Stories

In my mid-twenties, I moved out of my home state to help with a ministry to which I felt God calling me. It was right at the start of the financial recession that began in 2008. Finding work proved to be a little more difficult than expected, but at that time I was single and living on the cheap. I was able to get by just on making money doing spot jobs. I started getting enough work to keep myself floating, but it was definitely a single person’s income and I shared rent with a roommate. 

After establishing myself a little more, I ended up finding the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and we married. Though we tried to be frugal and I had a more consistent income, our monthly expenses were more than our income. Going from splitting costs with a roommate to providing fully for two proved difficult. It looked as though we were heading toward going broke and we didn’t know what we could do to turn it around. Out of what felt like nowhere, God opened a door that we couldn’t have thought up ourselves. We were approached by one of my employers about living on their property. We would trade taking care of their animals and securing their property at nights when they weren’t around and we would have an apartment. It absolutely blew our minds how God orchestrated those circumstances for us. After doing trade for a couple of years, God opened up enough work for us to finally be able to move into a place we could afford.

During the next couple of years, many job opportunities opened up and we were able to afford a decent living. It was a major blessing, but we recognized that due to the nature of my work, it was very difficult to have any sense of real community. We did what we could, but it felt very scattered. We wanted to find a way to pour into a community more, but my job and where we lived seemed to hinder going much deeper than we already were. It became a point of tension and we weren’t able to come to an agreement on what should be our ‘next’. We finally did what we should have done from the start. We sat down and prayed about it together. We gave it up to God and asked for His clear direction. Two or  three days later, I received an unexpected text that lead to God opening up the opportunity to move to Ellensburg to be a part of the Mercer Creek Church community.

Looking back it’s easy to connect the ‘God dots’, but I remember being in the moments of worry and stressing over providing for my young family; being uncertain of how the situation could turn around. But God provided a way, even when I couldn’t see one.