Many of you have been asking what we are doing after Derrick graduates at the end of the month. Are we coming to Iowa? Are we staying in Colorado? We decided that we would share with you where we are at & what is next. Since Derrick started sending his resume out to Nazarene church districts in March, he has had several conversations with District Superintendents either about specific churches or just about the district in general. Nothing really jumped out at us. Then Derrick, on a whim, sent his resume to the Prairie Lakes district at the beginning of April. We have a couple friends on the district, including our former youth pastor/best man/good friend/mentor to Derrick, Dave. We thought it would be awesome to be close to him. Before I go any farther, I need to say - Prairie Lakes is a big district. It is all of Minnesota, North Dakota, & South Dakota. As Derrick was sending out his resume, I said the thing you should NEVER say when going into ministry, “I just don’t want to go to some tiny town in North Dakota. No one lives in North Dakota!”
So the next day (or something), Derrick gets an email. The District Superintendent of the Prairie Lakes district wanted to meet with him. He just “happened” to be in Colorado Springs for a few days. So they met for lunch. And Derrick texted me - “The DS is nice...he wants us to consider a ‘really nice church’...in Beulah, North Dakota.”
I immediately started sobbing. North Dakota, God? For real? Not only was it not really closer to Iowa (12 hours vs. the 14 now), it wasn’t really near our friend Dave, either (still 6 hours to his house). I texted my dear best friend, Amy, who is really good at talking me down from my crazy. After me telling her what was going on & many messages back & forth, she finally said, “Okay, but what is your gut reaction?” Aside from the sobbing...my gut reaction was to allow the DS to give our resume to the Beulah church & see where that goes. After talking to Derrick that night & finding that he had the same gut reaction, we contacted the DS & told him he could give the church our information. We have been telling God “wherever you want us,” so this was our first BIG step out in faith.
And then we waited. And as we waited, we researched. Derrick may have accused me of being a stalker. We searched the town, the people, the church. We found that the town was super tiny - 3000 people. No Walmart, McDonald’s, Sam’s...but they do have Derrick’s favorite - Subway! Seeing all that they don’t have made me really nervous. The more I looked & thought, though, the more I liked the idea of a small town. No major distractions. More places for my boys to be outside & run & be boys. It really started to feel like it could be home. We began to get more & more excited. And more & more nervous. It felt like they would never contact us, so we thought maybe they decided to go a different direction. And then one day a couple weeks later, Derrick got a call. They wanted to Skype interview us.
I was so distracted waiting for that interview. I was so excited & scared. We interviewed. The church board was super nice & have a great idea about where they want their church to go. We had a really nice interview. And then we waited, again. Finally, after what seemed like forever, but was really only a few days, they contacted us, inviting us to come visit & for Derrick to preach. We are so thrilled! It feels like God has been leading through this whole situation. Whether or not we are called to the Beulah church, we know that going to interview there is from God.
So pray for us. We are excited, but very nervous - this would be a major change for us. We are currently attending a decent sized church & we live in a town that has almost anything you would want. Our boys have grown up here in Colorado Springs & it would be hard to take them from what they are so used to. It would be hard to leave our dear friends here who have become like family. Pray for the Beulah church - this is a time of transition for them & they are trying to discern what God has for them. Maybe it is us...but maybe it’s not. Most of all, pray that we would all look for God’s will in this. We all want to do what God is telling us to do. We want what is best for ourselves, but we also want what is best for the Beulah church. Being in the center of God’s will is an awesome place to be & we want to spend as much time there as possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment