Our Story of Following the Call

So if you don't know I raise kids for a living.  The kids think we do it for the money, our parents think we do it because we are crazy, our friend think we do it because of the perks (actually I have no idea what they think other then we are unstable), people at Walmart think we do it because we are weird religious people, and we....well we do it because God called us to it.  Pretty sure there isn't a home parent or foster parent out there that wouldn't say it is a calling. 

So this is our story of being called by God. 

Kirk and I graduated from our respective under graduate programs in the spring of 2004.  Kirk graduated with a preaching degree and I with a social work degree. We had spent the last three years over seven hours apart while we went to school.  I will say God used that time of us being apart to grow us independently to serve him and work for him.  Yet also gave us time together to learn cooperation, communication, and how to serve each other.

After graduation we bought a little house and worked the summer away doing social work, working for the church, and remodeling our little house.  In August we got married.  At our wedding some amazing people drove six hours both ways on that Saturday to come and share our day.  They also had an ulterior motive.  They brought with them not just three or four kiddos from Shiloh, but an application.  We had talked for years about working there, and had even taken a long weekend and went out to watch, on a more daily basis, what it was like.  We honeymooned in St. Louis so while there we filled out the application and dropped it in the mail. 

A few months later we got the call from the Major.  He wanted to interview us, we also came out to sit a house (which was a lot of fun, but no where near preparation).  At this time we also got a call from a church in Illinois to come be associate minister.  Over the next few months we would get requests from several churches to put in applications.  Although Kirk would never say it God has gifted him with an ability to preach God's Word, and his professors not knowing about Shiloh had given his name out to several churches looking for ministers. 

This is where discernment became a real thing for our 22 year old minds.  All the opportunities were good Godly things that we knew we could use our gifts and talents in to further the kingdom.  Yet we couldn't do them all.  We had plans get married, preach, do social work, start a family, then maybe look at home parenting.  The churches that had offered were great places where we knew we would fit and flourish.  Yet we knew that Shiloh was a place we loved, and the idea of being parents had always be a huge part of our plan.  Most of all after looking at the pros and cons we still felt this strong desire to go to Shiloh.  Our pastor finally said, "Guys both are good.  It's not a matter of good.  It's a matter of which one is great."  Which one is great.  We prayed and came up with although going to one of the churches would be good....good experience, good practice, good for us as newly weds, good for me to use my degree.  Both of use felt Shiloh was GREAT(thank goodness for us 22 year old are naive and full of a we can change the world mindset).  I'd love to give you a long list of why it was great, and there are a few reasons, but really we just really felt that this was the direction God was calling us in. 

So we began to make plans.  We put our house on the market right at the start of the housing fall.  We sold it for a profit in eight days to the person who we had bought it from nine months earlier.  My job came to a natural end at Christmas time, and several of my clients where in the process of transitioning into other areas anyway.  Kirk's position at the church was at a point it couldn't/wouldn't grow any more.  Unknown to us the church we were seriously looking at going to began to have major issues within it. 

The only other thing was that we were going to have to live at the Kahoka site.  Our friends and the kids we knew and loved were all at the Clarence site.  Yet we felt there was a reason we were going there, and boy were we right.  God is so amazing. 

So on December 28th 2004 we loaded up all our possessions (not a lot), and headed out in the early morning to Shiloh.  Little did we know the journey we were beginning.