Us: friends become one

 

God takes a couple of long time friends and makes them husband and wife.


Chris: Toward the end of my first year in Winona, after being engaged for all of 3 days, my fiancé called and broke up with me. I was devastated. Why, I didn't understand, but what it did to me was force me to look to God.


I was a wreck for quite a long while. Poor Amy stayed by me and tried to be my friend through it, but I really was confused and angry with women in general, any woman near my age. I praise God for His timing, had I fallen for Amy then, our relationship would have been a shambles and nothing that God would want. Amy remained faithful as my friend despite all of the mixed signals and coldness that she put up with from me.


Well, at the end of my training, just 3 short months before graduation, the devastation of 9/11 occurred. With the aviation industry in a hole, almost literally, it was back to work at the bike shop, where I’d also talked Amy into starting, and that had previously been my steady summer employment. I was anxious for aviation work both for experience and as a way to pay off my now more substantial student loan, but looking back, God was going to keep me near enough to Amy and my church family that I could learn and be blessed as He wished and knew best.


Amy: Our work benches were side by side at the bike shop, and we spent a significant part of every day together. By this time, Chris had grown pretty bitter toward women and it was hard to be around him. We were still friends, he was the closest friend I had ever had, but over the next two years I felt more and more hurt as he got more and more bitter. I spent less time with Chris and more time with God. I started to go for walks by myself, praying as I went. I would pour my heart out to God, telling Him about all my heartaches, and He would gently change the focus of my thoughts from my difficulties to what He wanted me to become. I began to experience a closer relationship with God as I learned to look to Him for love and acceptance. Over time, my bruised relationship with Chris began to heal, both of us having grown quite a bit spiritually.


Chris: God continued to use us where we were. There were some great bible studies along with friendship evangelism and we continued to lead out in the young adult Sabbath school class that God had inspired us to start.


I was given an opportunity to go on a short term mission trip to Honduras with a friend and the church he was attending. This trip boosted my desire for missions still further, yet I knew somehow that it just wasn't the right time to move forward into aviation.


A couple years later, I was really itching to move on and out and I was again in contact with Don Starlin (AWA’s president). He suggested that I go through Henry Blackaby’s “Experiencing God” work book. I went through this with my now best friend Amy, but felt impressed that it wasn’t God’s time for me yet.


I did however have a desire to go on another short term mission trip and I asked my Sabbath school class if they would consider praying about it. About a month later, we got our answer. A friend at church asked if we’d be interested in going to Ecuador as a class. God is so very gracious, the majority of our class was able to go and we were all blessed to see anew how thorough and loving our Lord is. God covered our costs and we learned to trust Him more for everything. Jesus wants a very real and practical, as well as deeply personal, relationship with each of us.


On this trip we saw Him actively pursuing the people we went down to serve as well as our own hearts, as a matter of fact, one of the guys on the trip was baptized there! We saw God do some amazing things in the lives of the people too and, as I’m beginning to learn is always the case, we were each touched at least as much as the locals by God’s love.


Amy: One of the projects we worked on during that trip was helping to build a church in the village of San Antonio de Latacunga. We discovered fairly quickly that these people didn’t really need our physical help at all, most of the village worked with us every day to build that church. But they were so grateful that we were there and they didn’t hesitate to show it. They shared with us what little they had and made sure we left with gifts they had made for us themselves. As we interacted with them day after day, we could see the close relationships they had with their extended families and found that they had something that is truly rare in the US. They valued what is really important – family, relationships, people.


Chris: That first trip to Ecuador was life changing in more than one way. While there, I was pulled aside one evening by one of my new friends, Guillermo, who took me out on the veranda of the building where the meetings were held and told me to prayerfully consider Amy as more than a good friend.


The thought had crossed my mind in the past, but I hadn’t felt quite right about it until just leading up to this trip. I had determined to watch and see how she acted and worked in this foreign mission setting. I was impressed with her desire to serve and especially her love for the people, and also a little more than surprised at the council I was receiving.


Amy: Guillermo and his wife Luz talked to me too, saying that they thought Chris and I would make a good couple.


Chris: Before leaving Ecuador, I had been personally invited to come back for another project that coming February. On this trip I felt led to make a very big decision. Upon returning the second time, Amy picked me up at the airport and I proposed. A little out of the normal order, since we weren’t even seeing each other as more than good friends, she had to answer no.


Amy: That March we started courting. Shortly after that, I was visiting a friend who convinced me to put out a “fleece” as Gideon had done in order to know God’s leading. I was reluctant, but decided to try it after she persisted. Chris proposed a few more times after that, and I finally had to tell him that I was waiting for God to answer my fleece.


Chris: While I was seeking an answer regarding our relationship, at the end of January, 2005, our dear friend, Steve Dickey, stopped into the bike shop, when I was working, holding two business cards for Adventist World Aviation, one for me, and one for Amy. He’d had lunch with Don Starlin during a Muslim Relations conference in Berrien Springs, MI and Steve had told him a little bit more about us.


So here we are, courting, seemingly nowhere even near engaged, with the opportunity to finally start training to “Go” for God. (We never would have guessed that nine months later we’d be married and preparing to move to Blackwell, Oklahoma.)


Amy: Then one beautiful lightening bug filled evening in July of 2005 at Whitewater State Park, we got engaged. We had been praying and studying about fleeces and the way God leads for quite some time (Exodus 3:11-12). I had finally come to the conclusion that God had already provided enormous evidence that His hand was in our relationship. Waiting for Him to answer this fleece was basically ignoring His clear leading.


Chris: A very short 7 weeks later, was the morning of our wedding day. We always had morning devotions together before work, and so on my way over to her place for devotions that morning; I stopped and picked her up a bunch of roses. When I arrived at her place and she “buzzed” me in, I held the flowers behind my back and when she opened the door I brought them out and she started to cry. I thought she might be a little emotional because of all that was going on and hugged her thinking nothing more about it. That night, after the most beautiful and blessed wedding I could imagine having, as we were just the two of us settling in at our hotel, she saw the rose pedals on her pillow, and I gave her one solitary mini rose bud. Then she explained her further tears.


Amy: My “fleece” had been that Chris would give me roses.


Chris: God didn’t answer her fleece until He knew that she would trust Him and act on what He’d shown her and not wait for a sign. Our Lord answers prayers and is very patient and, in my estimation, very romantic.

 

continued on "to Peru"...

 

 

His Leading • Us • To Peru