Centerville Christian Fellowship - A God Story!

One of the many amazing God stories in our mission journey includes Centerville Christian Fellowship (CCF), which is now our sending church.  As most of you know, Lana and I have transitioned into the Air Force Reserves.  When looking for a Reserve job, I had a phone interview with a Lt Colonel in Hawaii this past December.  Soon after the interview started he asked why we were looking at Hawaii, and I shared briefly about how God had called us to serve in aviation with PMA.  He responded with, "That's great, I have a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) calendar hanging on my office wall and think that's great what you are going to do."  The "interview" was essentially a conversation about missionary aviation!

Part of the conversation also involved him telling me he had an Air Force Academy classmate who is a grandson of Nate Saint, one of the five MAF pilots killed by the Wadani Indians in Ecuador back in the 1950s.  He is currently stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, and I was going to a conference at Nellis in January.  So, I found him on the Air Force global email list and we were having dinner a few weeks later.  During the conversation about our missions journey, I was asked if Lana and I had a home sending church.  I said no because we've been moving all over the world the last 12 years in the Air Force.  I wrote a prayer request down in my journal on 23 Jan 15 God would allow us to find a sending church.

Six weeks later I received a Facebook message from a guy I went to high school with, Erik Spohr.  He had seen something we posted on Facebook about missions and wanted to let us know he was praying for us and thought there might be something he and his church to support us with.  I had NO idea he was a pastor of a church about 20 minutes from where two of my brothers live!  I shared how amazing that was because we had been praying for a sending church since January.  He responded that since January he and the elders of the church had been praying God would raise up a family within the church for missions or that God would send them a missionary couple to partner with!!!!  Instant goosebumps and tears filled our eyes as we messaged back and forth - only Jesus Christ could write a story like that!

On 24 May, Lana and I had the privilege of sharing our story with CCF with many of my family in the audience.  The service was closed by another prayerful sendoff by our new sending church and we're very excited to move into missions with the CCF community by our side!  

SOLI GLORIA DEO!