Family Support - Diane writes!!!!

Since I read Carrie's blog post I have felt motivated to write the story of how all three of our wonderful daughters have encouraged us on this journey. You will quickly see that the writing talent in this family did not come from me, but here goes.....

As Carrie referred to in her story, The Lord brought me along on this journey just slightly behind Gary. I thought prison ministry was Gary's calling and that was fine with me. But when he came home and told me we needed 120 dozen cookies for the four day event, I was NOT fine with that. I remember talking to Carrie and she said she would pray for me, that God would change my heart. And He did, but not all at once. Then Emily said, "We can do this at my house. The kids will help and my friends will come and we will get it done!" And Dena had friends from church baking cookies and she delivered them. All the while the girls were helping and praying for a change of my heart. And God answered their prayers.

Then there were posters  and place mats that we also needed for the four day events. That was also a family project. All the grand kids worked on them and even our daughters! Carrie even had her Sunday school class from Indiana do some and sent them to us in the mail. This is all just to explain the support we got from the very beginning.

Now that we are doing what God has so clearly called us to do, we are still getting the great support that we got in the beginning. Before we left for language school Emily had her breast cancer surgery. Thankfully the Lord allowed me to be there for it, but we had to leave the day she came home from the hospital. To ease my worry about who would help Emily and because they love each other, Dena and Carrie each came for many days to be there for Emily. Even though Emily would have rather had me stay home, she still encouraged me to go saying that she would be fine. Always the encourager.

When we were first trying to begin to tell our story of how God brought us to this place of serving Him, the girls all encouraged us to practice telling our story in front of all of them and their husbands. It helped us so much to share our story with them first.  Dena even had a gathering of friends at her house so we could tell them our story. And I must not forget that Dena watches our dog when we leave the country AND takes us to the airport.

So these are just a few instances ( and I am sure I missed some) of the many ways our daughters have supported us. We feel so blessed that our whole family - son-in-laws, grandchildren and everyone is praying for us and supporting us in many, many ways . We are so blessed to have such a wonderful family!