Updates from the McGinnis
(The view from our little Ohana, every nights! )
Hello family!
These past weeks were very busy. Cate started her works, and I am still fully into the outreach on campus of University of the Nation Kona. Even in the midst of the busyness of life, God really take us deeper and we see His finger print in everything.
Cate work has been a blessing for us. It help us considerably for our monthly gas and groceries. Besides, Cate have been able to surf almost every day! Can you believe that? After more than 1 year after we left Australia and being far from any kind of good surf, God really bless her with this gift of being able to work into her passion, and even surf beside that. Also as she say, her boss is very kind and nice. Which nowadays isn't a granted thing when we work. So it is also a blessing.
She also started working as nanny, but it hasn't being as fun. Many people are rude, and it's kinda a weird experience. Write us for more info about that! Fortunately it isn't a very commitment, it is more if you want you can go work. So we chose to not continue too much into that, as it was really too draining and not helpful at all. Cate feel that it is a season of work, but not necessarily just for earning money whatever is the coast. And it was really not a good situation.
Beside she did some friend surfer and love spending time with them. It has been good to have surfing girl, as it is not very habitual. So it has been a blessing as well, to have some girl power in the water! She still enjoy doing some art and really enjoy our little Ohana.
Speaking of it, God really blessed us with this place. We have been able to pay our rent as we have now reached 1600$ per month!!!!! We are so thankful for you support, and feel so blessed that God is being so faithful. It has been miraculous, and still is. We do have a little living room and a couch that can become a beautiful and comfy bed.. For whoever want to have some little holiday on the big Island Kailua-Kona, we would be really happy to have you! Let us know.
We also received some random donation, and have been able to pay my next school deposit of 1000$! This, again, is very miraculous, and show that the direction God gave me to pursue this BA is going on the right path. I don't know if you read in my previous letter, but I will be doing the school of Addictive Behavior Counseling. It will start in the beginning of April!
Before that, I will be finishing my outreach with Advanced Training Counseling Ministry. We are now really being full of ministry and team time. We have been reading "The Joy Switch" by Chris M. Coursey and "Face of Grace" by Ed Khouri. It really gave me so much insight for this season in how to go deeper into my relationship with God. These books are pretty new, and have each one a little study side, with questions and reflection at the end of each chapter. It has been really amazing reading them, and creating new habit of joy and grace-based relationship with our Lord God! If you want to speak about any of that, I would be really happy to connect and go deeper.
These two weeks we are offering a seminar in a local church. We will be teaching the Divine Plumbline by Dr. Bruce Thompson. He founded the counseling department into University of the Nation. The schools I am doing now are partly because of him! It is a very big honor to be able to teach this seminar.
It is all about life. We have experience where we are feeling rejection from authority figures. At school, from parents, from close friends. Through these experience we start building aggressive or passive personality to protect ourselves from the pain and the hurt of these situations. In fact these personality are pictured as walls that we build into our heart. Inside these walls is where lust, pride, anger and fear reign. There is steps that God want to take us through to make these walls fall down and bring a new wall made with the Divine Plumbline (God's Plumbline) and reach a better state of life to have relationships with God and others.
You probably have a hard time understanding anything with this little intro. The teaching takes usually 8 days and include a lot of ministry time, revelations, forgiveness, repentance, and more. If you are interested, the author wrote a book! "Walls of my heart" by Dr. Bruce Thompson. You will understand all that much better, have a deeper understanding of who is Dr. Bruce Thompson and probably you will go through positive change in your life! So it's whatsoever only positive for all of us :)
We will be finishing this outreach in 3 weeks. Please pray for our team, that we will keep up on homework, ministry time, case study, and everything we have to achieve in the academic part as well.
This is a little bit of our life since we live in Hawaii. We have a full life, with a lot of challenges and lots of blessing.
We felt to buy a car. Long story short, a friend wanted to buy it to sell it more expensive (many people do that around here to earn a little money). Before doing so, he asked us if we wanted to purchase it. After prayer we felt to go on and to buy the car. It is a 2003 Toyota Camry. A older couple had it and took care of it. It look almost new!
We felt peace to buy it but still have no money to afford it. A friend of mine will put the money forward and we will need to pay him little by little through he next year. It was needed for us, as in the states a car in a obligation, and my friend couldn't let us just use his car all the time.
So if you feel to give toward the car, it will be much appreciated! It will coast us 3500$.
Here we are! Entering the third month of 2022, living our life, having many things happening in what we do. And we see that many things are happening in Europe too. We are in prayer for these people that live horror during these exact minutes I am writing. We are very sad for the violence and the people that are hurt from these circumstance. Let's pray together for Russia and Ukrainia, and all other government leader. Blessing over them, direction and guidance from God is so needed in these times! Join me in prayer for them, and all the people that are touch from choices they make.
We miss you, European, Australian, and mainland (and others) friends and family! Thank you for reading our news, thank you for your support and kindness. We love you!
God bless all of you!
More pics: From fruit picking to party wave together!