Adventures / Milestones

Everyone has a life story worth telling and no one life story is exactly the same. You see we are all created in the image of God but out of that image there so many stories. There are adventures to laugh about, tragedy to cry about, gifts to be thankful about, and a destination we each have to choose. Our stories are so different but our final destination is in one of two places.

The thing that blows my mind out of all the stories that I have heard is that they all lead to those final two destinations. Once you are gone then you only become a story of the past and you have concluded that story with one of two destinations. There are very few things that live on after one passes and one of those things are the unique stories that are told specific to that person.

As I was thinking about that tonight I wanted to record a couple of stories through my own life that will maybe one day out live me. Shelly and I have been interested in learning more about our families and their adventures, tragedies, and gifts that they have had.

My first story starts at my own birth on December 28^th, 1987. I was born at Cox South in Springfield where I immediately had CMV and contracted Pneumonia. My mother contracted Preeclampsia and immediately was transferred to ICU that first night. We left the hospital together a week and a half later after I was born.

When I was six months old we moved into a single wide trailer down the street from my grandpa and Grandma Garrett after my parents had sold our house in Kimberling City. When I was three years old my dad went to talk to a man about renting a house from him after our trailer sold. The man told my dad that he would hold the house for him and we could move in when we moved out of our single wide.

The trailer sold and we had to be moved out of it by midnight and my dad went to talk to the guy about moving in only to find out that he had already rented to someone else that were “in greater need”. So having nowhere to go mom and dad were lost in direction for their family.

Close family friends of ours came over to help my parents move their stuff to the storage unit. Loretta and Dennis loaded all three of our beds in the back of their trailer and took off. Well mom and dad had been to the storage unit twice and never did see Loretta and Denis and began to think where in the world are they.

Finally they show back up at the house and my parents asked if they had made it into the storage unit? The beds were missing from the back of the truck and Denis and Loretta told my parents that we were coming to live with them for a while. We were on the edge of seriously be homeless but the Lord took care of us!

The next story is pretty dear to me because it has to do with my final destination at the end of this life. As a child I witnessed my younger brother come to know Jesus Christ by kneeling down at the coffee table as a family and listening to the sweet words Matt was praying. It was something like; “Lord I know I am a sinner and I can’t live this life on my own. I am sorry for having sinned against you and no longer want to live this life alone. Will you please forgive me of my sins and come into my life?”

It wasn’t long after that I did the same and pray that similar prayer kneeled down at that very same coffee table. I was excited that I prayed those “magical” words and could now call myself a Christian.

One Sunday morning in the Fall of 1998 I was sitting on the center fourth pew back where I felt a conviction that I had never felt about. It was the Lord calling out my name and the sin in my life. All this time I thought the magical words that I had prayed years before saved me from eternal separation from Christ. The Lord was knocking at my door and it was on that Sunday morning that I quietly prayed the prayer of a sinner asking the Lord to come into my life and it radically changed my life. I actually felt something that I did not feel before; yet I was so afraid to share with anyone because others around me thought I was already saved.

It wasn’t until several months later that I opened up one day and told my dad that I truly invited Christ into my life. When I exposed the change in my life to my dad that day I felt even freer as a believer in the Lord. We were sitting out front of my grandpa and grandma Vanderpool’s house. Once I told my dad he told my grandma that was talking to us as we were about to leave. They both showed so much joy and excitement for that decision that I had made.

Glory be to the God in Heavens for giving us a chose to choose life over death!

Well, you probably guessed it by now what my next story is. I meet the love of my life and we were married on November 21^st, 2009. We honeymooned in Cancun, Mexico and thought it was really beautiful! It was through that trip that we figured out that we loved living in the United States! We have been through a lot of life in the last 10 months but I can only imagine that there is plenty more to come!

She is more than I could ever ask for! She frequently asks me why I married her and truthfully the roots of my love for her start with our very Creator. Our worldviews are truly one in the same and we have the same goals and ambitions in life. I enjoy Shelly and truly desire to encourage her in whatever she desires to do! I want to present her pure and blameless before the Lord! She is my soul mate and I could never ask for any greater blessing in my life.

We struggled our first couple of marriage figuring out where our place in life together was. Our journey began searching for a new church home where we felt we were growing. We have landed at Woodland Hills Family Church and keep getting more and more involved. It truly is our bodily family here on earth as we wait for our maker to take us home or for him to come back to us. We are involved in a Solutions group on Wednesday nights that has rocked our lives!

April of this year I was asked to come work at Kanakuk Ministries temporarily in their user computer department. While I was there I applied for an open full time and part time position but both those doors were closed to me. I declined my summer position at Kanakuk due to the needs to provide for my family financially. So once again unsure of where God wanted me in this life I started my own computer company. Stepping out on faith I began business with one step in front of the other.

It wasn’t two weeks later that I received a call from Kanakuk asking if my company would be willing to come help get their remote camps setup for the summer. This was just a confirmation from God that I had made the right decision to not work this summer.

The Lord has been faithful and has continued to bring more clients to my business since then. I owe everything that I have too the Creator of this universe! Without him my life would be a failure and I would have no sense of direction for my life.

These have just been some of the biggest life circumstances up until this point of life. I can’t imagine what the Lord has in store for us the many years ahead!