bon voyageee!

one time melissa brasnett and hayley turnbull said that i would say that whenever i was leaving. i do not remember saying this. but! i am off on an adventure with thom for the next two weeks. starting tomorrow!

we will head to the Calg. tomorrow evening, and then we shall rise early on saturday morning for my dad to take us on a hike up sulphur mountain (let me pause to say, is this not a kind of repulsive name for a mountain to have?) hmm, apparently, there is a species of butterflies called sulphur. perhaps what i mean is sulfur. anyway. then on sunday he wants us to hike up sunshine to help clean it up for the winter. i think we have been tricked, however there are folklore tales of men finding rolex watches and a kid finding a snowboard (how do you lose a snowboard may i ask?), and other such tales. so we shall see how are legs are feeling after saturday before we go on sunday.
then my mom wants me to do a pilates class with her (it looks as though this trip is going to be a marathon workout trip!). i will as per usual live it up in the lap by getting a massage and a haircut (if i am brave).
then comes the fun part..... thom and i driving back to ontario in my grandparents car!! hurrah! we will have a brief stop in saskatoon and melville ( i never thought that i would go to melville, but the lovely nancy jean shall be there doing her teaching internship and i do need to see that girl!). and from then on it shall simply be an adventure of kate and thom!

oh it will be a good way to end the summer.

also we get to see little ramona (who incidentily is not so little anymore and is starting her first year of highschool! -grade ten in alberta-)

so i am sure my mom has many nights of upwords and chai tea planned. lovely woman.

peace.

a new day

it's funny (well wonderful really) how God just knows how we are doing. And he just steps in with exactly what we need. i have been having a few weeks of hyper loneliness, you know the kind where you are in a room of people and you feel so alone it hurts, and you would way rather be by yourself because that kind of alone is not so lonely? ya, that is the one i have been having. anyway, i have been upset and angry and thomas has been getting the brunt end of that almost every other day for the past 2 weeks (thom = the most patient boy in the history of patient boys).
i have been not wanting to go to school, to move somewhere else.... i don't know what else. the first thing that God spoke to me was through thom (well maybe the first thing i finally listened to), that if i really was supposed to move, it would not be in a time of feeling like i hated where i was living. i think that we are not supposed to feel like we want to leave a place, but more like we are going somewhere else. Doesn't it make sense that if we leave a place when we are supposed to that it will be peaceful and that we will have some sadness about it, while having excitement about the new? like when i moved to ottawa.
the second thing that God did was on sunday morning while meeting with the church. todd was speaking on things that are going to be taking place in ottawa in the next few months and how we need to be prepared and rested. and all these tears kept leaking right out of my eyes. the kind that you could never stop. but by the end of the meeting the Holy Spirit had spoken right to me and my heart. it's time to take action, i can't just sit and be sad and expect things to change. i need to do something! but what we really learned was that we need to be doing it all while resting in Jesus. if i don't spend time with him, then i will start doing things in my own strength and that, my friends, is a set up for failure, for burnout and frustration. hence the situation i have been feeling that i am in.
but!! that doesn't mean that these feelings can disappear right away (though they very much could) but that i need to make sure that i am making that difference. that i am spending time every day praying, reading the word, listening to God, and also just spending fellowship with him throughout everything i do in my day. i'm going to be a better student, friend, daughter, sister, girlfriend, employee because of it!! HURRAH!!
all i know is that it is a little cloudy out today, but it looks brighter than any day from this entire month.
praise Jesus!

oh man, i am out.

kate

i miss beth

beth has been away all week, and while i know that she is spreading the gospel to children, i still miss her. really i have not seen her in ages because thom and i were away last weekend, and if she is not back in time to have breakfast with my momma and i on saturday then i will not see her until next wednesday! gollee. mattie and fife are here and i learned how to play poker. just imagine what kate's poker face might look like. i need to wear a welding mask, except that might just show too much of my eyes and still give me away.

anyhow, i was telling mattie about how i moved out on my own and he said ' without b.!!?!?' and i was like B!! how have we not been together in so long? i miss the days of beth and kate. when i was cleaning noah and robyn's place i found a list that listed us together, beth & kate, and thom had a christmas card list that had us together, beth & kate. and while i like being thom & kate, today (and yesterday) i missed being beth & kate because it probably won't go back to that. no wait, that's right, it won't go back. It will go forward to better things, when beth and i get to work together for God. i don't know what it will be yet, but there will be new beth & kate, it will be different i am sure, but so good .... dare i say even better!! i dare indeed, i am gonna claim it!!.... God is good.

and beth, if you read this, i love you and miss you and hope that you had a good week.

love kate

holiday!!! celebrate!!

Oh Happy DAY!!

Thom and I just had a lovely weekend in C'ford, visiting his mom and brother. She was house-sitting at this little acreage just outside of Campbellford, and it was delightful! we jumped on the trampoline, hung in the hammock, swung on the tire swing (well i did anyhow), swam in crow river, and just delighted in what the Lord is doing. We went to PCF on sunday morning and as per usual it was lovely to be amoung brothers and sisters there. It was a wonderful morning with God moving and speaking very specifically to the men there. cool.

We are now back in Ottawa with a true vacation approaching. My dad arrives this evening with Roslyn, and then Danielle and mom come on friday night, and on saturday we will all be at the Booth cottage for the surprise party for Grandad's 80th birthday. Thom will be coming as well and is feeling slightly alarmed at meeting all the Van Patters in one go, but it will be fine and we will canoe and swim and read.

Then it will be off to the Van Impe cottage for 3 days, with my mom and sisters, which will also be so nice. We have in our hands the new Harry Potter, which we will read during our holiday, but we have to wrap it up until then, or i may be tempted to read it, especially since i just finished the beaudilaires and the next one is not ready for me yet at the library, i really want to just buy it, i am hooked!

so four more days of work, and then off to the cottage. praise God for time to relax on the water this summer.

Also, on sunday night we had the most lovely visit with Ben and Maryann, those lovely Roebucks. It was a wonderful night filled with good things, such as excitement for what God is going to be doing this year, he has brought a lot of people here and it is not for nothing, that i will tell you, things are going to happen, and it is time that we start remembering the words that God has given to us in ottawa and live them out!! Hurrah!!!

and myriam is getting baptized this weekend, and the Lord is rejoicing, and so am i, and the angels. Hurray to you Myriam!!! Be blessed.

it's going to be a good day, a very good day indeed.

love!

moving day

well, the time has come. tomorrow is moving day, i am off on my own! very exciting indeed. so i may not be moving very far (four houses away), but it will be nice to have my own space. 5 years living with housemates, and now some time on my own. hey, i mean someday i am going to have to (i mean get to) share a house with a boy! so some of my own time will be nice. or maybe just help me develop even more of my own tendencies. whatever the case may be, olivia and i are very excited to move into our new place. (ok, so not entirely on my own, i still have olivia my cat).

last night ben and maryann had thom and i over for supper, we were their first dinner guests as a married couple. they are a lovely lovely couple those two. they have made marriage look like the most natural and easy and wonderful transition in the world. they just sought God on every detail and it has just been awesome. it was nice to get some relationship advice from them. Praise Jesus for friends!!!

anyhow, i am off to get some lunch, finish packing and try to find some loonies to do some much needed laundry.

a cat at the window

last night i came home and i was washing my face in the bathroom, when suddenly there was a noise at the window, and what to my wondering eyes did appear?
OLIVIA!!!

and we are on the third floor, and i could not figure out how she got to the front of the house, but i just imagined that someone let her on the balcony and did not know that she had gotten away. so i pulled the screen out, and hauled that cat in and then i got into bed. all of a sudden what do i hear? that cat, outside again!!! how how how?!?! how could this be? well it would appear that she managed to knock the screen out of beth's window, so off came the bathroom screen again (this appears to be the only window that she will come in) and i hauled her in again. and then made sure to close beth's window as the screen is lying in the middle of the roof. i tell you, there are no dull moments with this cat around.

on another note, i wish summer were here, summer makes everything feel good, and brings light to many situations. and shines light into darkness and hidden things. i am ready for summer. and new-ness.




that baby is huge!!

well. Jeff and Mary Smith had their little baby.. oh wait, not little, very very big baby. 11lbs 12 oz.
imagine, that is a lot of baby to be birthed. and Mary, the most wonderful lady did it all naturally with no drugs! yowza. that is inspiring. Hey, we were healed of the curse of the pain of childbirth when Jesus rose again. Jeff and Mary proved that faith is indeed believing in things unseen. (how many other women deliver 11lb babies with no pain? well more to come i am sure of it).

the weather is so nice here. but i fear that it will get hotter soon. you can already feel the temperature difference when you come up the stairs to our apartment. last june we nearly suffocated in here. at the very least i am now in the room with the nice big windows and a breezy little breeze to blow through them.

last night, mike came and taught the downtown cells (plus a few added extra lovelies from the body) about budgeting and credit and money, and it was very interesting and very eye opening. it's weird, coming from a family that has (seemingly, maybe there were) never had financial worries. if i've ever needed money it has been there. i said to cat last night that her and robyn and i are all totally in a similar boat, where growing up, we pretty much had everything we needed and almost everything we wanted. so it is kind of hard to learn how to be wise with money (what do you mean i can't just buy new clothes that i want as opposed to what i need... oh because i need to pay rent and buy groceries. hmm i guess that makes sense). but it is also exciting. this year i am going to pay all my own rent for the first time since i started school. it is scary but exciting. and i know that it will go well because God gave me a word that the transition would be easy, and God's words never come back to him empty. this i know.

do you ever have one of those days where so much can make you grumpy? where anything that under normal circumstances would be fine, can make you feel sad and upset and lonely and want to just be alone and grumpy and feel sorry for yourself? i hate those days. i had a day like that yesterday, but praise God , i am learning to bite my tongue, and i am all the better for it. also, Romans 12:2 says 'do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will'. somedays overcoming our thoughts is the biggest battle we face with the enemy. he knows that we are still with our old minds and he is going to do everything to try and make us fall into that trap. well... this is one girl it is not going to work on. I know who I am in Christ. I am more than a conqueror. awesome.

it is going to be a very good day.