309 – Carrying a Vision – Part 2

309 – Carrying a Vision – Part 2

June, 2018

This is continued from the previous post, 308, an article I wrote about visions.

Dan had an idea (a vision) (in 1983) of a solar house he wanted to build. So, on property his dad had given him, he pursued that goal, while I was pregnant with our third son, and completed it about the time our 4th son was born.  

We had realized when we were in Japan that we were not as prepared as we had thought we were to live in a foreign country. We were not strong enough spiritually to battle the demonic forces. (Dan had been a Christian 2 years, I had been a Christian 5 years.) Through a movie about a missionary couple who lived in Papua New Guinea, Peace Child, God gave Dan the idea to get more training. We followed that vision and applied at several Bible Schools in America. Just when we needed a boost, God gave us a supportive and directive prophetic word from a friend. Our departure was delayed for two years while Dan helped our church family to fulfill their vision of building a new church.  We were finally emancipated and spent 2 ½ years in upstate New York at a missionary-preparing, missionary-sending school, Elim Bible Institute.

We never lost what we felt was our ‘calling’ to go to Japan. We were accepted into Elim Fellowship, a missionary-sending arm of the Bible School. AND I had a heavenly vision of babies while we were living in New York. The Lord seriously began to teach me how to carry a vision, how to work with Him to see it come to pass. It was a long six years before the vision was explained and then we went into action to bring it to pass. We had returned to Reno after 8 years away, we joined the foster care program and were foster parents for the next 12 years. We cared for 52 foster children: 5 elementary school age kids, many toddlers, and 26 newborns straight from the hospital. We also adopted our first foster child, who is now almost 25 years old.

During this time, we received the vision from God to homeschool our 5 sons, and later Dan received a vision to go back to school to get his masters degree as well as his marriage and family therapy license. He has worked as a therapist for 8 years.

We are currently seeking God for a new vision. Dan will be 70 in July, and I just turned 73. How can we serve you, Lord? We are in excellent health, we have been Christians for over 40 years. We have 9 ideas that we are considering. We need God’s nudge toward one of them OR we need another idea that He would drop on us!

In the meantime we have had many many God-inspired visions: Dan had a ministry teaching the churches about missions, for a few years Dan organized and ran a teen group that helped senior citizens in the morning by doing yard work, by running a vacation Bible school at a local motel in the afternoons. I mentored 3 teen girls for 3 years. We read purity books.