What happened to bring us to theWELL in Oct 2010

We had a meeting this morning at theWELL with a group of Pastors from the Frontier Baptist Association of which we are a part. After talking through with them what God has done at theWELL in the last year, I realized how much of this I need to get down in writing.

It might take a few posts, but I will try to get caught up to current day.

In September 2010, Erin and I and our girls returned from a family trip to Croatia where we were able to see our friends Jeremy and Petra on the mission field. We knew before leaving on the trip that we would be leaving Ridgeview Church and heading to Buffalo NY to help in planting theWELL. We had prepared to have our house in SC for sale by owner for a month before breaking down and using a Realtor. We figured it might mean living in NY with our family until the house in SC sold. Instead God sold our house in less than 2 days on Craigslist to a cash buyer who was willing to pay almost all of our asking price. We closed on the house 18 days later.

Ridgeview Church rallied around us to help us pack the house up and get on the road for buffalo. So many people came to help in fact, that neighbors began asking our people to park in their driveways, because all the cars were beginning to cause a traffic problem. We packed everything as tight as we possibly could, but it still wasn't fitting into the massive rental truck. So, at 10:30 the night before we were suppsed to roll out at 5am we had an on the spot garage sale where we sold our riding lawn mower, some power tools, and gave away some furniture.

We left SC the following morning by 7am and didn't end up arriving until 3am the following morning. This is about 6 hrs longer than expected, but we made it safe. So, our truck was full and our house in SC was sold, and we had about 24hrs to find a place to rent before the truck had to be returned. Game on!

Our new partners in ministry, the Castronova's had a couple places for us to look at, and by 12noon we had found a suitable house to rent. By 5pm we had signed the contract, and theWELL rallied around us and helped us unpack our things from the truck and move them into the house. Once again, all the cars created a traffic problem. Great help is hard to find.

Our 1st Sunday at theWELL was October 24th 2010. It wasn't until we were sitting in a Journey group in someones home telling them about who we were that it dawned on us that this date was exactly 9 months to the day from January 24th, the day that we had lost our son Josiah to HLHS, from a rare and serious heart defect. January 24th 2010 was also the 1st time that a small group of people had ever met in a home as a launch team with intentions to start theWELL. It was as if God had confirmed with us that while he had taken our son home to be with him, that he had also birthed something that we would be able to be part of. Something very special and very unique. A church that would be the most exciting place I've ever been able to serve in ministry.

More to come...