In the beginning...

This adventure started in May of 2009 when I went on a trip to Portland, Oregon for work.  My wife Amanda came with me this time and we made it into a mini vacation from work, home, the kids, and life.  We got off the airplane and were greeted to a beautiful setting.  There was a city next to 2 large rivers, massive trees on the hillside, and massive Mount Hood in the distance, covered in snow.  We quickly fell in love with this quirky city, taking in all of its sights and sounds each day.  We would part during the day so I could go to training, and we would meet up in the evening to talk about all that we had experienced. 

On Saturday of that week we rented a car and drove around Oregon, first going to see the beautiful waterfalls that lined the Columbia River Gorge, and taking in the beauty of Mount Hood close up.  We drove to the top to see snowpack that was more than 10 feet deep, and then we drove to the coast to see the mountains that line Oregon's coast.  We were hooked, and the seeds were planted at that time that perhaps someday we could move to this area just to live out our days enjoying all of the natural beauty.

We came home and got back to work and to life, but we quickly found that Oregon and the northwest were not out of our minds.  We kept talking about it, and as time went by we talked about it more and more!  My wife enlarged a number of the pictures she had taken while on the trip and they were mounted on a wall in our living room.  At night we talked about going there once the kids were grown.  Maybe I could teach at a university and she could be a photographer.  The kids could visit us anytime they wanted!  We were only an airplane ride away.  So we made our plans, and God began making His.

In the spring of 2013, I remember sitting in church on just another Sunday as the worship team was preparing for worship.  This Sunday was different though because we had a special speaker named Ron Shepard, who was visiting us from Seattle.  Ron got up and quickly started talking about the northwest and the degree of lostness there.  He displayed a map of the United States that was color coded by the number of churches per capita.  Oregon and Washington were some of the few states that were red.  Red meant few churches.  Red meant few knew Jesus.  In fact, he through out the statistic that the Seattle area has one church per 20,000 people, a staggering statistic.  Over 90% of the population arguably does not know Jesus, with only about 5% going to any church even 1-2 times per year.  I was floored, but I also sensed that there was something to all of this.  There was a reason I was sitting there in the chair that morning listening to this man from Seattle.  I remembered Portland and the northwest that I loved, and I wondered what plans God might have for us.

I remember nudging Amanda and telling her that I thought there might be something to all of this.  The church promptly announced that it would be taking a mission trip in the summer to go to Seattle and that they hoped to form a long-term partnership with the northwest and church planting.  We were the first to sign up for the trip.

We didn't know how we were going to come up with the money to go on this trip, but were encouraged by the church to send letters to people to ask that they pray or consider funding us.  Amanda drafted these and sent them to about 10 people and we just figured that if God wanted it to happen, it would happen.  We soon learned that we had been given more than enough for both of us to go.  It was paid in full, and we again were the first to have this happen.  God was moving, but we really didn't learn until much later about the sheer scope and magnitude of His plan for our family.