worship pastor and so we will continue to pursue that when we return. Let us know (over the course of this year) if you hear of any churches looking for one!

Let’s see….what else did we do in Kauai? Well, Luke got a chance to go surfing a lot. Not as much as he would have liked, but more than normal. Since I don’t really surf- I took up body surfing. A couple times a week, we would go down to Kealia (a beach a few minutes away from the house) and go surfing or body surfing.

Also, and I think most importantly, we got to spend a lot of time with Luke’s parents. Although I knew his parents from before we dated, we never have had a long period of time to hang out since we’ve been together and gotten married. So, naturally, moving to Kauai and living with them, made that possible. That was a ton of fun.

All in all, Kauai had its ups and downs, but looking back on it- I’m really glad we made that choice. We were really sad to leave.

I’ll put up some pictures we took in Kauai up after this.