Picking Wild Flowers with Nancy

Thursday night we spent the evening in Appling, Georgia at the home of Jim and Nancy Wall. It was a great time to visit and have some good meals, including a dinner with Harold and Mary Lynn Eubank. Friday morning before we left Catherine went wild flower picking with Nancy to bring back to Cullowhee to liven up our kitchen. After we took this picture, Nancy joked, that she might make it on the internet and I couldn't disappoint. So this picture is for you Nancy. By the way the flowers are beautiful in the kitchen and Catherine says thanks. The poppies are her favorite, but I think I like the Queen Anne's Lace the best. And isn't my Catherine a cutie? Just look at that picture...that she is pretty cute. In the next few days I will post what verses we will be studying through this summer if anyone wants to study through those with us. And please pray for Kevin this week as he prepares his talks for the summer. He is teaching the Bible Study training portion of our summer curriculum along with two other staff members and his outlines must be completed and turned in on Thursday.

A View of Western Carolina University

My Dad and I (Kevin) went Trout fishing on Sunday around Cullowhee. On the way back we snapped this great picture of Cullowhee and Western Carolina University. The brick buildings you see on the left nestled among the mountain are dorms and academic buildings. You can make out the Home side of the football stadium just right of the center of the picture. There are more dorms and academic buildings on the other side of the ridge that you cannot see. Our house is about 3/4 of a mile to the right of the football stadium, but not visible because the other ridge is blocking it's view.

"Present" LP 2006

We just finished our LP retreat where we unveiled this summer's theme to our students and connected with the people we we will be training and discipling at the Leadership Project. So now with great joy we wanted to share with you our theme for this summer. It is...drum roll please..."Present." The theme comes from 1 Colossians 1:21-22 "and you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him."

The theme has several facets. The first is that God is presenting us, his church, his bride, to himself as holy and blameless. This means that he is transforming us by the work of His Holy Spirit to present us before himself as a holy people set apart for Himself. This means that we are a present to God the father from God the son. Similiar to the way a bride is a present from her family to her husband. We keep referencing the Church as a bride analogy because Kevin was a groomsmen in a wedding on Saturday afternoon and it is a very accurate analogy. The last facet of the theme is that we are the tool God uses to present others before himself. This can be seen in Colossians 1:28-29 "[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdeom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." We are excited about this theme for the summer because we believe it will be the idea that permeates every part of the LP.


After the theme was unveiled all staff and students were presented a present to unwrap. Inside the box we each found another person's name whom we will be meeting with throughout the summer in small discipleship groups. The reason this name was a present to us from God is that every person will be used by God as a tool to shape us more into the people God desires us to be.


These are the girls that I (Cat) will be investing in this summer...Anna, a sophomore at Furman, Emily O., also a sophomore from Furman, and Emily P. a junior from Western. I am really excited about the opportunity to spend my summer pouring into these girls. I am praying that God would unite us as one, that we would be able to challenge one another and push each other closer to Christ and the cross. Please join me in praying for these women, their personal growth, and my humility in leading.

"Present" LP 2006

The men Kevin will be training personally and mentoring this summer along with the men from Western Carolina are pictured above. From Left to Right: Stuart "Stu" Cook, a freshmen at Furman from Nashville Tenn. Andrew Dietrich or "Dietch", a junior at Furman originally from Atlanta but now lives in Charleston. Jeff Gurganis "Gurgs" a freshmen at Wofford College from Myrtle Beach.

Please begin praying for these men and their growth now...you will be hearing much about them this summer

LP Retreat

We and our staff Team are currently preparing for The Leadership Project (LP) this summer in Mytrle Beach. We are tweaking the Summer Beach Project that we normally do during the summer to make this project more focused on spiritual leadership development. We hope to give our students better training by having our staff team play a more involved role in personally discipling them this summer. Catherine and I will both be leading three students each this summer. This means we will be responsible for their spiritual growth over the summer along with the students from Western attending the LP. We will be personally teaching them how to study the Bible more effectively, walking them through how to begin spiritual conversations with people to share the gospel, and showing them how to pray. We will also be providing accountability in areas like character, thinking for other people, developing personal vision, holding to convictions, and handling personal finances in a God glorifying manner. These are great responsibilites for us to have this summer but we are excited about the fruit The LP will bear next year and 10, 30, 60 years later.
This Weekend May 20th-21st we are having a retreat for all the students going to the LP and all of our students going to South Africa on our CCP team. We will unveil the theme to them and then they will be meeting the people they will be living with this summer and the staff that are going to be discipling them. We would love for you, our faithful team of supporters, to be in prayer over the weekend. Please pray that our students would leave the retreat excited about their own relationships with the Lord and that excitement would be the beginning of a summer that would impact them and many others for years to come. Please pray for our friends Charlie Brooks and Jenn Cline, who are being wed on the afternoon the retreat begins. Kevin and several other staff working at The LP will be groomsmen and bridesmaids in the wedding before going to lead the retreat Saturday evening

Hiking at Western

Catherine and I took Sunday off from painting our house and raising support to celebrate her birthday. We decided to go hiking since Jackson County has the best hiking in all of Western North Carolina and we had not gone at all since living here. Branch, a student at Western, suggested we go to Pinnacle Park, the highest elevation in Jackson County. We drove over to Sylva and found the trail head and began our ascent. Two hours later after several stops for water and to catch our breath we were at the top of the ridge, where we snagged this photo of the area. Then afterwards we hit up some ice cream at Sonic because we figured we deserved it after an almost 4 hour hike.

Dream with Me. Pray with Me.

This year has been an exciting year for ministry as we have sought to lay a foundation for the years to come working on Western's campus. I think about the men who I have spent time with and invested in their life relationally and it saddens me that I will not be with them during the summer break. Being apart from those whom I desire to see God work in their lives makes me even more eager for God to work in their lives. So this summer I have committed to praying daily for a few men and I want to invite you to pray and dream with me over the summer and into next fall. My dream is that there would be a handful of men from a few fraternities who would come to know Christ personally and want to be used by God to reach other men in those fraternities. My dream is that I could walk alongside these men mentoring them and discipling them in Christ. But before this is to happen God must first bring these men unto himself and it is for this reason that I am committing myself to praying daily for these men: Thomas Kiser,
James Flora,
Nick Helwig,
Jason Lassiter, and
Jonathan Keller.

All of these men are in fraternities and are not Christians and this is what I pray for them everyday and would like you to pray for them as well.
"I pray that, out of his glorious riches, that Christ would dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray you would encounter Christ peronsally, not empty religion, and that you would know Him and be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

R.N. Kevin

Welcome to our blog! Bookmark it...save it under your favorites...do whatever you need to do to remember the address. We are hoping this will become a forum for discussion. We will post notes from the Talks Kevin gives at campus so anyone can read them. We will also be posting the things we will be studying and our comments as we study through them. For example in the beginning of June we will post the outline for our study in Colossians this summer and whoever wants to study along with us can, and we will post our thoughts from the passages almost every day. We will also post pictures and prayer requests. Feel free to post a comment about anything you see on the site and may this be a blessing to both you and us. If you have any questions feel free to email us...but now for a quick update on us.
The school year has ended. Exams are done. Seniors graduated May 6th. All this means we have the month of May devoted to connecting with our supporters, raising new support, and doing some projects around our house in the leftover time. We would love for you to be in prayer for us as we travel raising support. We need almost a thousand dollars a month pledged to us in order to be at 100% of our support goal. So we would cherish any prayers towards this end.
As I post this we are staying the night with the Ratchford family in Greenville and tomorrow morning Catherine is going under to have her wisdom teeth removed. We expect her to be out of comission for a few days and I will be attending to her every need...just call me Nurse Kevin.
Feel free to check out the links on the site and may God be gracious to you and bless you, causing his face to shine upon you.