Orange Apron

Brothers and sisters,

Nic got a job at the Home Depot.  He starts tomorrow.  Praise the Lamb!

Other than that, I do not have a lot to update y'all on.  As always, the Lord has been faithful to us here in Pittsburgh; our bills are always paid on time, we have not gone hungry, and we are constantly amazed at what Christ is doing through our efforts with the ministry he has entrusted to us.

As always, we ask that you would continue to keep us in your prayers; we cannot do anything without prayer.  Please, keep the Vue in your prayers as well, and the people that the Lord has entrusted to our care.  We love them a lot and are blessed tremendously by seeing them grow in their faith and love of our Lord Jesus Christ!

I would like to share with you all a prayer from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.  It has been a comfort and encouragement to me, and I pray it for all of you as well:


"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."


Thank you all for your love, support and prayer.  It means more than you know.



Grace and peace,

N&K

"He who waters will himself be watered..."

Brothers and sisters,

This past month has been a whirlwind for us.  On top of our normal weekly duties, we have traveled to Kentucky twice to see two of my closest friends get married, Nic got a job as a guitar instructor and he also preached his first sermon, and we got the cutest kitten in the whole entire world.  His name is Shadowfax.

We are still getting used to living in a new city.  Every day Pittsburgh feels more and more like home to us, and we are very grateful that the Lord has called us here.  We've been blessed to have wonderful neighbors who warn us when a cop is outside and about to give us a ticket for being parked in the street during street cleaning hours, and who go out of their way to say hello to us when they see us out in public.  They've made us feel very welcomed and cared for here.  I am blessed to be able to say that I see my coworkers as friends and not just people who I happen to work with, and I'm really excited to see where those friendships go!  Nic and I continue to make new friends through our ministry all the time... we just seriously feel blessed by the people we have been surrounded by during our time here thus far.

Christ has been continuously teaching us about trust and generosity.  It seems that every month we hit a point where we don't really know how ends are going to quite meet up, but Jesus is faithful all the time and we have never been in want.  When we have no idea where our means will come from, we have learned that surrendering our worry to him is far better than trying to figure out our situation by ourselves.  Thus far, there have been uncountable occasions where we were in want and he provided us with a ridiculous gift of provision just out of the blue!  And he continues to astound us by giving us things we don't even need, like tons of fresh vegetables from my grandparents garden or free Pirates tickets.  We serve a God who is not only loves a cheerful giver, but is one himself!  And he has been teaching us how to cheerfully give of what we have as well.  Generosity has been one of the most important practices that we have been learning during our marriage so far.  When we get frantic over how the bills will be paid or whether or not will be able to go to the grocery store for the week, we are learning to respond to that worry by giving of ourselves even more, knowing that "he who waters will himself be watered."  Instead of letting anxiety build in our hearts during times of struggle, we encourage growth, in ourselves and others, by continuing to pour out, knowing our Father will take care of what we need in turn.  Sure enough, he always does.  We serve an incredible God.

The Vue is doing well!  Nic has taken over the worship and order of the gathering; he enjoys his work quite a lot.  I am still praying about what the Lord wants me to do as far as that ministry is concerned.  So far, I've seen him answer me by giving me opportunities to get out in the community to meet people in the form of art shows.  I am participating in one next week and I'm really excited about it!  I'm hoping that this trend will continue, and that I can really form a network of friends in the art community of Pittsburgh.  Also, the Lord has shown me and Nic that we should lead a Bible study out of our home.  Within the next month or so we hope to get that started, and we are ecstatic to have a reason to bring people into our home and share the things we have blessed to have been taught about the Word in our undergraduate years and life experience (and we are excited to learn from other people in return).

We ask that you continue to keep us and our ministry in your prayers.  We have definitely faced a lot of spiritual opposition in our work; we take that as a good sign! But we need people praying with and for us for what the Lord wants to do here in Pittsburgh. Nic and I appreciate your support and love more than you know.  God is good.


Grace and peace,

N&K

Fruits of Trust

Brothers and sisters,

If there is one thing Nic and I have been learning these past few weeks, it has been that the Lord is truly the giver of every good and perfect gift.  We are provided for every day with the things that we need and even the things we want, which is hard for me to accept for whatever reason.  Seriously, Jesus has been generous enough to not only pay our rent, but to even provide us with little things like money specifically for us to be able to have dates together (a fund given to us by one of the most wonderful and generous families on the face of the earth).  We have continuously been blown away by the kindness he has shown to us and are trying to figure out what it means for us to respond faithfully to that generosity by making our gifts, resources, and lives accessible to others.  We ask that you pray for our hearts to be open to trust, generosity, and praise more and more every day.

The Lord has also been faithful to provide me with employment!  Thank you to everyone who has been praying about this with us.  Starting on Monday, I will be working with the YMCA in their after school program at Bellevue Elementary School.  I am very grateful to have an opportunity to influence the youth in my community for the glory of Jesus; intergenerational relationships and training are so crucial to the health of the kingdom.  I am very much looking forward to teaching these kids what it means to be people of good character, and I am especially anticipating what they will teach me in return.  If you could be praying for Nic to have clarity on where the Lord would have him work, that would be wonderful.  We know there is a job out there for him, we just need to be patient and wait on the Lord to reveal it to us.

We have been meeting with Austin and Julie every Monday morning to talk about the direction that The Vue is headed in and what steps we need to take in order to achieve the goals of this ministry.  We pray often that our ideas would not be our own, but the Lord's, and we hope that whatever fruits may come from this ministry would be rooted in and sustained by the vine that is Jesus Christ.  We are hopeful that through this ministry, disciples will be made of 20-somethings who are empowered by the Holy Spirit to go out and disciple more people throughout the city of Pittsburgh.  He is faithful and we are so excited to see what he is working in and through us and the people we are growing with.  Some of the people we have met through The Vue are the most inspiring, motivated, and strange people we know.  They are genuine in their lives and faith; we are so thankful for their friendship and encouragement.

On another note, I am already helping a friend coordinate and promote and art show this November.  I am beyond excited!  There will be more details on that at a later date.

The Lord is faithful in every way if you submit your ways to him.  We are beyond blessed by his love and mercy for us, and pray the same for all of you.  Please, keep this ministry and his kingdom in your prayers. We love you.


Grace and peace,

N&K

22 Days Later

Brothers and sisters,

We are blessed to share our lives with you.  We would not be married and living in Pittsburgh if it were not for the community of believers (y'all) that have surrounded us and who continuously show us the love of Christ in the most ridiculous and humbling ways.  Thank you for everything you do for the kingdom - we love you.  Let us know if you ever need anything. Seriously.

Since we have not been able to communicate personally with most of your since the wedding, I want to catch all of you up on how marriage, moving, and ministry has been for us.  If you don't mind, I will be very frank about everything.  Our marriage belongs to the Lord and to the church, and I am not shy.

If I had to put into one word what Nic and I have experienced in our short time as a married couple, it would be this: trial.  This is not the space for unnecessary details about our personal lives, but I am more than comfortable saying that we have had everything but a "honeymoon phase," and we are so thankful for that.  Any sin we have hidden from ourselves and one another - known and unknown - crawled out of the depths of our heart the moment we said "I do."  For real, though, I feel like the past few weeks have consisted of us fighting our monsters together, one at a time, and through hours of prayer and tears. This time of our life that everyone told us would be the easiest has been the most difficult, but, praise Yahweh! he knows what we need.  In our weakness, Christ has been our strength.  We love each other more than ever, and that love has been sharpened through our fiercest arguments, darkest moments of despair, disappointments in one another and ourselves, but mostly these: humility, repentance, forgiveness, and love.  Nic and I are stubborn, selfish people, and it is fitting that our marriage began the way it did.  Jesus knew what we needed, and we would not have made it without him. Hallelujah.  We are excited to see how the Lord is going to continue to shape us and grow us together in and through our marriage.  If you could pray for us, that'd be wonderful.

We are also hopeful of what Jesus is doing here in Pittsburgh.  We love this city and the people here already (even though they honk at me a lot when I am driving).  The culture here is so different from anything we have encountered, and even though we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into by moving here, we know that God has been forming us specifically for this place. It's beautiful. If you could pray that the hearts of the people here would be opened to the Gospel, that'd be fantastic.

This morning we met with Julie and Austin to discuss the mission, values, and heart of The Vue.  We are reworking everything; it will take time.  I do not have much to say about that currently, but I assure you that there will be much more to tell very soon.  If you could pray that the Lord's desires would be our own, that'd be great.

Nic and I are in the process of looking for jobs.  We do not know where to look, but we know the Lord has jobs for us here. If y'all could be in serious prayer about this for us, that'd be dope (Tom Haverford, anyone?).

And that's all I really have to say right now! Once again, thank you for your prayers and support and for loving us.  We are blessed beyond belief and we don't deserve it at all.  I hope to have this blog updated regularly, so look out for more updates weekly (or monthly... maybe).



Grace and peace... we love you.

N&K

Welcome

Hello friends,

Welcome to the blog of Nick and Katlyn.  This blog will serve as a channel of communication between us and you as we get married, move really far away, and have lots of new things to tell you.

Here you will find prayers, stories, needs, trepidations, vexations, celebrations, questions, and lessons from the city of Pittsburgh, all shared for the glory of God and for the upbuilding of his people.

We are thrilled and filled with hopeful expectation of the transformative work that the Lord is doing and will continue to do in the city of Pittsburgh. We hope that through our posts, you can share in those same joys and hopes.

There isn't much to say right now, but we promise to write more soon.


Grace and peace,

N&K