Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Thank you so much for your partnership with Kairos in our mission to bring young people into a life of deep and radical discipleship. I am pleased to present this brochure to you once again and excited for everything that we have in store.

Most of the pictures in this brochure were taken on Kairos trips from this past summer. Sorting through all the pictures filled me with gratitude as I considered all the ways God is using Kairos in the lives of our young people. We have spoken regularly about our desire to foster a love for the real through everything that we do. It was clear as I looked through the pictures from last summer that we are indeed providing simple, but powerful opportunities to love the real on all of our trips. In a world that continues to forget the real, these simple opportunities will continue to grow all the more powerful.

While our summer trips do not constitute everything that we do in Kairos, they are a major piece, and I’m pleased to say that last summer was our fullest summer yet. We are excited to share with you in the following pages all that we have planned for the coming year. It is our prayer that each of our trips and programs will continue to bear rich fruit for our young people and their families

God Bless You,
Stephen Giles
Director of Kairos

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am very excited to be able to share this brochure with you, and it is my hope that you find it to be a helpful resource. Inside, you will find information on almost everything Kairos has to offer, including parent and youth worker resources, the YES Retreat, Adventure Trips, Gap, and more.

One of our growing convictions as an organization is that we want to foster a love for the real, as opposed to the virtual and the artificial. This is one of the reasons we love our Adventure Trips and the opportunities for challenge they present. They help us love the real and embrace the challenges we face along the way.

In addition to our Adventure Trips, we’ve also begun to add some mission trips back into the mix. Our mission trips will be the 10th grade boys trip, and the 9th-10th grade girls trip (on alternating years). Mission trips are powerful opportunities that can produce real transformation and we’re excited to be offering them once again.

Our mission in Kairos is to awaken youth to a venturesome faith and to help them sell all to follow Jesus Christ. It is a joy to do this work and we are so grateful to do it alongside all of you.

God Bless You,
Stephen Giles
Director of Kairos

At Kairos, our mission is to awaken young people to a venturesome faith, and we believe that high-adventure outdoor experiences are an excellent starting point to achieve this aim. That’s why we’ve been expanding our girls’ programs by offering a growing suite of adventure trips. However, to make these trips possible, we need your help!

We’re raising $3,000 to expand our store of camping gear, including tents, sleeping bags, cookware, and backpacks. With your contribution, you can directly support our efforts to provide these essential supplies to our girls’ camping trips.

Thank you for your generosity!

Donate

As a token of our appreciation, we’re offering a cool bumper sticker to anyone who makes a gift to our camping gear fundraiser. And for those who donate $500 or more, we’ll send you a Yeti Thermos with the Kairos logo.

Dear Friends:

Greetings in the beautiful month of July! We are very much in the midst of our summer trips. We just finished a 9th grade girls trip to New York state. They spent several days hiking in the beautiful mountains and did a exciting rafting excursion together. The second half of the trip was spent doing service with a charitable organization in New York City. We will report on that in a subsequent issue.

For the boys’ trips, we have two intrepid guys serving as Kairos Adventure Guides this summer. Thomas (Tommy) Bielejeski, from Minnesota, and John (Johny) Touhill, from New Jersey, are serving as staff for all four trips. See the back side of this page for a copy of their very busy summer—they only have six free days (probably spent doing laundry and sleeping)!

Adventure Guides program director Stephen Giles recruited and set up the schedule for this year’s Guides. He led a training week with them when they arrived in Lansing mid June, which included a hike along the Lake Michigan shoreline (see pictures). I was able to go with them on the hike—great time.

Brian LaLonde and Stan Mathay—our seasoned trip leaders—are heading the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade trips. Stephen is heading the 10th grade trip, where they will take nine young men to New Hampshire to do trail building work in the White Mountains. This will be a challenging trip, and will be a great opportunity for the young men to grow in brotherhood as they learn to embrace discomfort alongside one another (yup, we got nine boys to sign on!).

Thank you so much for your support of our mission of calling young people to Christ and helping them become life-long disciples. We very much appreciate your prayers and financial support!

Yours in Christ,

James Munk
Kairos Director

Dear Friends:

Last month, we reported on the Kairos Youth Equipped to Stand (YES!) Retreat that was held March 25-27. This month, we get to hear from three of the youth participants.

Some of the youth evaluations are straightforward, like this one from a teen:

“During the YES retreat, the Lord shared a word with me. He said that I am not broken. I feel like at some point in all our lives, we feel empty inside and broken. But God is here to tell us that we are healed and forgiven for our sins. Our sins don’t define who we are. God loves us as we are.”

Some of our youth had been struggling spiritually before the retreat, and experienced a new closeness with the Lord:

“I came to the YES Retreat tired emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually, I was coming out of a period of spiritual ‘dryness.’ I was struggling to pray consistently and then beating myself up mentally when I failed. I was getting discouraged because every time I resolved to get up early and pray, I found myself sleeping in. I got to the point that I didn’t really see the point in trying again. I didn’t see people I could relate to in that regard. At the beginning of the retreat, I asked the Lord for peace, joy, and perseverance (especially as I was leaving for a mission trip in Washington D.C. literally the morning after I got home from the retreat).

“Throughout the retreat, the Lord helped me enter worship in a way I had never been able to before. At a Christian summer camp several years ago, I asked for the gift of prophesy and was disappointed when I didn’t feel that I had received it right away. At the retreat, I felt the Lord speaking to me during worship in a new way and giving me not only a word, but also the courage to share it. I was able to share it with my YES small group.
“The talks and testimonies at the retreat were super relatable, and at multiple points I felt like the speakers were speaking directly to me. Overall, the Lord showed up big time and I left feeling joyful, peaceful, refreshed and ready to serve on the mission trip.”

Some of our youth merely wanted more!

“On Saturday night, the talk was about asking the Lord for a double portion. Later in our small groups we were asked what we wanted to receive from the Lord. I decided that I wanted a double portion of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. I was the first one prayed over in my group, and it was very beautiful. One thing that I had been seeking though this retreat was to get to know Jesus as a living person, and not just as a far-off being.
“Receiving a double portion of His Spirit made His Presence more real to me, and all I did was ask for a gift. After I had been prayed over, I was able to pour out my double portion by praying over my small group members. This really struck me, because I realized the Lord gives us gifts so that we can bring Him to others by using the gifts He gives.”

Watching the Lord touch each one of our young people personally is a highlight of serving at the YES! Retreat. Bringing youth closer to Jesus is an amazing privilege. Thank you so much for your support; I am happy to be on mission with each of you.

Blessings on you and your families as we enter these summer months.

Your Brother in Christ,

James Munk

Kairos Director