About Us

I came from a rich and long heritage of people who were not Christians just in name but truly in heart also and were following the truths laid out in the scriptures. I know this came to me not in a genetic heritage but in a heritage of faith that the truths of the Bible were lived and taught to each generation.
My maternal grandmother was raised in Nebraska and her parents were of the Brethern Church there in Aurora. They were loving and godly people that believed the scriptures and practiced them daily. When my grandmother was 16 she was going to join the church but did not want to just do a church practice but she wanted to be able to stand before the church and be able to say that she knew the Lord and that in her heart she knew Him. So she prayed each night before she went to bed for a long time asking the Lord to somehow show her that she really knew Him. After several nights she lay exhausted on her bed and told the Lord that if He wanted to show her he could or if not that was fine too. She fell asleep and then experience a dream, more like a vision. She said the wind was blowing almost like blowing through her body and it blew hard and long and then it was like she was floating on a sea of peace and a still small voice spoke to her and said, " Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the world." She woke the next morning and she felt like her feet did not touch the ground and she knew she could join the church and that she really knew God. This special experience was so wonderful that she shared it with her children at different times in her life and it always brought tears to her eyes.

Pentecost came to that area in the 30's by this time grandma was married and had all 9 of her children. A man by the name of Tom Wyatt had tent meetings in town and she went. She was deeply touched by this ministry. It was the first teaching she had heard about the infilling of the Holy Spirit. She had read about it in the Bible but no one practiced it. She embraced it but in Spirit and Truth. To her is was not a show or way gaining attention or power to promote herself. She knew that God was real and Lord and that he wanted to empower His people if they were truly his disciples and walking according to the truth. My grandfather would not go as he thought that it was all a bunch of foolishness. He was a Christian in name but was compromised. Grandma took all of her children to these meetings and they were all spirit filled and changed and began to share their faith and trusted the Lord in hard times of the Great Depression. My mom was the youngest.

Grandma fell very ill with diabetes and was told that she needed insulin. As was her practice, she went to the Lord and inquired of him what she should do. She told the Lord that she wanted to live to raise all of her children including my mom who was 6 years old at the time. She told the Lord that if she died she feared for my mom's spiritual sake as her husband was not close to the Lord. So she was not asking for her sake but for the sake of her children. The Lord told her if she would be careful of what she ate and followed a diabetic diet that she would live to raise her children. She told the doctor of her decision to follow the Lord and he shook his head and said that without insulin she would not live 3 months. God was right and the doctor was wrong. Grandma lived another 13 years until my mom was 19. She had several brushes with death and returned, a gangrene sore healed on her foot that the doctor said wouldn't. During those 19 years she imparted her love and faith for the Lord to my mom and she grew up with faith and maturity in the things of the Lord. Grandma died from diabetes in the first year of my mom being on her own and going to Bible School where she met my dad,

My dad was raised Amish and left the church at 15 and did not know the Lord. A Mennonite couple in Kansas who he worked for lead him in the sinners prayer over breakfast one morning. For the first time he knew the Lord, even though he had been raised in a deeply religious culture. It was all dead and meaningless to him. He moved to Oregon and went to the same Bible School that my mom was at. The Lord brought them together and they were so very happy. They had 4 kids with me being the youngest.

By the time I was born in 1960 my folks had bought a little piece of land and moved a small trailer there and planned on building a house. My folks were happy but poor. My dad had only gone to the 8th grade. He was very smart but did not have the education for a high paying job. So, through great financial difficulty and trusting in the Lord for their daily needs they were able to build a modest home for us and my dad did it all by himself after hours from his job in a plywood mill. We were all so very happy to have a home and put down roots. Before this time they had always attended small non-denominational churches. But they ended up attending an Assembly of God church just a couple of miles away from their home.

My dad and mom always made the Lord first in their lives. We went to church all the time and my mom and dad were always serving as Sunday school teachers, my dad was a deacon, my mom helped clean the church and they always helped the needy and were hospitable to anyone new in the church. Though they were in a denominational church and met in a nice church building those things were not super important to them. They sat through many sermons but always talked about them and compared them to what the Bible said on the way home from church. I have many childhood memories of my folks talking about the scriptures and also telling their stories of faith and how God helped them down through the years in all things. They told stories of how God supernaturally took care of them, healed them, provided finances, kept them and us kids from danger. They shared of having wisdom and discernment and counseling and helping people. They knew the power of God was real and that they felt His empowerment as they went through life with it's ups and downs.

They did a little bit of "Speaking in Tongues" really just a babble but not a lot and it was only because that is what they had been taught. I was laid hands on at 10 and was encouraged in this behavior but I didn't take too much stalk in it. I did accept the Lord as my Savior at the age of 7 and I have never fallen away. I knew God was real and from my parent's life and testimony I had a very strong foundation of faith. I was filled with the Holy Spirit and felt His work in my life. I knew that churches had people who did not really know God and they were there for other reasons. Some just believed whatever the pastor said and didn't think or study for themselves. I knew that pastors and leadership compromised the truths of the Bible to have things that they wanted. Some people in church were just there for social reasons or just because their mom or dad went there. When I got older and began to read the Bible all the way through for myself, I began to wonder why I didn't see very much of what happened in the Book of Acts in the churches today. Because of my strong foundation of faith I was never sucked into the Word of Faith Movement and realized they were really off. Because of being in churches that believed in the Gifts of the Spirit I was exposed to some of these Word of Faith Churches and TV shows but I always steered clear of them.

When I was 28 my mom died and I was very, very sad to lose her. She was a godly and wonderful mom. On her dying bed she said that she would want to live for the sake of her family but she knew that if she died she would be with the Lord and looked for the day to see her Savior's face. Her funeral service was packed out with friends and family. They all testified of my mom's faith and love for the Lord. There was not a dry eye in the group. My poor dad was so lost without her. She had always encouraged him and loved him. One of her dying wishes is that I move back home and live with my dad for a year to help him. I told her I would. She also told me that God would not take anything away without giving me something better. I couldn't see it at the time but I know now what my mom was speaking of.


After a year I moved to S. California and in three years became employed at a Calvary Chapel as a church secretary. I never thought I would do a job like that because I had already seen the problems that can come up when you are privy to the inner workings of a church and the staff and I didn't want any part of it. I just wanted to go to church and be blissfully ignorant. Through a prophetic dream I had, it was confirmed in my mind that the Lord wanted me to take the job. The job had it's really good points and its really bad points, seeing hypocrisy and the church being treated by the Senior Pastor as a business. But I just did my job and sought the Lord by myself. By this time I was 32 and still single. In my twenties I had a couple of serious relationships that were with men that were in the church. Both men said they loved me and wanted to marry me but both ended with the realization they did not and my heart was broken and disillusioned. So after I took the job, I began a long journey of seeking the Lord if I was to be married and when. The Lord was so faithful and through some more prophetic dreams I was given timing and I was to just wait for it. I was met with some opposition from people in the church saying that you really can't know the future and thinking it silly that God would actually talk to you. Kinda of like, "Who do you think you are?" But I persevered anyway and when I was 41 I met my husband in the church, in the office that I worked. God gave me the job and I learned a whole bunch of things and most importantly I met my husband there.


My husband, Rich, has a wonderful testimony. He was raised in a Baptist home with several generations of Baptists going back. His parents went to church but they did not put God first. They were very moral, hard working and kind people but God was not first. So as he entered into his teen years he seen the hypocrisy of the church, met unsaved people in school and became friends with them and he drifted from church. He always believed in God and at different times in his life read the Bible a lot but he always struggled.

He had never married and did not want to marry someone who had been married before because of what it says about a man marrying a divorced woman in the New Testament. His sister married at 17 and divorced at 23 and remarried at 24. He was against this 2nd marriage saying it was not recognized by God. His grandma disagreed with him and told him to be quiet and he had no business thinking or saying that and his sister had every right to divorce for whatever reason and she could marry anyone she pleased. This was the main thing that pushed him away from the church and he went his way. After many years of wandering spiritually he came to a cross roads in his life. He was living in Las Vegas living with a woman who had been married before and had 2 grown sons. She started out being a girlfriend and then she became a friend who just lived off him and her two sons lived off him too. God began to deal with his heart that he needed to get out of that situation and if he didn't it could cost him his life and eternity in hell if he did not get right with God.

So, he woke up one morning, got on his work clothes got in his truck and drove off and never went back. He left all his material possessions behind and never talked to that woman he was with again. He called his mom and told her that he had repented and wanted to do what was right. She was overjoyed. They invited him to move back home, he got a job and got his finances in order and paid off all his debt and began to attend church on a regular basis. He quit smoking and drinking and told God that if he were ever blessed to meet a woman that had not been married before and wanted to court, he would practice complete purity with her and not kiss until their wedding day.

Rich had a friend he had known for 30 years and really liked. That guy went to our church. So he came to the church I was working at instead of his parents' church. He walked with the Lord for 5 years before we started dating. The church we attended was pretty good sized so I didn't even know who he was for several years. Through a beautiful set of circumstances we found out that we liked each other very much and wanted to get to know each other better. When he called me for the first time to ask me out we ended up talking for 3 hours. I felt in one way that I had known him all my life. He was the one that my heart had been longing for all these years. Someone who truly loved the Lord and loved me.

The year that Rich and I courted before we got engaged we had many wonderful conversations and he began to open up about his troubles with organized churches, their buildings, their salaried pastors not aligning with the New Testament example. He knew that the need for money to keep these organizations going caused the pastors to compromise on teachings of Jesus that were not popular in today's society. They needed money and wanted to please the people so that they would stay and give their support. I agreed with him from all that I had seen working in that church for 11 years. At the end of a year, he proposed to me and we were married in 5 months. The people of the church were so happy for us and they put on the most beautiful wedding for us. My mom was gone, my dad had no money and I only had $500 in savings. Those lovely church people just lined up and offered their services and helps without us asking them and we had a wedding that would have cost us $7,000 to $8000 and I only paid $500 of it and Rich bought our rings. One of the great truths that the Lord impressed on Rich's heart at his crossroads experience was that the Kingdom of God was all about people and he put a deep love for people in his heart that was not there before. So, when we planned our wedding we always put our guests first. We just told them don't buy us anything, just come. After our honeymoon it took us 3 evenings to open all the cards and gifts that were given to us. It was like the Lord poured open the flood gates of heaven to us. Over $3000 in cash was given. Rich just held those cards and just wept. We loved those people and cared deeply for them.

We remained in the church for 2 years after we married but our hearts were heavy because of the truth being suppressed about adulterous marriages, no power in the church and the church being run like a business from the Senior Pastor. The pastor counted the people every Sunday morning and brought in fund raising companies to estimate how much money he could get from the congregation to fund the new church building he wanted and the best way to persuade and influence people to give. It was truly disheartening.


So through another amazing set of circumstances we moved back to where I had been raised. The Lord blessed us with a baby girl, Mary, when I was 46 and Rich was 51. We left everything in the hands of the Lord and I did not take hormones. The Lord was upon me physically and I had no complications and my labor and delivery went quickly and she was born beautiful and healthy. That was almost 7 years ago.

We went to a Calvary Chapel type church that is just around the corner from the house that we rent. But after 3 years we left and went to an Assembly of God church here in town. Some really good friends went there and we liked it when we visited. We got to know the Senior Pastor and his wife in a home fellowship that they led for about 18 months. We really like them. Of all the pastors that I had sat under he rang the most true in his messages. He talked a lot about sanctification and what it meant to repent. He does not believe that the speaking in tongues (babbling) is the evidence of the infilling of the Holy Spirit, he does not believe in the pretrib doctrines and he has a super big heart for missionaries and our church has a huge missions budget. The biggest in the whole state of Oregon of any Assembly of God churches. None of his staff pastors are divorced and they are all men. He and his wife of 30 years have raised their 3 children to serve the Lord.

But there are still things that were troubling our heart. We did not see the Power of the Holy Spirit being demonstrated, the church does not grow in attendance as far as salvations, just people coming and going, and they teach tithing heavily. They have a 7 year old building that is one of the best church facilities in the whole area and is in a prime spot looking out over the whole valley.

Rich feels that there is no power in the church because of compromise. Church leaders are winking at sins of immorality and materialism to keep the people. He feels that the whole truth of Jesus words need to be preached, even the hard things, in order to see the power of the Holy Spirit that will confirm them. If the pastor really spoke the truth he probably would lose his job and that building but Rich feels that needs to happen in order for God's work to be done and for believers to actually reach the young kids that are exodusing the churches all across the country and to be of any saving influence on the homosexual community that is so prevalent now.

We have prayed about this extensively over the last year on what God wants us to do. Rich has been in conversation with the pastor on some of these issues. He has told Rich that he feels the Spirit of God on him and he has been convicted and encouraged by the things that he has said but at this point he is not willing to say those things that will make people in their church mad and pull their financial support. It's like he is stuck. He has started on the bridge of truth but he is not willing to cross it. So we feel like we need to leave the church and trust God to do a work in our lives and God will lead us to other people of like heart. We have wonderful friends and family but none of them see things the way we do. It is like they are stuck in the "Mattrix" and are not willing to break free. We feel alone but we know we have the Lord. We long for a true revival and to see God work by his Holy Spirit to perform miracles for His glory and not our own. To be part of a fellowship without church walls. He wants it to be a gathering in this area like the early church meeting in homes, not paid staff and church buildings. People who are loving, committed to letting the things of this world go, being modest in their dress and sexual purity and helping the needy and the lost. Praying for people and they be healed and lives being changed.