Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 14, 2020 | Expresso - Cori Power

Transcript

January 14, 2020 | Expresso - Cori Power · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when I met with Connie for the first time last fall, when we were talking about Haiti, I was afraid I was going to show up in LOL.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea she did this and I was going to end up here.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I was very cautious to not do or say anything that she might find as funny because I did not want to end up as one of those stories.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I am sure of this that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not necessarily a verse I would quote as my favorite, but I find that it's a verse that really does describe my life.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in August of 1966.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can figure out how old I am, but you have to do the math at least for it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was a dentist, my mom a homemaker.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: We lived in a small town in western Kansas by the name of Phillipsburg.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: My mom had been born and raised there in Phillipsburg.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: She only didn't live there for three semesters of college at K-State.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was 10 years older than my mom, and my mom kind of tricked him into going out with her for the first time.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: And she didn't come clean until the day of their wedding when she finally confessed what she had done, and he was very nervous when she said, I've got something I've got to tell you before you marry me.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: They were a beautiful example of marriage of love.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And gosh, Marianna, you got me all worked up down to cry.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a crier anyway, and now you got me going.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: We are so much alike.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even tell you how many parts of my story match yours, and I didn't know you until tonight.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So but my parents are a beautiful picture of marriage of love and sacrifice, respect.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: They married in August of 65.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was born 11 and a half months later, baptized on their first anniversary.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you get to see here some of my cute baby pictures.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was fun to go through these pictures and find all this stuff.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: My brother Chris, you see in one of the pictures there, was born 13 months later.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: My brother Bill was born 16 months after him.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I was not quite two and a half and had two younger brothers who took a lot of my mom's attention.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: A lot, they still do.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which to my memory was fine by me because I liked quiet play, I liked being alone.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you see there in the photo of my first modeling job, the uh uh photographer in town had just gotten that new sete setee and wanted to take some pictures on it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so he called my parents and asked if I could pose for those pictures.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those pictures sat in his studio until he died about seven years ago.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, um, anyway, my first non-paying modeling job.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: When I was five then, my sister Casey was born, and there's a picture there in the top with her and I.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I loved having a sister, finally having a sister.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, she was took after my brothers a lot more, liking to be outside and doing all of that adventurous stuff.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: My father named all of us kids, sometimes without consulting my mother first.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: My name Corey comes from my great-grandmother, my my mom's grandmother, whose name was Corinne, and one time my dad heard her called Corey, although she never went by Corey.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so he decided that that was going to be my name, was Corey, and so that's where that came from.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: My sister Casey, though, spelled C-A-C-I.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Her name was supposed to be Ann Elizabeth, and that's the name my parents had agreed on.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then after she was born, and my mom told the nurse she was ready to fill out the birth certificate.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: The nurse said, Oh, well, your husband already filled out the birth certificate.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And she then, for the first time, heard the name Casey, that she was named Casey Irene, spelled C-A-C-I, but he said named after Kansas City because that's where he'd gone to dental school, and the Kansas City Royals were new at the time, and I've grown up a Royals fan, and so he came up with Casey on his own.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: My dad also bought a house without consulting my mother first.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: The story goes he called her and said, I just bought a house.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: The realtor's gonna be there for another 20 minutes if you want to go look at it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: She informed him she had bread in the oven and a baby asleep.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, they're there for 20 minutes, otherwise you can just see it after we when we move in.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so she turned off the oven and woke the baby up and took a 10-minute tour through her new home where she still lives today.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my dad was a kind, generous, patient, giving, always willing to help anyone, man.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: So these stories about him when they were younger are kind of hard to believe sometimes, also because my mom is so independent and strong, I can't imagine her just taking what he gave her.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it tells a lot about my personality.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: My mom had grown up in church, but my dad never attended church as a child.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was one of the things my mother insisted on, although they only dated for about nine months before they were married.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she insisted that he be baptized and uh go to church with her.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: My dad took to it, took to church, hook, line, and sinker.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, growing up, he told us kids, you know, you don't wake up on Monday morning and ask if you're going to school, and you don't wake up on Sunday morning and ask if you're going to church.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's just what we do.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't matter if we were on vacation, we always found a church to attend.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: We never miss, I mean, I am not kidding, we never miss church.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: I also remember my dad attending a Bible study, I was probably a young teenager at the time, called the Bethel Bible Series.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was a two-year study, a serious study, with lots of Bible reading and outside reading and lots of map studies.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, I do not remember him sharing a whole lot of what he was learning.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I just remember my mom frustrated at how much time he spent working on it, telling people he was having an affair with a woman named Bethel.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I had that solid church foundation we never missed.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I knew God and Jesus were important, at least on Sundays.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: But for whatever reason, though, it never became personal to me.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: It never affected my life, though I have always agreed with my dad, I loved going to church, and I felt lost if I missed a week.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've always loved singing those old hymns.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I remember my grandparents had one of those giant stereo consoles, and my grandma had the albums, you know, that were came in the box, and there were 12 albums of hymns.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Was one of my favorite things to do at her home to sit and listen to those hymns, and I would write out the words to those hymns.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I also loved Billy Graham Crusades on TV and any other TV pastor.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now we lived in the country, and though my dad was a dentist, we did have a farm with pigs and sheep and horses and geese, and at one time a cow who lived in our basement for a period of time until the corral could get built.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: We we we we lived a little different, edgy than most people did.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of fun, and we still do have a lot of fun, but things are not planned.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: My family still doesn't plan things, we just do things.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um I remember though those, so we didn't have TV because of where we live.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have much TV, much access to TV, but I sure remember those TV preachers.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to order their books.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: My parents would always let me.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I always read those books because I could never have enough books.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: We lived on a fairly large acreage with a wooded crick in the backyard, and that's where my brothers spent most of their time, but not me.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I was a quiet kid, very quiet.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's hard to believe for any of you who know me now.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was very content to be in the house, to be by myself.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I taught myself to read before I went to kindergarten and spent many, many hours reading.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Still do spend many, many hours reading.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I also loved music.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I had my own record player, and that's where I spent my time in my bedroom reading and listening to music.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now I was like four and five, not a teenager doing those things.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a lot of friends in elementary school, and I was perfectly okay with that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like I say, I was very content just being alone.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: My mom was busy with my brothers, my sister liked being with them, just let me go, I'm fine.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was in seventh grade, probably somewhere between that second or third picture there on the bottom.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what was popular at the time was to have birthday parties, was to have a dance at the community center where you invited the whole class, which would have been about 60 or 70 kids.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, a lot of junior high romantic hookups took place there.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: These dances were a big deal.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't always like to go.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it wasn't just wasn't my thing.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember one particular dance that I really wanted to attend, and my mom said to me, I don't know why you want to go.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're just a wallflower, and you won't dance with anyone, you probably won't even talk to anyone.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, he who began a good work in you will be faithful to carry it on to completion.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I made the decision that night to never be a wallflower again.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: One of those things that I decided shortly after that was to be a cheerleader.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided it was the fall of my seventh grade year that I was going to be a cheerleader.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I was very shy, very quiet, and most importantly, very awkward and uncoordinated.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Also not surprising for any of you who know me.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I practiced every day, a lot, in front of the mirror, out feeding the cows or whatever, everything that anytime I had a chance, I would practice all of my motions and my speaking clearly.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when tryout day came and the cheerleaders were voted on by the other girls in the class, I had made cheerleader.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was so excited.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was really a turning point in my life.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I hate to say that cheerleading was the turning point in my life, but it was.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I arrived at my first cheerleading practice later that week, the coach and the other girls openly questioned how I had ever made the squad.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was still awkward.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was still quiet.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was still shy.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had just done the little bit that I needed to know how to do to get through triumphs, and that's what I had done.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I continued to work hard, and I did continue to cheer throughout high school.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, about my family a little bit more.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: We were a very close family.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: This shows a little bit of our family togetherness.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is my dad, and I'm the oldest there with my brothers.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can see they're messing with each other.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: I who knows what the two of them were up to, um, and my and my little sister there.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: We had that motorhome for years, and every year we were big in 4-H, and then there was the rodeo in town, and 4-H Fair was the beginning of the week, the rodeo was the end of the week, and when the rodeo got over, which was usually right around my birthday time, the second or third of August, we would take off in our motorhome and we would travel in the motorhome until we'd usually come back the day before school started.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So for a good two, three, sometimes four weeks, we were gone.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: We, this is the Patton family, we never had a plan.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: We just drove.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever highway looked like fun.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: If we saw a billboard for something, we'd turn and go to it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: If we picked up a brochure about something, we would decide to go there.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: If there was family along the way, my dad has a big family, my mom, too, if that we knew there was family somewhere, we'd stop and visit.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: I remember one time we were in California and we stayed there for two weeks with my aunt and uncle, us four children, and they had four children of their own.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can only imagine how excited my aunt was to see us leave.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: But we saw so much of the United States that way.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: We went to world fairs in Seattle, we went to one in Nashville, Tennessee, or maybe it was, I don't know, one of those Tennessee towns.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: We went to amusement parks, everyone we could come to.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: We love amusement parks, hole-in-the-wall attractions, all sorts of digging to find geodes and to find dinosaur eggs and to find gold and whatever it was.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: So many memories from those trips.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Picking up hitchhikers, staying in campgrounds, that RV movie, very accurate to how our life was.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: We once got stopped for speeding in the RV with the St.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Bernard hanging out the window that we had picked up in Idaho.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure why.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: As kids were in the backseat cheering, Dad's getting a ticket, dad's getting a ticket.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the police officer looked in the window and said, You might want to slow down a little bit.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I understand why you're speeding.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to slow down a little bit and have a nice day.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so a few more family pictures there.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I love the one there at the top from those old, it was taken in 1970 of my mom and dad.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: That was before my sister was born, but the Buffont hair doing my red shoes.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I still remember those red shoes.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then in the 1980s, that middle picture there of us growing up a little bit.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then our our second modeling job, that was with my brothers and sister and I, the uh car dealership in town had a new model of a car, and they had this animal.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a cheetah, I'm not really sure if you're any of you animal experts.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the car wasn't a cheetah, so I have no idea what it was.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, we were in the newspaper for a whole year, then this picture was of us with this animal with that car in the background.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, and then uh the picture on the bottom is the picture just taken here at Christmas time.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Our family has grown to 29.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: My mother still puts all 29 of us up in her home to sleep and to eat for every holiday weekend at any other time that we come.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we're edgy.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not saying everybody has a bed, but everybody at least has a blanket and usually a pillow, unless you're a child, and then you might have to share those two.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So on July 11, 1983, I was at my boyfriend's home when we heard the fire whistle calling all the volunteer firefighters in town.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you've lived in a small town, you hear that whistle, and everybody drops what they're doing and goes to help out with whatever needs help with.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then we heard multiple sirens, they blew it again, which means in case you didn't come the first time because you were busy, you need to quit doing what you're doing and come now.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then we heard all the sirens of the police and the fire and the ambulance, and obvious something big had happened.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then the telephone rang.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was my husband's birthday, and that's why we were at his oh, he wasn't my husband at the time, my boyfriend.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it was my dad telling me that my oldest brother had been in a severe car accident.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: They ended up life lighting him to Wichita with a collapsed lung and a closed head injury, lots of severe cuts.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: He had an impression of the, still has an impression of the wheel, of the steering wheel in his chest.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: He was there for two weeks and came home like a zombie, couldn't turn his head, shuffled as he walked, talked like a robot.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my parents were in Wichita with him.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: My younger brother and sister and I, my brother and I were in high school, and my sister was probably junior high, but we held down the Ford at home.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: They left us alone.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, when you're dealing with trauma, you just do what you have to do.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember, we were a good church-going family.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: We never missed.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: But when this tragedy happened, we circled the wagons, firmed up our family, and took care of ourselves.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother recovered.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's a dentist today, took over from my dad's practice.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's the father of three kids, and our family during that time became closer than ever.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember that quiet, shy wallflower who had become a cheerleader.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as life changed and she decided not to be a wallflower anymore.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: She also gained lots of friends and lots of boyfriends and pretty much skewed any family thing that she could get out of.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was with friends and boyfriends all the time.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: All the time.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I started drinking a lot.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: I once got arrested for riding on the hood of a car down Main Street in my cheerleading uniform one night after the football game.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, arrested is a term to be used loosely.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a small town, they just take you home.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: But uh another night, one of my boyfriends and I, not the one I'm married to now, decided to test how fast this Formula One firebird bird would go.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of straight flat roads in western Kansas, but also a decent amount of traffic.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just say it went fast, real fast.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so thankful for the plans that God had for me and that He would bring it to completion.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I took a lot of risks and somehow survived them.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And in the spring of my senior year in high school, I discovered that I was pregnant.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was so disconnected from my parents and family that I couldn't understand why they were upset.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't even remember being afraid to tell them.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was leaving home once I graduated from high school anyway.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to be a court reporter.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: We'd had a court reporter visit, a business class I'd been in my junior year of high school, and I knew then and there that's what I wanted to be.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'd also always wanted to be a wife and a mother, I'd be fined.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: My boyfriend loved me, right?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: He had job skills, we'd be fine.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't ever figure out, I understand now what the big deal was, but it took a lot of years to understand where my parents were coming from.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I graduated high school on May 20th, 1984, came to Topeka just a few days later to enroll at Washburn, who had a court reporting program at the time, with a carload of stuff to move into the apartment that we had rented earlier in the month at 8th and Tyler.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Attended my first few days of college, returning home to get married on June 3rd, exactly two weeks after my graduation from high school.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: We took a one-night honeymoon to Kearney, Nebraska.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you've never been there, it's not the honeymoon spot of the world.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Then drove to Topeka because I had to get back to school.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that very next week we entered a church.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, I was raised that you go to church every week, and we never missed.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was something I had a strong desire for, and something a desire that God put in my heart, because again, he who is faithful will complete what he started.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was a tough time, but I was happy as a lark.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had everything.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to college to study a career I so desperately wanted.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had a great husband.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had a baby on the way.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Approximately October 10th, I walked from Washburn over to where my husband was working because that car I'd driven here when I started college was really our family car, and so it stayed at home because my brothers drove that car too.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we I walked a lot.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: We had his truck that we shared, but anyway, I walked from Washburn over to where my husband was working so we could ride home together and broke down in tears.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do this.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm nine months pregnant.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do this.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I can go through labor.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I can do this.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: His wise advice, well, there's no getting out of it now.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's the first time I felt a chink in that whole plan that we were just fine.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, our oldest daughter, Carrie, was born a week later, October 16th.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had my court reporting machine with me at the hospital, practicing during labor and shortly after she was born.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I missed just that day she was born and the next day while I was in the hospital and returned to school the next day with her in tow.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I found a babysitter eventually.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then, as I enrolled in more evening classes so my husband could babysit in the evening so I could go to class and study, we're doing fine, still happy as a lark.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the court reporting program at Washburn struggled, and I was struggling to hold it all together.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then our second daughter was born, Danielle.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd had to restart the court reporting program due to changes in the program because, like I say, it wasn't working.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Long story, doesn't matter.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got pregnant with my third daughter.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And two days before my due date, I got another call, this time from my mom, saying the younger of my two brothers was missing.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd found his vehicle burned on the golf course in Manhattan where he was in school with a body inside.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Two days away from my due date, and my world came crashing.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: We were still going to church every Sunday.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: I still didn't have a relationship with Jesus, but he is faithful to complete what he had started.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: My doctor induced labor as it was going to take some time to identify the body, which coincidentally was done through the dental records provided by my father.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: We left the hospital twelve hours after that little girl that he was born, and drove four hours to western Kansas for his funeral.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: At this point I'd done my internship.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I could almost write fast enough, 225 words a minute, to pass the certification test.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now I had three small children, and I'm drowning in grief.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to school one day, and I told my teacher I'm quitting.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't said anything about quitting to my husband.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can imagine his reaction.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: We'd been on this five-year journey that it was supposed to take two for me to go to school.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: The only reason we lived in Topeka was for me to go to school.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: The plan was to move back home.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: He had a business there, he was gonna take over.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: My teacher, who'd now who had never been married and never had children, supported my decision 100%.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Being home with your children's never a bad choice.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all I needed to hear.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you know how he completes what he has started.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or as Pastor Jim quoted last week from Condoleezza Rice's biography, do you want to know how long the arm of the Lord is?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we moved to Topeka in 1984, I had to find a job.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was driving again, the only vehicle we had a manual transmission four-wheel drive truck.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'd bought a newspaper and was driving around while my husband was at work to fill out job applications.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now I came from a small town, one stoplight.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: The stoplight stays red for exactly 20 seconds.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: The streets in the town that run east-west are 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, 4th Street, the two streets that run north-south are A Street, B Street, C Street.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Topeka had me stymied.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't find anything in this city.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I drove around, and Topeka's easy to drive around in, but I couldn't figure it out.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I drove around all day and was only able to locate one potential job location, and it was for a business called Systems 3.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: They were an employment agency and they just needed a part-time front desk girl.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: They told me I could bring my baby to work.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Other employees would take turns helping watch her.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was hired.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Fast forward a year later, we had no family doctor.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: My OB had lost his medical license just about a month after my daughter was born.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I had an ear infection.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: One of the ladies who worked with me at Systems 3 said they had just met a new doctor for her son earlier in the week and they liked him a lot.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: She said he was brand new in town, fresh out of medical school.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I called, got an appointment for the same day.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: When I arrived at his office, the files on his shelf were about an inch and a half thick.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: That doctor just retired 30 this this spring and has treated us all this time.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: But then, fast forward four years later from that doctor visit.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: This doctor, by this point, he delivered my two younger daughters.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: He had treated us with so much care and kindness when my middle daughter was born with the cordon.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wrapped around her neck and not breathing.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And her heart had stopped in labor, and he knew I didn't want to have a C-section.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, he sat with me that whole time making sure that if they needed to do an emergency C-section, he was right there.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: When my youngest daughter was born, after my brother had died, he's the one when I called to say, We're leaving town, I know I'm at my due date, but we're leaving.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Wouldn't you rather take a baby with you?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he's the one that set all of that up to get that all taken care of, so that that was one less thing I had to worry about.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: But fast forward four years later, after we found that doctor for the first time, we had, he was a family doctor.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had three small children.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: We were there all the time.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I had small children.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then my brother died.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had a newborn baby.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'd quit school.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to figure out a lot of things.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: My next door neighbor, who had graduated from Topeka High, was helping with her class reunion.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I went over one day to help her stuff envelopes and was shocked at how many people were in her graduating class, how few of them she knew.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: My graduating class had 63 people.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I knew them all.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: I knew their parents.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I had been to almost every one of them's houses.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: We had mostly gone to school together since we were three years old.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Here, our oldest daughter was ready for kindergarten that year, and I decided on my own, maybe I'm really not that much different from my father, that the big public schools were not where I wanted my daughter to go.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't really talk to my husband about it, didn't really know what other options were.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are at the doctor's office, because God loves small details, right, for a six-week infant checkup.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the first and last time through those 30 years that he took care of us, that I ever, 35 years, that I ever noticed a booklet advertising Care Paravile Latin School was in his office that day on that six-week visit.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I started reading the booklet.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then when they called my name, stuck it in my diaper bag and stole it from his office.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: That afternoon, while the kids were napping, I poured over that booklet and called the school.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Kindergarten Roundup was two days later because it had been postponed a week because of a sudden snowstorm.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you just love God and his little details?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Carrie and I went to kindergarten roundup.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't told my husband we were going.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: He was not impressed with my idea to pay for a private school education.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, I had just quit school.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't working.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: There were three small children.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: There was no way we could afford this, no way we could do it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then out of the blue, Systems 3 called me.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't worked there for several years at this point.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: They said a court reporting firm had moved into their office building and was needing some help, and they thought of me.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I began working for the court reporting firm pretty much right away, typing transcripts at home at night after the kids went to bed.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: I occasionally helped out in their office and we enrolled Carrie at CPLS.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was just half-day kindergarten, right?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: We could surely afford that much.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like to think ahead when I have like a, you know, an impossibility kind of thing.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, we're still good churchgoers, but we're not Christians.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Though I'm sure we said we were, because we didn't know what we didn't know.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we went to church and we knew Jesus had died and God was good and all of that.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And again, drowning in grief, here I was.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the words that I said, not to Care Perville that day, but that I was saying to myself and to my husband, was how could a good God do such a terrible thing to a good family?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are bad families out there.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Take their children.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Don't take ours.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said, I'm I need a school.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: This was my selling point to my husband.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I need someplace for my kids to be taught about God because right now I don't know what I'm going to teach them.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably not going to be good.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: So Carrie started at Care Paraville that fall in kindergarten.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that fall the school held their annual play.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Carrie wanted to go.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So she and I left the two little girls home with dad and we went to the play.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of a miracle in themselves that I mean he has always been a good dad, but to leave two Nikki was still a baby at the time.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, Daniel was difficult.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: That night during intermission, a woman was sitting near us, and it was intermission.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: She's chatting with her friends.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden she stops chatting with her friends.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody gets up and leave, and she turns completely around to us and says to us, Hi, my name is Carol.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe I've met you yet.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: I told her my name.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Where do you go to church?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I told her, and upon hearing my response, she said, I bet you're not in a Bible study, are you?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: She knew because of the church I attended, but she didn't let on about that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: She simply just made her statement and invited me to come to a Bible study that some of the CPLS moms attended.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was so excited.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a part of the school.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to make some of these ladies as my friends.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't hardly wait for the next Friday to come so I could go to the Bible study.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: One problem, I didn't have a Bible.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked up this lady's name in the school directory and I called her.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: She told me to go to the Bible bookstore, RJ Cars, and asked them and they would help me.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: She said I could tell them I was part of this Bible study and they would get me the study book, too.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: She said, just tell them you're with Cindy I live right here, nice little Cindy.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll take care of you.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: They know all about it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was very shocked that I could go in the store and tell them some woman's name who I didn't know and they could know what I needed, but they did.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: That next Friday, I showed up with my new Bible in a room of maybe 20 or 30 ladies and quickly realized that they all had a different kind of faith than I had ever seen before.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Over the months I attended, I realized they lived their faith.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't something they did, it was who they were.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now they weren't perfect, they weren't not struggling, but they were alive in Jesus.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember, here I am, grieving, drowning in grief.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: My family has just, is just struggling terribly.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure who God is.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what I believe about God.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And to make matters even more interesting, our church had hired a liberal female pastor.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: My husband was now refusing to go to church.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: He refused to let the kids go to church.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I was teaching Sunday school, and you always got to fulfill a commitment.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I went by myself every Sunday just to Sunday school to teach and then came home.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was really struggling at this point.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now these ladies had to have known I wasn't one of them.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But they never treated me differently.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, maybe they never even noticed me.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine, I don't care.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, and it doesn't matter because they kept loving Jesus and living Jesus.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted what they had, but I had no idea how to get it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was afraid if they knew I didn't have it and asked a question, they'd kick me out.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I remained quiet for an entire year.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Christmas 1991.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: One of the ladies decided to host a neighborhood Christmas coffee so she could share the gospel with her neighbors.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: She reported back after Christmas.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I told them that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And she went on to say, they had never heard that before.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Could you believe it?
• 28:44
  unknown: I hadn't either.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: She went on and told them, she said she went on and told them that the wages of sin is death.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: She said they were shocked to hear it.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So was I.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: But she said, when she told them that the gift of God was eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, she said their eyes just lit up.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Mine did too.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: She went on to say that she had shared the next verse, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this I had a decent knowledge about.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she reclosed her 30-second or so report to our group saying that she had told her mesmerized crowd that once we understand our need for a savior and recognize that Jesus Christ is that savior, we can respond by calling out to Jesus.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he promises that if you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the scales fell off.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I declared with my mouth, quietly to myself, Jesus is Lord.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I knew and believed God had raised him from the dead.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: But what those approximately 282 Sundays of my life hadn't done, what those televised Billy Graham Crusades hadn't done, what those other television preachers and all their books hadn't done, this woman simply relating a simple story about a simple neighborhood coffee, was the simple impetus that God used to complete his salvation work that he had begun in me.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was still afraid to tell these ladies what had happened to me.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Salvation doesn't make us perfect until we see our Savior face to face.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: But my daughter, who was now in first grade, who, because the arm of the Lord is long, was now in first grade with a teacher who happened to be a child evangelism leader.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter had also accepted Jesus, but very publicly in her class.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I asked my first grade daughter questions.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she took the questions to her teacher and brought home the answers to me.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we learned about this salvation thing together.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we know where to share our faith, and that sounds so intimidating, doesn't it?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: It does to me too.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: But did you notice all those little conversations that led to me to salvation?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, just maybe, obeying that still small prompting is all he needs from us to bring someone to salvation.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's saying, call my doctor, that lady wasn't a Christian.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: She had no idea what she was doing.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it was the, I don't believe I've met you yet.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you're not in a Bible study yet.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: I should have a Christmas coffee at my house and invite some people.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I should share what happened with these ladies.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Many years later, I talked to this Carol who had introduced herself at that play and invited me to that Bible study.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't remember that I was even ever a part of that Bible study.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't remember she'd ever talked to me.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't remember she told me to go to RJ Carr.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: She remembered nothing about my conversation with her because that's how the Lord works.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be afraid to have those simple five-word conversations, those little 30-second testimonies about what God's doing.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have no idea what God's doing in the ears of your listeners around you.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: But did you really catch all of those little details?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: My only being able to find systems three that day as I was out job searching, the co-worker just happening to have found a new doctor a few days before I got an ear infection, the only one of my entire life.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: My brother's death, the new pastor causing me to question what I'd always believed, and as a result, desire to know and understand him more.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: My neighbor with doing her Topeka high-class reunion, the six-week-old baby who needed vaccinations, the only day that booklet happened to be there.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Going to that play, the woman stopping her conversation with her friends for only a moment to say, Hi, I don't know you.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you go to church?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Come to a Bible study.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: That desire for a Christmas coffee and a willingness to share what had happened there.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: How long is the arm of God?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Longer than you think.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because it wasn't long after I came to know the Lord that I realized my brother had died not knowing the Lord.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it seemed very unfair that the Lord would take his life to save mine.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was hard.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: After my brother died, his roommates had boxed up all of his stuff and delivered it to my parents' home.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Those boxes sat unopened for years, probably about five years.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And one day, my sister, we were both there at my parents' house, and my sister said, Why don't we go upstairs and go through those boxes?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: We just need to get, I know it's all just trash in there, we just need to go through it and throw it away.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we did, and we, as we were going through those boxes, I found a booklet in there called The Four Spiritual Laws, a popular booklet for campus crusade to hand out on college campuses.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Coincidentally, very similar to the scriptures that had brought me salvation.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And in that booklet, my brother had written that he'd accepted Christ as his savior with a date.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: What a gift from the hand of a very good God.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: My parents since have also trusted Jesus as their savior.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: My mom is still living.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just for the last, for the first time last year, read the Bible all the way through, cover to cover.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: She told me she'd read the New Testament several times, and it was, and she just, but she was afraid of the Old Testament.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I wish I could find something broke up into daily readings of the Old Testament.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Where have you looked?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't say that because I love my mother dearly.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I happened to be at the Friends of the Library book sale and found one, I think it's the same chronological Bible that you use, Patty, and bought it for her and gave it to her.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: She read it through last year.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: She told me every week every day how much she hated the Old Testament, how much she hated God and his wrath, and how much, and I keep telling her mom, you just you gotta have the wrath before it to understand the love.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she told me just here when we were home at Christmas, you know, I said I was never gonna read that Old Testament again, but you know what?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm gonna do it again.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read the whole thing again.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, thrilled to see the work that God's doing in her life.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, we have a very, very good relationship today.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: I eventually realized that my mom was not out to get me.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Who knew?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: It took a few years for her to understand and to accept my husband too, because she was very angry at him.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when she realized how wonderful he was and how committed to marriage and our family he was, she decided to love him even more than she loves me.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And um, to this day, she does um truly enjoy his company.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: And my father died in 2015 after calling me to his side and telling me that we needed to let him go.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: He told me he was ready to meet his savior, that his worth earthly work was done.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: I begged him not to go.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said that he had never asked me for anything until that moment.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: This was the only thing he would ever ask of me.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And to please let him go.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: I really wish he'd asked me for something easier in life, or something earlier in life that would have been easier to give.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: I still miss him daily.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that Bethel Bible study that he went to after he died, and we went back to my parents' home.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: The first woman from their church who came said to me, Do you know what a great Bible scholar your dad was?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Do you remember we did this class called Bethel Bible study?
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it reminded me of that then.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Your dad had never read the Bible before.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: We had all read this.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: We knew all of these stories.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And as we were reading these stories, we'd say, Oh, we know all about that, and try to skip ahead.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd say, No, wait a minute.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard this story before.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I need this explained to me.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: She said, We learned so much because he wouldn't let us skip anything.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: What a beautiful story and a reminder, no matter how elementary your questions may seem.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Your elementary questions may be reminding someone of their faith or even teaching them something they didn't know.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, to close, I want to tell you a couple of things.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know we're going way late tonight.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always long-winded.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Have I ever stayed within a time limit somebody gave me?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I even talk real fast.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: First, I don't often share my story.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: I share bits and pieces of it, but not all of it very often.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know some of you have been yourself or had a daughter who was pregnant as an unmarried teenager, and they don't have a beautiful 35-year marriage to celebrate.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: I know some of you have had loved ones die and you have no assurance of their salvation.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand why God allowed us to be blessed despite our sin.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: But really, do any of us know how we could ever be blessed?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even as Christians, our sin is ever before us, forgiven, yes, but still tripping us up.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I pray for each of us to recognize that hand of blessing and not seek to understand this side of heaven, answers to all of our unanswerable why questions.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Though I know when I get to heaven, my list is long with those why questions, though I also think the answers probably won't matter so much in the presence of my Savior.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, just because God completed the salvation work in me on that cold January day in 1992 doesn't mean his work in me is done.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still learning and growing every day.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I did finally become a court reporter two years ago, almost two years ago.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love my job.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Delayed dreams are just as wonderful, fulfilled as they would have been, maybe more so than being fulfilled back then.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: God has blessed me with the opportunity to teach at BSF, to teach his word for the last 12 years until I retired, resigned this last year.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I miss it so desperately.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: You don't realize how much you love digging into God's word until you're not doing it because you don't have a reason, some impetus to do it.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: I still love reading his word, but that deep digging and studying and understanding.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I know he has great plans because his work isn't finished, because I know I have so far to go in knowing him and truly walking with him the way he wants me to.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Despite that, I know and am sure of this that he who started a good work in you and in me will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then just because I have the cutest family in the world, although Mariana yours is pretty cute.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Those are my seven grandchildren on the bottom, ages two to eight, and our family picture there on the top that was taken this last summer.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I am very privileged and thrilled that my girls all love Jesus and follow him.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have two sons-in-law who are wonderful, godly men who lead their family well.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And my oldest granddaughter Charlotte, who is eight, um, was just baptized here a couple of weeks ago as um with her fail, she was able to publicly declare her faith in Jesus.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And she is begging me to take her to Israel because she so bad wants to walk where Jesus walked.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: But that will probably have to wait a while.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want me to pray or do you want to?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, I just thank you for your good work in all of us.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I thank you that you've given Marianna and I a story that we can tell that I know encourages others and maybe even brings others to a deeper, uh, maybe first-time even relationship with you.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, thank you for being faithful through hard things.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for showing us so mightily yourself.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for using your long arm to love us and to bring us to salvation and to give us a peace that we also deeply desire.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's in your son's name we pray.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.