Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 14, 2017 | Expresso - Ruth Davidson

Transcript

November 14, 2017 | Expresso - Ruth Davidson · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, our small group recently began a study of the life of David.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And our leader, who happens to be my husband, um, gave these words as an introduction.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: God is at work in our lives to accomplish his purposes in us, even though we may not see how.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as that was true in the life of David, it's true in our lives as well.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: As I looked back over my life to kind of compose this and uh it down and figure out exactly what I was gonna say, I saw God's providence, his goodness, and his faithfulness all along the way.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it still amazes me that God would care for me in such a way.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it amazing?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Ours, each of us, he loves us so much.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here goes.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was born Ruth Ann Stuckert to a Russian and German, Russian immigrant family who settled in Flint, Michigan.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were both very young when they married.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were 20.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they both had come from Russian-German families, and they both had seven children in their families.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there were lots of aunts and uncles and cousins around.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were hoping their first child would be a boy, and he was gonna be named after my father, who is Clarence.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't a boy.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: They hadn't even picked any girl names.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if if a boy was going to be named after dad, then you name the girl after her mom.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm Ruth Jr.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was the oldest of four children, three girls, and on the fourth try, they finally got their boy.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so this is a photo of that time.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: My brother was not yet born.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a favorite of all of us girls' picture, but he hadn't come along yet.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um both of my parents worked outside the home in those days.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't very wealthy, but I we were all happy.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that we were kind of poor, but um, my dad worked at Buick Motor Division in Flint, and my mom was an operator for Bell Telephone.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one ringy dingy, you know.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um before we were school aged, my grandmother, my grandma Stuckard, took care of us, and then when she couldn't watch us, there was always an aunt or an uncle or somebody to take care of us.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what family did for each other, and we were together a lot.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my parents were church-going believers.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: They were involved with Sunday school teachers and youth leaders, and so much so that whenever the church had a service, we were there.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday morning for Sunday school and church, Sunday night, Wednesday evening prayer meeting.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: We were usually some of the first ones to come and the last ones to leave.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I got to show you an updated picture of my siblings.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: This was taken in Green Bay just a couple years ago.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is my brother.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I really do have a brother, and uh, it was Thanksgiving Day, and the Lions were playing the Packers, so we are in our garb rooting for the appropriate teams.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're still very close.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Two things happened early in my life that shaped the person that I would become.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: These were the things that set uh the direction of my heart and the choices in my life.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing had to do with music, particularly the love of piano, especially as it was used in those days in the Sunday morning worship service.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: You see, our pastor's wife was an accomplished musician.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Her name was Aunt Muriel, and we loved her dearly.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: She had gone to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, she was a Canadian, and when she played the piano, you wanted to sing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: There was something glorious about the way that she played the piano.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost like you wanted your singing to match her playing because she was amazing.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where that seed of love of piano and its use in worship was planted deep in my heart.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that happened at a young age was making the decision to trust Christ.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: At the age of seven and a half, I heard the gospel presented in a clear and a simple way, and I trusted Christ that night.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Even as a child, I had a hunger for God's word.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I took notes when our pastor spoke.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: What 10-year-old does that?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I still have my old Schofield Bible where I have all the underlinings and all the speakers that meant a lot.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have all their signatures in the back of my Bible.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had great Sunday school teachers who helped us learn God's Word and His principles.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in fifth grade, my parents decided that they wanted to send us to a Christian school.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The only way we could do that is if my mother took on the position of the school secretary, so we would get a discount, but she did, and we went, well, I was in heaven.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely loved it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh Bible every day, we had chapel once a week, we memorized scripture.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the fifth and sixth grade, I had a teacher that made us memorize hymns, two hymns a month.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: We had to write out all the verses.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: We got graded on spelling.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, that was not my favorite thing, but I tell you what, every hymn that I learned in fifth or sixth grade, I can tell you all the words to all the hymns.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember sometimes what happened this morning, but I can remember those hymns that we learned in fifth and sixth grade.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it it was a real blessing.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that was a fun time in my life.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in 1969, I graduated from Flint Northern High School.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was the same school that my mother had graduated from just 22 years beforehand.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And off I went to Calvary Bible College in Kansas City.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the school, the Christian school that I went to often hired teachers from Christian colleges and universities in the Midwest, and Calvary Bible College was one of them.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of those teachers at the school that connected me with a professor at Calvary Bible College who had a gospel team, and they traveled around and did PR for the school.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: They needed an accompanyist.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I auditioned to become the accompanyist, and I made it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was so excited.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was basically self-taught.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I took lessons for a year and a half from a very strict and uninspiring teacher.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had no idea if what I could do would be what they needed or if they would be willing to take a chance on me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: But they did.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I loved attending Bible college.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was an elementary ed major.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't yet figured out that I could marry my love of education with my love for music, and I should have done music ad, which would have been perfect, but I didn't.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I loved the Bible classes, of course, and the theology classes, although I will testify that the cheapest, most effective way to take a nap was to do my assigned reading from Chaffer's Systematic Theology.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anyways, okay.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite things about Calvary in those days was the building that it was located in.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do any are any of you familiar with Calvary Bible College?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in those days, Calvary was on West 39th Street.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: The address was 1111 West 39th Street.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was just down from KU Med Center, and it was in a grand building that was formerly a nunnery.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was red brick.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was set up on a hill.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: What thing in Kansas City is not up on a hill?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um, it had a uh circle drive, and so you turned onto this heavily treed um property and made your way up the circle drive, and then there was this gorgeous building.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You walked in the front doors and you were in a marble entryway with staircases that went uh circular, round staircases, and took you up to a domed space.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was beautiful and the acoustics in there.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was better than singing in the shower.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I loved about the the building was the chapel.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: The chapel had huge stained glass windows.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was very um what's the word I want?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Very stately, very um, you just felt a hush come over you as as you walked in.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: The the nave for the nuns, which we used as a stage, was all marble as well.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It just was gorgeous.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a big uh grand piano up on the stage, and so often I would slip in without turning on lights, and nobody was around, and I'd sit and play the piano and just enjoy that space.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was really amazing.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was a social creature and uh I thoroughly enjoyed dorm life.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Three out of four weekends a month, I was out on the road with Melody Messengers.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was the name of the gospel team.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the Melody Messengers one Sunday was out, we were on a weekend trip, but Sunday morning we were in a different city, but Sunday afternoon we came to Topeko because we had an evening service to do at Topeka Bible Church.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: But since we were traveling and we had been somewhere else in the morning, we needed a meal provided for us.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Marcia Davidson decided that she would like to do that, but she had a small home, and so she could only entertain half of the team.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So she had all the girls on the team over for dinner before the evening service, and that's where I met two of her three children.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I met her youngest, her daughter Diane, and I met her oldest son, Mark.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where Joel was that weekend, but he was probably playing his guitar somewhere.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um so that was fun.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was the first time I met Mark.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was several months later that I would run into Mark again.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: This time it was in Kansas City at a Bill Gothard seminar.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was a weeklong conference.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if any of you are familiar with the old days of Bill Gothard, he went every night, it was three or four hours, and then all day on Sunday.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, someone anonymously paid my way.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't gonna go, but I thought, well, if they pay my way, then I'll go.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: My girlfriend Brenda and I were gonna go.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Brenda got sick, so I drove down there.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was in a municipal auditorium, 5,000 people were attending.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I make my way, park my car, get out, and there's a bunch of people going in, right?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm in a crowd, get to the doorway that was closest to us.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: A gentleman opens the door.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I walk in and I look up to thank him.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I recognize that face.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me and he said, Do I know you?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized it was Mark Davidson from Topeka.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So after the crowd passed by, he said, Um, hi, what are you doing here?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we chatted for a minute.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Are you did you come with somebody?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, my girlfriend's sick.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I came along too.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to sit with me?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we sat together that night.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when when the the um that evening was over, we were going, and he said, You want to sit together tomorrow night?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, sure, but if Brenda comes, is it okay if Brenda sits with us?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah, yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we sat together Tuesday night, we sat together Wednesday night, Thursday night, we skipped and went out on a date.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We really enjoyed each other's company.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had a lot in common.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mark was attending Washburn at that point, and he was a music major.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our second date was actually his senior voice recital.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here he was on the the pretty new white concert hall was pretty new then.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was standing on that stage singing Figaro from the Barber of Seville.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, be still my soul.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um we began to date seriously after that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um he would come to our Melody Messenger concerts.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: He would he would get off of work and then drive to wherever we were.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this particular weekend he drove all the way to northern Minnesota.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: He had it bad, you guys.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um to the little town of Niswa.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had never heard of Nisswa, I've never been back to Nisswa, but it's one of my favorite places.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um after our evening service, he got permission to take me out on a drive, and we went to the little lake that was beside Nisswa, and he asked me to marry him.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I could not believe it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I came back to college with a ring on my finger and stars in my eyes.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was fun.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our plan was to get married the following summer after he completed his first year at Dallas Seminary.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to get good biblical training and thought that with his bachelor's degree in music and a master's degree in Bible, that he wanted to teach Bible and music somewhere in a Christian school.
• 13:53
  unknown: Wow.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was engaged to a man who loved the Lord, loved music, and wanted to teach.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Count me in, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those plans, though, kind of got altered, as we all know that you make plans, but things happen.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we didn't wait till the next summer to get married.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Mark was taking 18 hours of seminary classes, including Greek and Hebrew, and he's not a linguist.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was always in awe of Pastor Jim because that is not his thing.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he was working three jobs, and every other weekend he was driving from Dallas to Kansas City to see me.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was tired, he was not doing well in his classes, so after talking to our parents, we decided that we would get married at Christmas break and that I would finish my last semester and my student teaching some other time.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Never happened, but we did get married.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: January 6th, January 6th, 1973, we got married, and our honeymoon was traveling from Michigan to Dallas, pulling a little U-Haul trailer with all my earthly belongings.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even full.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I hardly had anything.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was cold and it was snowy, and that trailer jackknifed on us a couple of times as we made our way from Michigan down to Dallas, but we did make it.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that happened was that Mark's post-seminary plans changed.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: As he studied at Dallas, he realized that the desire of his heart was really more toward the pastorate than teaching in a school.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I really didn't like that idea.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was not interested at all in being a pastor's wife, but I figured God would change his heart, and so I I was okay, you know.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: God could do that little thing, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Little did I know it would be my heart that needed changing.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, our first child came along during those years in Dallas.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Julie was born in March of 1975, and after finishing all of his classwork and only having his dissertation to write in the fall of 1976, Mark accepted the pastorate of a small church south of Garden City, Plymouth Union Church.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved to Garden City, and while he was pastoring, he wrote his thesis.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually graduated in April of 1977.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Although the birth of our son, Joel, during that week of graduation kept him from attending the ceremonies in Dallas.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: We have a son named Joel.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a grandson named Joel.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we have Uncle Joel, Mark's brother.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're at our house around the holidays and you need help, just holler Joel and you'll get somebody to come and help you.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we muddled through those first three years in Garden City to city slickers out in ranching and farm country.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the people were wonderful.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: They were so gracious and forgiving of us city kids.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: The women taught me how to cook and how to crochet and how to quilt.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not very good at quilting, but I really appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into a quilt.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: We soon realized, though, that our gifts would be best used in a ministry somewhere in a city.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So in the fall of 1979, we were contacted by a church in Austin, Texas.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: They were looking for an associate pastor who would preach about 30% of the time, develop a music program, and develop a missions program.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: January 1st, 1980, we began our time in Austin.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mark's job was very high profile.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: It required many hours a week.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: The least I think he ever worked was 55 hours.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was sometimes 75 and 80 hours a week.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: But we loved living in Austin.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: There was so much to do.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: As we settled into that place, a third child came into our family.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our daughter Jamie was born on September 11th, 1982.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And three and a half years lady, our baby Jeannie was born on New Year's Day, 1986.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: This picture is our church directory picture from 1990.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: There is Mark and I and our four children, Julie, Joel, Jamie, Jeannie.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, our church had a preschool in those first few years, and I was hired to teach the four-year-old class.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: It gave me a little extra money and some structure to my home life.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I loved being a mom, but I did not like being home all day.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was chomping at the bit to get out of the house and do something useful.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was not content at home.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was so restless.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in those years when my children were young, God taught me a hard lesson for me, and that was that I needed to learn to be content where I was.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of living for the moment that the kids would be in school and I would have a few hours of freedom.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: But through the influence of godly women at our church and a dear friend, we happened to move to Austin at the same time.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had children the same age, and she became a lifelong friend.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: She's the kind of person that when you first meet, you feel like you've known her all your life.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was nothing.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: We just connected.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: We knew Mary Jane.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mary Jane helped me through lots of rough times.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I had to learn that there are seasons in our lives.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: In everything, there's a season.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Even now, there's seasons, and they still keep moving.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I like, you know, we like to freeze-frame a season we're comfortable in that's good.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I in those days I didn't think the season of having small children would ever end, and I knew for sure I would never miss it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it did end, and I do miss it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I have grandkids now, so it's it's a good thing.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I began to teach piano uh in 1982 in my home.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know for sure if I could do it, but I didn't need a car and I didn't need a babysitter and I didn't need fancy clothes, so I figured I could try it and see if it would work.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it did.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: It worked great until the year when my oldest daughter was in high school, my son was in middle school, Jamie was in elementary, and Jeannie was in preschool.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Four different campuses to get kids to activities, and I signed up 30 piano students.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was insanity, and life was an adventure, right?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I never did that again though.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um my love for studying God's Word also continued and it grew in Austin.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to be part of a group called Community Bible Study, very similar to Bible study fellowship.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they were starting up a new Bible study there, and I was just a part of it for a while.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: They had a preschool program, so it didn't matter if I had kids at home, I could go.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I really loved the format.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And for a number of years I went.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: When that Bible study grew so big, they wanted to start another one in a different part of town, and I was asked to be in leadership.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they trained you to be in leadership, and you went with the servants team, they called it, those were the leaders, the servants team, and you kind of bonded and you got trained to do the job that they needed you to do.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was with three different servants teams over those 19 years we started.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are now, I think, 10 community Bible studies in Austin.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, that was a continuing theme.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I one of the things I loved about community Bible study was it didn't matter if people liked Mark's sermon on Sunday, it didn't matter if he chose the right hymns.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: didn't matter if the orchestra messed up or the choir, it was just me.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And God could use me, I could develop myself and my gifts and what I could do apart from who he was.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for a pastor's wife, especially when you're young, to, you know, you're you're kind of coupled together.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to not tell people if if we, you know, we were out somewhere, I wouldn't say, oh, I'm a pastor's wife.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, because they put you in a box and you can't get out, and it just it just changes a relate.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can just see it on their face.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, anyways, it's hard.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so community Bible study for me was um was a place where I could develop skills and I just had some freedom just to be me, just to be silly or you know, I didn't have to worry about, I could just be me, and it was wonderful.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: During those years in Austin, God also used the job that Mark had of the missions program to give us a heart for the world.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not only did our church raise up missionaries, but we actually trained 32 families in our church, sent them out to all places all around the globe.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was our job to go and visit them on the field, see how they were doing, work alongside them, and so that the sending church could know exactly how to help them the best.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we had some pretty big adventures.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: We visited missionaries in um London and Vienna and Singapore and Istanbul.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: We had some pretty scary things happen too.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like Mark was teaching the Prospectives course at a seminary in India, and it was a two-week course, and we came back one night just exhausted.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was a long day, it was hot.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: We opened the door to our bedroom, and there was a cobra at the foot of our bed.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Another time Mark was helping train some pastors in Sofia, Bulgaria, and at that time we were sleeping in a home with no heat, with straw mattresses, no hot water, and the outdoor temperature, the whole five days we were there, never reached 50 degrees.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have never been so cold in all my life.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even in Canada or in northern Michigan, I wasn't as cold as I was there.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you tell this was an exciting season of my life?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I loved living in Austin.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that time.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: But after 19 years in Austin, it was time for us to move.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to go anywhere.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: My mother's heart had put down roots, and I had my nest, and it was a good one.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why should we move?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that was my thought, not God's thought.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Our children were happy and a good and in good places.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our two oldest were in college, our younger ones were in elementary or uh middle school and high school, but seasons of life changed, whether we want them to or not.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was in April of 1999 that we went from Austin, Texas to Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Mark accepted the position of worship pastor at Park Bible Church in a western suburb of Toronto.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And while Jamie and Jeannie did wonderfully, I mean the school system is so different there.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: They had so much to adapt to, they did fine.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mark and I were miserable.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was awful.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was so hard.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were just, Mark would cry every day on his way to work.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: He hated it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was able to teach music there, and I um found a community Bible study class in Canada and helped them out.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that part of my life stayed the same.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But as we were there for just two years, the girls were beginning to look at college, and they weren't didn't want to go in Canada, they wanted to come back to the U.S.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna pay international tuition with tunies and loonies, that's the Canadian dollar and two dollar.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, it wasn't gonna happen.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we needed to come back to the States.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Mark began to look for a new place to minister, and after three years in Canada, we moved back to the states two weeks before 9-11.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't tell you, I told you we were miserable in Canada, but my way of dealing with it was hopping in the car, driving to Buffalo, kiss the ground, go in the grocery store where there wasn't French all over the every packaging, you know, and uh go fill up with gas where they were real gallons, not Canadian gallons, which are different, and I could never remember how to figure it out.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was just it was the little things.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a Western country, but it was the little things that were so difficult.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, two weeks before 9-11, we moved back.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was again evidence of God, God's provision for us for a need before we even knew it was a need.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: He was there, his hand was there.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, during the first month we were there, I found out that there was a group of women who had been praying weekly together for two months.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to start community Bible study.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: God brought me along at just the right time for them and just the right time for me because doing that, you get to know people right off the bat.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was in the Bible study.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: See, God knew what trouble I'd be in if I wasn't in a Bible study.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I wasn't, yeah, if I wasn't being reminded constantly of what I should be doing, how I should be living.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so he made sure that that was a constant threat through my life.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to teach piano then as well.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had been in Indiana for seven years, but Mark had a scary thing happen.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: He had a pulmonary embolism, and it was pretty serious.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the hospital for 10 days.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: I almost lost him.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, sometimes God just smacks you in the face and gets your attention because you can't go anywhere.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, okay, Lord, what is it that you want to tell me?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in those days, Mark began to realize his heart really was to not so much be the worship pastor, but he just wanted to shepherd the sheep again, like he had done in Garden City, Kansas.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so um he began to look for a church that he could be pastor of.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now he had been the head pastor since 1980, and here it was 2000, 2007.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a long time.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: So many churches weren't even uh weren't even willing to consider him.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: But in in March of 2008, the first congregational church of Ross Common, Michigan, hired Mark to be his pastor, and so off we went to northern Michigan to a sweet little church nestled in the great north woods of Michigan.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: There were lots of adventures there.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a sweet church.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: They had it, this little tiny church, they had 80 people on a good day.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: They had a choir, they had handbells.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we had lots of music adventures there.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was back in my home state and I got to connect with my aunts and uh and my cousins, and so it it I felt like I was home again.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've never been to the Great Lakes State of Michigan, you need to get up there because it's gorgeous, it's beautiful.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go in the winter though, unless you want to ski.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um the only problem with being there, and we were there for eight years, was our children were scattered all over and none of them were close.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: It took three days for them to get to us.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can imagine how often we saw our kids and grandkids, not very often, if we were lucky once a year.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And after a while, the long winters, you know, would start snowing in late October, and we would not, I'm not exaggerating, we would not see the ground until the end of April, the first part of May.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was always snow and ice and this and that.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it got you down after a while.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: These old bones were aging.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the cold, when I was a kid, I thought it was cool, but as an adult, it wasn't so cool.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was very cool.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was cold.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but here was the deal.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every church that we had worked in, they didn't have any benefits for pastors.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: We lived in expensive towns.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had four children.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: We had very little money in the bank.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: We figured we'd have to retire when God called us home to be with him.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: It just wasn't gonna happen.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we tried to keep a good attitude and think, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, two things happened, and I'm winding up, so if you're looking at the clock, I'm almost done.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, two things happened that we never dreamed would happen.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, showing us God's sovereignty in our lives and his tender care for all of our needs.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing was that a distant relative of Mark's passed away.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: She was quite wealthy, more so than we ever thought.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark's family was named in her will.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were named in a pretty substantial way.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: We still wonder in awe about the whole thing, but the money that Mark inherited was enough for us to pay off all our debts and have a little bit of money in the bank.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Woohoo! We were on cloud nine.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: We knew it wasn't enough to retire, but it gave us hope.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: It gave us hope.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that happened was Mark's sweet dear mother found that at I can't remember how old she was, then 89 or so, she wasn't able to live in her home anymore.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: She needed to be an assistant Livy.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, what were we going to do with the house?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Should we sell it?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Should we put it in the family estate?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Would it work for Diane?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, not really.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Joel and Connie, well, they weren't real interested.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Would Mark and Ruth want mom's house?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Would Mark and Ruth want mom's house?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was the final piece to the puzzle.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had a little bit of money in the bank, but we didn't have enough money to buy a house, but now we have a house.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's small, but it's wonderful.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little piece of heaven.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that final piece of the puzzle dropped into place.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our life has come full circle.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're now back in Topeka where we first met.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that amazing?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: God's hand was there.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I uh we attend Topeka Bible Church.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: I teach 15 piano students a week.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm involved in Bible study here at TBC.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Mark and I sing in Shawnee Choral Society.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our grandkids and kids come at least twice a year.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're all coming next week.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of us last Thanksgiving.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the gang in the upper, let's see, see if I could do this.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our upper left-hand corner is our daughter Julie and her husband Micah.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that tall drink of water standing there is our grandson Joel.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's 17 and he's six foot seven.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: They have Joel, Maddie, Mallory, and Joshua, and they live in Bunavista, Colorado.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Julie's husband, Micah, is the camp manager for Trail West.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our son Joel is in the bottom right corner.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Joel Mark Davidson and his wife, Jessica.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Joel's in the Navy.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's a limited duty officer, and he is awaiting an assignment to direct one of the Navy's bands.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever the next band becomes open, that will be his post.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: But right now they're in uh Tennessee and uh they've moved around a lot, and their daughter Maddie Page is in the middle, and their twins, Kai and Piper, are on either side of them.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our daughter Jamie is in the center of the back row, that tall blonde.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: She lives in Westminster, Colorado, and teaches third grade in a charter school.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And she's looking for Mr.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wright.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, but she's she's patient and she's a godly girl, and I'm proud of her.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and our baby, Jeannie, and her husband Austin, are pictured here in the top right-hand corner.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Molly is in her mama's arms, and last January they added a new baby, Luke.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they um, Jeannie and Austin and their family serve with crew, that's formerly Campus Crusade, and they're in East Asia as missionaries.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: The sweet white-haired lady is my mother-in-law, Marcia Manchester, and she lives at in Topeka at homestead assisted living.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's us.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to conclude with this thought.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Life consists of many seasons.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some are shorter, some are longer, some are harder, some are easier.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: But no matter what season of life we find ourselves in, we can be sure that the hand of God is at work in our lives to accomplish his purposes in us, even though we may not see how.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, whatever season of life you're in, sometimes those seasons change and we don't want them to.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: But God is with you in that season of your life.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I challenge you to take hold of it with all your heart, be an encouragement to those around you.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Stay in the word.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as Pastor Jim has been challenging us, don't look so close, look farther down the road and eagerly await his glorious return, and we can get through this together.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.