I want to try to document some of the answers to our prayers over the last few months / years in this post without it getting too long so sorry if I don’t accomplish that but at least it will be something I can look back on and see for myself at a later date.
As you may know, we live in a small town in remote Eastern Arizona. We transplanted here almost 4 years ago from the Phoenix area to work in my family’s home building business to try a different pace of life. What we didn’t know when we moved here was the difficulty of finding a church that was looking to reach out to the lost or reach out to people different than them in any way. Being unable to find an acceptable local church, we began attending Lifechurch.tv’s internet campus in our home. Starting about 2 years ago, we invited people to come to our home to attend church with us and had a few people come.
Over the last 2 years, we have tried many different things to grow our group into a real church. Some of them I’ve documented in previous posts and all of them eventually were ineffective. We have been alone and frustrated for a long time. Prayer seemed like a waste of time from the lack of results. Although I always believed that God could and can do anything He wants to, He was not stepping in on our behalf.
About the same time, the home building industry began to slow down and eventually come to a screeching halt. As my income was reduced, we felt a financial squeeze and decided we needed to put our house up for sale last July. Our house sat on the market and the only activity we saw was me continue to lower the price on our home. Again, God was not moving.
My wife and I continued to pray for direction and action from God. We sought advice from anyone who would listen to us. I finally talked with my Dad at the beginning of this year and told him it just wasn’t working for us to live here and I needed to look for something else to do elsewhere. That was a tough discussion to have because I was supposed to take over the business at some point in the future. However, with the housing market completely dead with no short term hope of reviving, he had no choice but to agree. Believe it or not, the housing market in its current situation was an answer to prayer for me – a way out of this town.
Next I started the task of trying to find a job. I was a pension administrator (its ok if you don’t know what a pension administrator is, my wife doesn’t really understand it either. If you have a 401(k), your company pays someone like me to keep it functioning) for 12 years prior to moving here so it seemed like a natural thing to return to. I sent out countless resume’s, called old contacts and prayed and prayed and waited and waited. There were a few places I wanted to move to and the top of the list was Austin, TX. I had phone interviews with people all over the country but none of them seemed to stick except for one company in Dallas who kept resurfacing. However, Dallas was nowhere on our list of preferred places to live. And they were taking FOREVER to make up their mind on bringing me out to interview in person – they kept wanting me to talk with different people.
Well, we still had our stupid house to sell and we kept lowering the price with no results. We finally lowered the price $55,000 from the original asking price and we finally got a hit and we agreed to selling another $20,000 below our asking price. We closed and have moved out and have cash in the bank. Now, selling your house $75,000 lower than your original asking price, which I thought was a fair starting price, isn’t your typical answer to prayer, however, it is our ticket out of here. And we still pretty much will leave town with what we came here with.
Well, the Dallas company finally agreed to bring me out to interview and they offered me a job a couple of days later. It was a good offer and I accepted. We still are uncertain about Dallas but we’re trusting God that we are going where He wants us. I think He has led us to a church and a suburb there where we can get plugged in to. We have no desire to “shop” for a church and know this is not the perfect church since there is no such thing. The Bible says that God is sufficient for us but life is certainly better with people in our lives and we’ve missed out on that for 4 years and can’t wait to start finding new friends.
There are so many pieces that have fallen into place, like the duplex we’ll be renting for a few months with 4 pets while we find a permanent house, that only my wife and I can see God’s hand in. There are times lately that I’ve just teared up being overwhelmed with how many pieces have had to fall into place in just the right time for all this to work out.
I am leaving for Dallas this Friday, starting my new job on Monday and my family will follow me out when school gets out the end of May.
I know I’ve left out a whole bunch of stuff that God has done for us. We can see His hand in all the pain that has caused personal growth in our lives as well as the success that has restored our hope.
Thank you for your prayers. We cherish them all and I appreciate my internet friends.
More to come.