in all the world, there is no love for you like mine.

Warning: I'm feeling mushy and thankful and well... yeah. So just know that's what's about to go down. Today's category: Friendship...

Some days of your life feel like they add more days to your life. Honestly, not a lot of them in the past year have felt like they've done anything but take years off my life. If it wasn't bad health in the family, it was friend problems, and if it wasn't friend problems, it was just your normal funk...

BUT...When you do have those brilliant moments in life where you couldn't be more thankful, don't you just want to sit in them and be them for a while?

In the past few weeks, I have been loved SO well by so many of the people who love me the most, and I can't start to explain what a different place the world feels like when you just love and are loved well...

I turned a whopping 23 years old on the 15th, and the day was ushered in with NASTY weather. I woke up super early because a storm seemed to be reeking havoc on my roof, so I went on to Ashlea's to begin my birthday celebration day. All day long I was excited, but so dreading having to drag my friends around to celebrate my birthday in the pouring rain. I couldn't have possibly been more wrong about this night.

As always, my best friends showed up in full force. Ashlea and I went to Annie's house and started getting ready, and pretty shortly Quincee was joining the crew. We went on a fun-filled target run and then headed to Cabana for dinner.

Let me just tell y'all that I LOVE my best friends being best friends. I am a great friend-picker, if I do say so myself... and I do. We laughed and shared and danced and caught up, and my heart was so happy. We even got to hey tell/skype in some time with Summer, who I desperately missed. God has supplied my greatest need through His Son, and has been forever faithful to show me exactly who I need in my life to keep me facing Him.

Here's the time that I brag on my friends. If you don't wish to listen, you don't have to- but this may take a minute...

Ashlea is my light. She is fiercely loyal and will love you for better or for worse if you'll let her. She is a firecracker, and makes me laugh every time I talk to her. Some of the most idiotic times of our lives were spent together, and we made it through largely because of each other. She has long been known as an "honorary Campbell", as deemed by my father, and may have her chance to become a real live Campbell, if the dating situation with my brother continues the way that it has. Ashlea makes me proud to call her my friend every day. The person I have watched her become over the past 15 years is one you probably wish was your bff. : ) I love her and her daughter with everything that is in me, and I am forever grateful to have them in my corner.

Annie is just what God knew I needed. She, too, is incredibly loyal and loves with all that she has. There hasn't been a moment in our friendship when I've wondered if Annie would be a life-long friend. It was understood from day one that we would be calling each other with "daughter" questions at some point in life, and that our wedding albums and our daughter's wedding albums would contain pictures of each other... along with every other album in between. She has walked beside me through some of the hardest parts of "adult life" and will continue to do so... I would have it no other way.

Quincee is my saving grace. Our time together screams sunshine and laughter, but we'll kick some tail, too, if need be. We share hearts for African lovies, and I love having common dreams with her. Q is among my favorite people to share quiet time with. She's one of those souls that you just feel okay around- no words necessary, but sometimes that may be because we've already used them all. : ) I love that in such a short period of time, our friendship has become a forever one. Sometimes, we call each other just to rant, and when we've each said our piece about how horrible our day has been, we sleep easier because someone is sharing the burden. I am blessed on so many levels by our friendship, and love her more than words... teach me how to dougie.

Summer is my sunshine. She has the biggest heart in all of Nicaragua, and I'm sure of it! We were instant bff when we met at good ole FHU. Summer is my favorite kind of person- she has the most beautiful heart, the most fun personality, and the most intense love. There is not a day that goes by that I am not thankful for the friendship that God gave me in Summer. She is a constant encouragement and reminder of God's heart. She's my favorite way to use Skype & hey tell, and I miss her pretty much constantly. I fully expect us to be on another continent, barefoot, playing in the yard with our kids of different nationalities some day. Nothing would make me happier!

Thank you, God, for giving me just what I need, and knowing what I need better than I ever could. Thank you, Girls, for being my support system. My favorite people with which to laugh, cry, and dance, and some of my biggest blessings.

On top of my family, I have been given people like this to share my corner, pick me up, listen to my complaints, and love me hard- I mean... I couldn't be less deserving or more grateful.

God has given me above and beyond. Over and over again. And just keeps. on. giving.

love, love, love.

-kat

Necessary.

Dear sweet friends,

Thanks to the providence of God and a few incredible people that are allowing Him to use them, I am headed back to Uganda in a short 19 days. As I’m sure you can imagine, and have probably read, I am MORE than excited about this trip back into my “heart-home”.

This trip was both very short notice and very exciting to me for the same reason… Through a partnership with the American Refugee Committee, We are being given a unique opportunity to resettle 700- yes, seven hundred- children who have been living in IDP, or Internally Displaced Persons, camps.

For more than 20 years in Northern Uganda, tribes were required to live inside these camps as a way to protect them from rebel armies, and for some as a refuge from already-destroyed villages.

Because they have been displaced for so long, and because disease and sickness is so common, many of the remaining displaced persons are children leading, or living within, a child-headed household. Most are fearful to leave the pseudo-families that are all they have ever known.

However, after resettling hundreds of children, the word got out that they were able to receive beds, bibles, and mosquito nets…Children who were formerly afraid to return to their homes are now lining up to receive their goods and go back to their home villages! It’s so uncommon for the children to be willing to resettle that other organizations are asking how we are able to accomplish this. Praise God!

ARC is working hard to trace each child back to their tribe of origin by each of their family names. They are also working along side village leaders to determine what land each family owned and reclaim it for them.

Being resettled means the children acquire a new hut from ARC, and we with Sweet Sleep will arrive with a “resettlement kit” of mats, mattresses, blankets, bibles, and mosquito nets.

Here’s where you come in! Like I mentioned earlier, God has provided FAITHFULLY for the funding necessary for me to be hands and feet to these children, but we need more beds!

The staff at Sweet Sleep works tirelessly, and God is moving for them and the orphans they love over and over again!

For example, as we speak, a donor is willing to match EVERY donation toward the resettlement of these children 100%!

An ENTIRE resettlement kit, including all of the items I previously mentioned, costs only $50. Because of the generous matching, we only need 350 people to donate fifty dollars, or 175 people to donate 100, and I know we’ll get it. I know how big my God is!

What can you do? God is calling me to go, and I’m going! God will provide the means for these children to get the beds they need. Pray hard and often that He will move hearts in the next 19 days, and that those who are able and willing will cheerfully give generously!
Thank you for your prayers, your support, and your love!

-Kathryn

If you are also able to donate monetarily, it’s easy.
Go to www.sweetsleep.org
You will see a link toward the bottom of the page that reads “Click Here to Donate”
Here you are able to donate any amount… be sure to Type “GULU” in the comment box, and know that your money is doubling by the magic of a generous donor! ☺

If

If

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Return, turn, turn.

Here’s to an attempt at restarting my blogging habit. When I do it, it’s very therapeutic to me. Especially when I have those random intense thought moments. Hey... It happens.

Today has been a non-Memorial Day kind of Memorial Day. For the first time in a long time, we weren’t able to get all of our family members together, and while I was sad not to see them all- I was VERY excited about all of the things I was able to get accomplished. I’m trying to get my life back in order so that a new beginning can come easier.

Hopefully this time next year I’ll be a month into nursing school. I’m both nervous and SUPER excited about that fact. One step closer to the Hope Clinic... Back to organizing and watching Tori and Dean: Home sweet Hollywood. (It’s addictive.)

He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.

God's first language is Silence. The rest is translation.

because Seeing is Different than Being Told...

It has taken days... a full week, actually. A week when I had nothing else to do with my time except think and yet I drew blank.

I'm not one to be at a loss for words very often- I almost couldn't have even told you what a loss for words felt like until this week. Even now, the thoughts aren't flowing like they usually do. I'm fighting through it only because I feel so much needs to be said that I need to attempt a headstart.

I thought I knew... I loved the thought of really helping a group of people that needed it so badly, and that thought alone kept me wanting to do more.

But I wasn't prepared. I didn't etch out in my mind what would come to pass when everything that I have been told would be living and breathing and having a conversation with me. My mind still doesn't know what to do with what I saw and my heart with what I feel.

The difference isn't in the things that I experienced- I knew they were real. I knew that there were hearts stifled from the depth of the things they feel and souls stifled from true healing. I knew that being there with them was going to be different. Cognitively, I had stamped all this out.

I thought I knew...

But seeing is different than being told. Wrapping an orphaned child in your arms is different than seeing photos of them. Walking among their heartache and feeling their joy is different. It is encouraging and heartbreaking. It is incredible and has the power to tear you apart. It puts our God on a whole different plane than before, and yet my heart that can only hold so much begs so many questions of Him.

They don't question Him. Why would they question a God who has held them for so long? I know He has. I know He is in them and with them and still in the back of my mind I wonder- Why them and not me? Why do these babies have to suffer this way? Why would a great big God allow... and then I stop. I know better.

In as much as my heartaches, His heart is breaking. I think of them throughout the day and He holds them throughout the day. I pray for them and HE answers the prayers. He is tangible and living and breathing. He was there before I came, while I was there, and will be there with them until the day they take their last breath. And then, without a doubt in my mind, He will take their hands and bring them Home.

and so, I am thankful. Thankful that I can't wrap my head around it. thankful that He knows them by name- the hair on their heads- thankful that I can't fully imagine that fact. Thankful for a God who Was and Is and Will Be and who allowed me to be a small part of the Story He is writing...

i'm so thankful that He is so big. So kind and careful and so much bigger than their heartache.

I don't understand. I can't fathom. But He loves Them Deeply- and that is forever Enough.

kat