Kodiak, Alaska

So.....Kodiak, Alaska.  How did this come about?

Well, after praying, and seeking God, I felt that we were being called to somewhere cold.  In my mind I was thinking, "Oh please, Lord, don't send us to Russia or Sibera!" Also, I'm really not all that fond of cold weather.  I was very hesitant about telling Josh what I felt was on my heart.  Nevertheless, I told him that I felt that we were going somewhere cold.  He looked at me with a look that I knew confirmed something in him.  He said, "Kelly, we are meant to be in Alaska."  I took a breath and said o.k. now what?

We continued to pray for God's guidance and wisdom.  We met with our pastor, Stan, and he had some suggestions for us and prayed with us.  Josh felt that he should be proactive, so he started doing internet searches for ministry oppertunities in Alaska.  He made contact with several people and heard back from a few.  Different people would give him different advice and tell him different things, but nothing was ever really definite.  He also contacted the Alaska Baptist Convention and they gave him some suggestions and ideas as well. 

One night, Josh could not sleep.  His spirit was so stirred.  God kept telling him to search again.  Josh was fighting getting up because he knew he had done the exact same search about 20 times and the same things kept popping up.  God kept prompting him to get out of bed and look again.  Finally, Josh listened and got up.  He did the exact same search, with the exact same words.  This time something different came on the screen and has every time since then - Kodiak Baptist Mission.  Josh read all about their mission and vision.  He contacted the guy over it and the very next day, Trevor (the guy over the KBM) emailed Josh and a few days later skyped with him.  God started opening doors! It wasn't long after that we started hearing from Kelli, who heads up staffing for the summer camps and other things.  We filled out our applications and met together with Kelli via skype.  She contacted our references and the ball started rolling.

The Kodiak Baptist Mission has a website, a facebook page and some videos on youtube if you would like to check it out.  They offer camps during the summer and during the school year they have a pre-school and after school program.  They also have a food bank that helps serve the people in the community.
During the summer the staff that works the camp is strictly volunteer.  Josh and I knew that and were fully prepared to volunteer our time for the summer, but as time passed we both felt that we were not going to be there for just the summer.  Kelli told us that there are paid positions in the fall, if we decided to stay, they would love to hire us.

I started thinking about how I could sign my teaching contract for next year, just in case things didn't work out, I would have a job to come back to. If things did work out and we decided to stay, I could always call the school in July and ask to be released from my contract.  But that was me making plans and not seeking out God's direction.  When I did start praying and asking God what I should do, he clearly let me know that I was to resign my job and start telling people that we would be moving.  Josh also felt that we should sell our house and not have anything to fall back on.  We both felt that God was telling us to take a giant leap of faith and completely surrender our lives to Him.

So here we are, with our broken, chipped, cracked, and scarred vessels ready to be used and filled up by God.  And the journey begins.....