Caleb & Karly Holschen Newsletter (Spring 2024)

Buenos días amigos y familia!

God has been so gracious to me and Karly in these past months and I am so excited to be able to include you in all that He is doing!

First off: there has been a change in our plans for the summer. We are still leading the preteen team, but the location has changed from Costa Rica to Honduras. The mission in Costa Rica was not prepared to take the team this summer, so the decision was made to send our team to our Santa Cruz base in Honduras. This change is a welcome one for Karly and me because we first met leading a team in Honduras together in 2021. We are very excited to return and see the people and sights again as Mr. and Mrs. Holschen. We have also both been undertaking some informal Spanish lessons, so we hope to be able to practice in a real-world setting to hone our knowledge and take another step toward fluency.

We were blessed to go up to Kentucky to be with my family for Easter weekend. My dad recently acquired a new job working security at the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, so we took the time we had for Easter to drive fourteen hours up to see my family for the first time since the wedding and experience the Ark. To say that it was majestic would be an understatement. We learned a lot about the process Noah would have taken to build it, as well as some of the finer details of the Flood that I had never considered before, such as where the animal waste went and how they organized the larger-sized animals. I am very glad that we were able to take the trip, even if it was only for a short while.

On a less cheerful note, we are sad to report that Karly’s Grandpa Pete died in mid-April at the age of 82. He had been declining for a while, but it was still an unwelcome shock when it happened. We are so thankful that Karly was able to go home to Houston for the weekend to be with her family and speak at his memorial service. It was good for her, but it was also the first time we had been apart for more than a few hours since we got married in November of 2023. There were a lot of things to adjust to that weekend, but she returned safe and sound just in time for our annual Tough Gator 5K Mud Run fundraiser.

The Mud Run was a major success this year. We had a total of 628+ participants and very little problems. During the race, I was responsible for our rope-swing obstacle, the Slough, and Karly was given the responsibility of assistant race coordinator. It was a big responsibility and learning experience for her, but she rose to the occasion and was a huge help to the acting coordinator. The hope is that she learns a lot and can apply her knowledge and experience running recreational races to next year’s race as head coordinator.

Aside from working on and preparing for the race, we have also been working on progressing in our other responsibilities. Karly has been training in our overseas supply department, which is responsible for packing supplies to send with teams to our overseas bases as they need them. She has been less busy with the retreat center as it has slowed down coming into the hotter months, but there are still things she needs to do to keep it running smoothly. Since our last newsletter, I have been continuing my work in the IT and finance departments while adding another major role of the chairman of the Housing Advocacy Team (HAT). If you are unaware, Teen Missions provides rent-free housing for its full-time staff and long-term volunteers. This is a huge blessing to our staff, as we are living on the faithful support of others and average rent prices are steadily going up. HAT is a newly formed team that has undertaken the duty of mediating between Teen Missions and the residents of free housing to make sure that our resources and assets are being properly maintained. For me, it has involved a lot of writing reports and checklists, meeting with personnel and the administration, inspecting homes, and overall ironing out the many details involved. God has been very good to me and provided me with the wisdom I needed to be able to pioneer this new effort to revamp our housing allocation and best steward the great blessing God has given us in housing. Outside of all of that, I am also going to be trained this year on our Boot Camp lights/sound setup.

God has been so good to us, but there is still a big need we have. We have learned a lot about marriage in the past six months, and we are so thankful for all that God has blessed us with. He has given us wonderful and faithful friends and family who have been able to come alongside us to partner with us through prayer and finances. He has provided for all of our needs and we know that He will continue to provide for us through the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:25-33. That being said, we are not yet at our set budget for monthly support. We have enough to cover our basic needs, but we are still $1,300/month shy of our end-of-the-year goal. This extra amount will help us to purchase supplies for our ministry overseas each summer, give us some wiggle room in our budget for emergencies that may come up, and help us to prepare for when we would like to start a family in the future. We would like to ask you to pray and ask God if He is leading you to partner with either a monthly or one-time donation. It would mean so much to us if you joined our ministry in this way; nothing that we are doing both domestically and internationally would be possible without the faithful support and prayer of others.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Here are some specific ways you can pray for us this upcoming summer:
Pray that we will have wisdom as we lead our preteen team.
Pray that we will be able to effectively share the Gospel with the people of Honduras.
Pray that God would grow us in our marriage.
Pray for our future decisions as we look to start a family.

Thank you so much for your prayers! We pray that God will bless you abundantly wherever you are this summer!

Blessings!
-Caleb and Karly Holschen
2 Thess. 3:16