In 2000 I graduated from Mount Airy High School and after a visit to Appalachian State University decided to follow my dream of becoming a teacher and thought it best to fulfill that at App State.
We have both been here since, and decided to stay when we were married in 2003!
Now, in October 2008, after much prayer and wrestling, we have decided our time is up here and that God is sending us off this mountain on a tremendous journey. Just the journey to this point has been amazing. Seeing God work in our lives to change our hearts to his desires--it has been a privilege.As we started working at Greenway, we became very close to alot of kids. We knew we wanted to be here for at least 2 more years to be able to see some of our first kids graduate from high
school. But those were our plans and not God's. However, we weren't willing to listen to a change in direction until May. When I didn't get a teaching job for next year and we had difficulty making all our finances match up as we needed to, it was as if the Lord was telling us that he wanted our undivided attention. Now I know that some might say that He should have had it all along, but often times we get things in our mind and we want our plan. We're like little kids who want something so badly that we aren't willing to see what is being handed to us in another direction if we would just pay attention....We began praying for direction. We prayed to be stretched, taken out of our comfort zone and to be placed in the absolute center of God's will. We felt like we were being told it was time to make a change. A change we didn't plan to make for a while but it was time to be obedient.
As we embark on this adventure, it is a bit scary, but we are walking completely by faith. It's exciting to see God's hand on our lives and to know that we are where we should be. It has been hard to deal with reactions because not everyone understands surrendering to God's will. But we love in all situations and know that some day God will reveal this type situation in the very lives of our young people. Our goal has been for them to be able to look back on this time and be able to say that they saw through us how we were faithful to the call and then will be able to better understand as they do the same with their own lives.
We will always have wonderful memories of Boone. We have been blessed to see the lives of many young people changed. We have watched them grow and experience so much in their lives. They have been our children and for everything that we thought we taught them, they have taught us so much more! I can't count the number of tears that I have shed through this process from sadness to fond memories, but I know that we are doing just as Christ has called us to do and I have to have faith that he will continue the work he has started in these young people with the next youth pastor.
