Testimonies

Jeremy & Sherry Pabst - Courage to Give: A Personal Story

“To see where we are now. It’s like ‘how did we even get here?’ We need to remember that. It’s amazing because when God works, everything just falls into place. God’s blessing isn’t just blessing you, it’s blessing other people. And that’s when you know it’s of God, because your testimony is their testimony and it goes on. It’s just amazing. We have learned that God will provide no matter how hard it gets.” Sherry

“We weren’t able to make decisions on how to use our money. Money was spent before we were even making it. We didn’t have any choices. It just got to the point where not only could we not make decisions with our money and manage it the way we would want to, because we were so upside-down, it just became chaos to the point where there just wasn’t enough. You can imagine the amount of stress and anxiety a family can experience because you’re not able to be free from that. It was a spiraling, out of control feeling, financial chaos. One thing Sherry and I were always very faithful with was our tithe. I had a steady job but it was paycheck to paycheck. We were wrestling with God for a long time.

Once we came to a place of acknowledging our inadequacies, our failures, our shortcomings. You come to that place where you’re surrendering to God. I think the hardest thing to do next was to trust Him. We had to trust Him that He was going to work it out. I remember sharing with the kids ‘Hey guys, you know what? We’re literally $150 short on something.’ We had a board at the time and we’d just write down prayer requests on the board so that we’d all kind of be on the same page. I can’t remember exactly how the Lord worked that out because this was some years ago now. But, I do remember Him providing and us being able to stand with our kiddos and literally celebrating that as a family as an answered prayer as we prayed over these thing we had on the board. We had to trust that God was going to provide those things. We didn’t have that money. We’d gone through everything and that money was not there. God provided. You submit, you’re seeking counsel, and now you’re trusting in the Lord.

God’s Faithfulness So now we’re on this journey and as things unfold, you’re able to see the testimonials of God’s faithfulness along the way. It was really important, I think that God didn’t just write a check and erase the debt. We learned an appreciation along the way; along with the importance of not going back. We learned how to trust God through that more and more. It’s not constant. It’s not like we have these unshakable emotions now that don’t teeter every once in a while. I still wake up wondering, sometimes, how some things are going to play out or be taken care of. Even in those moments, it’s nice to be able to look back and be able to trust that the Lord is going to provide. It is unbelievable how managing your resources better impacts every single area of your life. We’re managing our money now. It’s not managing us. We’re able to make decisions with our resources now whereas before, the decisions were being made for us. Can I sit here and say that we’re completely debt free? No. We have car payments and we still use our credit cards. But we use those things now in a way that is incredibly different.” Jeremy

Randy & Deb Fischer - Passion for Missionss

“When I went to Haiti the first time, it was such an eye opening experience. I’d never seen such extreme poverty. And yet, people who felt hope and blessed everyday amidst their extreme poverty. It just draws you in; like you can’t not want to go back.” ~Deb

“We saw the difference we made not only praying with them but doing something to help make their life better. We realized that we had tangible gifts given from God that we could use in a way that would really impact somebody else that we never thought would make that difference.” ~Randy

Randy & Joy Quil - Personal Impact

“God’s sovereignty led us to The Orchard Church in 2014. We weren’t reading the bible. We weren’t proclaiming the gospel. We weren’t putting Christ first in everything.” ~Randy

“Right away we had connections with people. People genuinely care for you here. We started something we’d never done before, going to bible studies.” ~Joy