To Montana via Argentina

 

I think it has been something like four months since my last post!!!

Oh but I’m so happy to be back here.

So here we go…

I don’t know. I think I got sidetracked. Busy. Working on our house in Costa Rica. Cleaning. Repairing. Restoring. Praying. Listening. Living.Traveling. Holidays. School. So here we are back in Louisiana with my parents after the holidays and next we are headed to South Carolina for a 2 month stay. But that is way ahead of the story.

So I would like to continue a bit of our history. So many great God Stories. A Good God. Too good, not to share!

In my last post, I left you in Montana. It was August 2011. We had made a trip up there to see the state and visit the YWAM base… and another place.

It was a ranch that our really good long time friends,Steven and Cameron Jones, in South Carolina had helped restore a bit, some years back.

Steven and Cameron own their own Construction Company in South Carolina, and Steven grew up in Costa Rica, which is where we first met them. And how can I describe this couple to you?

This couple.

Parents to 6 amazing kids…well most of them are all young adults now.

This couple.

Fearless. Always ready to step out and step up.

I would need a whole post just to tell their story. They have an amazing story. It’s a God story. Get to know them, and ask them to tell you their story. And your life will be greatly enriched.

Some friends are more than friends. Steven and Cameron Jones

The ranch is located in the Bitteroot Mountains of Montana and the owners of the ranch are friends of  Steven and Cameron. It was once used as a Girls home for troubled girls and later as a place for Christian Business Conferences. We only passed by the ranch, as the owners were not there at the time, so we couldn’t visit.

Anyway, while at the Lakeside, MT ywam base, we talked to many of the ywamers and prayed with a few. We were open to doing our DTS at the Lakeside Base, but after praying with one of the leaders, we felt strongly that we were to continue with the original plans of going to Mendoza, Arg for our DTS. But we fell in love with that part of Montana near Glacier Park. Actually we fell in love with ALL of Montana that we saw.

So we flew back to La with the love of Montana in our hearts and headed to the deserts of Argentina. It was exciting, adventurous, challenging, hard, and wonderful. We had made round trip tickets to Argentina to return to the US in a year. However, about somewhere into the third month or so of our DTS, we realized that we were not going to stay in Argentina for the whole year and we would not stay in YWAM either. We knew God had something different for us. Something that we had yet to experience. But we didn’t know what.

So we took about a week to get away and pray and hear God as a family to what we were going to do with our lives now! We had come to Argentina with our 6 children planning to go thru the DTS and then stay on with one of the Argentine YWAM bases and serve there for the rest of the year. And now we were unsure of where to go and what to do, having closed our business, rented out our house and uprooted our family. So we did what we knew to do….asked God.

Here we are in front of the entrance to the YWAM Mendoza, Arg. Base

The long path to the dining hall on the Mendoza Base

 

Our house and classroom during the DTS in Mendoza.

 

 

We went to Santiago, Chili for that week between Christmas and New Years (end of 2011) with our only agenda … to hear God. And we were not disappointed.

That week, God spoke to us and confirmed that we were to leave Argentina early  (after the DTS) and go to Montana!

OK…there it was. Montana again.

Wow!

Montana!

Only 147,046 square miles of land to find a place to live and do what??!

So we did what we often do when we are getting ready to do something radical……

We called Steven and Cameron (who by the way, never think that anything is radical) and told them our news and asked them if they could contact their friends at the ranch in Montana and see if there was a way we could connect with them and see if that is where God would open the door for us to be in Montana. Of course they happily said they would.

But alas, they were never able to contact the ranch owner. So we continued to pray and wait and complete the DTS.

We finished our DTS in Mendoza and took a month long bus trip in a circle to Buenas Aires, Puerta Madryn, Bariloche and on back to Mendoza while we waited for Sabrina’s visa to be renewed to the US. It was an amazing trip! One that I don’t think any of us will forget. We saw some of the most beautiful scenery…from the wide wild Patagonia to penguins and sea lions to the German/Swiss town of Bariloche (which btw, we fell in love with).

Walking the streets of Bs Aires, Argentina

A very young Sabrina looking at a penguin

Sea Lions

Puerta Madryn

Our bus broke down on the way to Bs Aires from Mendoza

Moving our stuff over to the new bus, which also had a problem. So we changed buses yet a a third time.

 

But it was that epic moment our last night (March 2012) in Bariloche when we were feeling a bit uncertain, that we decided to skype with Steven and Cameron and we heard the news that would confirm God’s word to us once again…just when we needed it. I’ll never forget it. We were staying in the guest house of the Bariloche ywam base talking to Cameron …well actually it was whining…not them. Us.

Entrance to YWAM Bariloche

Our guest house on the YWAM Base in Bariloche

 

We were home sick, a bit weary from traveling on overnight buses, and facing an uncertain future. Our plan was to fly to Louisiana to be at my parents house while we waited to see how God might open the door for us to go to Montana.

So here we were…in Argentina, changing our plans of staying in the country for a year to actually packing up and heading to the states to wait for God to show us how to go to this  north western state that was 2500 miles from my parents house, and even much further from our home in Costa Rica and very different climate-wise. We were feeling a bit discouraged and overwhelmed with it all that night….when I just politely asked Cameron how their planned trip to Costa Rica with a couple they had met earlier that year was coming along. They had a team together to go down for an outreach.

And then she told me the NEWS. That trip had been canceled. They had found out just that day that,… that couple they had met at a Jesus Culture Worship Conference was actually going to go to…

Ta Daaaaa!!

 

 

 

 

 

MONTANA

 

 

 

 

 

and waan- waa – waa -waaaan. (remember the grownups in Charlie Brown shows and how they talked? That is all I heard…at least in my head)

Something something something about planting a church something something something something.

“Wait wait wait just a minute…did you say Montana??! Are you kidding me??!!Who are these people?Oh!These are the same people you have been telling me about for the last 4 months And now you say they are going to Montana?Why didn’t you tell me earlier?You just found out today?You say you have been wanting us to meet this couple I remember you saying something about that a few months ago…And these are those people??!”

This was all blurted out in a matter of seconds as Cameron just let me babble on for what seemed an eternity.

We felt…a spark…well maybe more like a flame. An excitement. Hope renewed. Joy. Anticipation.

We had no idea who these people were. But we knew at that moment we would be with them and we would be a part of whatever they were going to do in Montana. And then we heard even more.

When we were staying at the Lakeside ywam base several months earlier, we were only about 20 minutes from where this couple was going to plant the church! No wonder we felt such a sensing we would be back. They were going to Bigfork, Montana to plant a church, 20 minutes from where we spent 3 nights the summer before. We had no idea what kind of church. No idea who these people were. No idea when they would go. No idea where we would live? What we would do?

But we knew Cameron and Steven. And we knew if they were connected with them, we wanted to be too. And more importantly we felt His peace and grace and life all over this.

So we took our last overnight bus ride back to Mendoza, Argentina and gathered up our things and flew back to Louisiana to meet this couple over Skype and hear their  story. They are Ben and Carolea Burdick and their five beautiful children. We skyped with them for over 2 hours the day after we landed in the US. They were in Indiana. And we in Louisiana. And it was love at first skype!

Ben and Carolea had been called to Bigfork, Montana actually many  many years earlier. Ben had been in the airforce and he was now the associate pastor of a church in Valpo, Indiana, but had a calling to Bigfork which of course had been confirmed to them in some quite miraculous ways over the years. But that is their story. And what a story it is! You need to hear it. If you are ever in Bigfork, stop in and come to Mountainsong Church and meet our pastors. You’ll want to stay!

Here they are …THAT couple! Our pastors now. And what an honor to be able to call them our friends too.

 

So that was it. We were going northwest. We were going to Bigfork, Montana to be a part of a church plant with Ben and Carolea and we would figure out the rest along the way. And we did. God showed us and led us. That was July 28, 2012 that we landed in Bigfork, Montana in a house we rented on the beautiful Swan River where our kids enjoyed many summer days of swimming and winter days of sledding down the hill our first year in Montana. And below is a peek at that sweet house we stayed in our first year in Montana…