It’s been a great week here in Kona. We began our staff training for the Justice DTS which starts on January 8th. Here is a pic of the staff gathering in the Ohana Court. The training was led by the one and only Jeremy West, who taught on personal discipleship and stewardship….such good content!

But not only are we preparing for January, but our Fall schools are preparing to leave…..at our weekly Thursday night meeting, we had a time of commissioning. 58 teams are leaving and heading to 39 nations!!!!!!!!!!!! Praise the Lord for all that will be accomplished through these teams! Here is a pic of these young missionaries being prayed for.

It is almost December….WOW! Another year has flown by, and 2015 is just around the corner. We wanted to share with you a few things: what have we been doing in 2014? What does 2015 look like for the Randerson Ohana? And we’ve even included some references, to validate our family’s work here in Kona.

Here’s a recap of some of the things we’ve been up to in 2014:

• Training and sending over 1,000 young people as missionaries to the nations. Our role has been to train students and staff to be effective in the area of finances (budgeting, stewardship, reporting), as they have taken the good news of Jesus Christ to people who may have never heard his name before.

• More than Sport giving away backpacks full of school supplies to needy kids of Kona. Here’s one of the pro triathletes smiling for the camera with a little girl who just received some much-needed, new, school supplies.

• Paul serving on both the A-team (focusing on improving our short-term outreach effectiveness) and campus circle leadership team

• Justice Water drilling to provide water for a community in Togo, West Africa. Here’s a video of the drilling and a picture of the dedication ceremony:

Financial Update

We are so grateful to our team of supporters who make it possible for us to be here, serving the Lord with Youth With A Mission. Without our faithful partners teaming up with us through financial and prayer support, we could not be here! It’s that simple. A huge “Mahalo” to our supporters – you know who you are!!

Our monthly support doesn’t always cover our monthly outgoings. As a result, we do rely quite heavily on year-end donations. As you consider year-end giving as part of your tax planning, would you consider giving to our family’s work? Information on how to give can be found on our partner page, or just give us a call.

In 2014, when we compared our income versus our expenses, our expenses exceeded our income by almost $4,000 (through October 31st). In ten months, that equates to around $400 per month for us to break-even, and not have to dip into savings. Would you consider joining our support team? If 4 individuals or families would give an average of $100 per month, our family’s needs would be met. We do try to live frugally, but the reality is this: we have a family of six, and our boys are growing. Just the rent of our 3-bedroom condo and power bill amounts to $1,750 per month. Hawaii is not a cheap place to live!

Dreams

Here are some of our goals for 2015, that we wanted you to be aware of:

• We hope to make a visit back to Whatcom County to visit family, friends and church. We originally planned on coming back to Washington state once every 2 years. Summer of 2015 will be 2 years since we moved to work with YWAM Kona!!

• We will be part-time staff of the “Justice DTS” which starts on January 8th. For more info on this school, click here.

• We are praying about Josiah and Lynnette going on a short-term outreach to Cambodia. A local family runs a Christian school in Phnom Penh, that educates 200 children. They hope to pioneer a second school in another part of the country. So, the outreach would be for the purpose of seeing that school established. God is doing awesome things in Cambodia, redeeming them from a torrid past. Here is a new video from U of N Battambang (one of 450 U of N locations around the world):

• Buying home: as part of our desire to establish long-term roots here in Kona, we are believing the Lord to own our own home! Owning a home here isn’t cheap, however! Our home in Lynden that sold for $250K would go for over $400K here. In order to own a home, we need to increase our down-payment. We do have some funds from the house we sold in Lynden, but not enough to avoid private mortgage insurance. Cost-wise, owning a home would be similar to renting, assuming mortgage rates remain low….except we would be building equity instead of paying someone else’s mortgage.

References

Click here to read two references that those we work most closely with have written about our family.

Maybe you’ve heard the words “YWAM”, but have no idea what it is. Here is a quick video that explains the basics!

This quarter, YWAM Kona is blessed to have over 500 students here, being trained for missions! There are 11 different DTS’s running (Discipleship Training Schools), each with a unique focus, but with the same core curriculum. These students come to be transformed by God, and to fall more in love with Him! He rocks their world during the 3 months of training & equipping, and then around Christmas, these same students are sent out to the nations, to share the good news of Jesus. We are so privileged to be part of this discipleship process, and to hear some of the stories when they come back full of amazing testimonies of how God worked through them!

Here is a quote from one of our campus leaders – this is what the University is all about!

With so many students, the campus is jam-packed. Here is a pic of student orientation at the Ohana Court, where we hold our campus gatherings. It’s a full house!!! But we are believing the Lord for MORE, to make a bigger impact in the nations! We have an unfinished dorm building that will hold another 100 students. Please pray with us that we can finish this building soon!

We are also pumped to announce that our new campus cafeteria has opened. The official dedication ceremony will be on Oct 24th, but we are all eating there now. The old kitchen facility was BADLY out-dated, and the truth is we out-grew it probably 10 years ago. The only reason it wasn’t condemned by the county is that they knew we were building the new facility, so they showed us grace. 🙂

Here is a picture of the new cafeteria, which will hold us all in one spot. It even has modern kitchen equipment, to aid the food preparation process!!! The boy’s school is the building just to the right, so they are nice and close for school lunches!

In order for us to use the new cafeteria building, it had to pass several inspections. Lynnette was one of many staff who helped to do a “final clean”. Here’s a pic of her hard at work!

In addition to our students going to the nations, sometimes the nations come to us! A classic example is every October in Kona, when our small town hosts the Ironman World Championship! Because our family loves running and triathlons, we are keen to be involved. This year, our family volunteered at “Pro Fluids”, which is an aid station just for the pro men & women athletes. Here’s a picture of Luke McKenzie, who placed second last year. Josiah was cheering him on! It was so fun to be right there with the pro’s, cheering them on, and serving them as they battle to conquer one of the world’s toughest race courses.

For Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and YWAMers, the goal is two fold: first, to know God, His character and His ways. Second, to make Him known. But HOW do we make Him known in the nations? Using a variety of ministries, schools and seminars, which exist to declare the gospel message in all spheres of society. Here’s a great video which shows just a snapshot of some of what YWAM is currently doing.

Answer the Call – Youth With A Mission from YWAM Kona – UofN on Vimeo.