pottersclay

My mother and father-in-law own the house we live in. Although we rent this property, we own land and a 24′x44′ garage/shop on that land. Since my father-in-law (a pastor) plans on retiring next summer (’08), we need to be moved out by September 1st of 2008.

It has been a huge blessing to us, to live in this house for 5 1/2 years. It has been a *hub* of sorts, and a place of fellowship and spiritual growth for many people. Friendships have been formed, and strengthened in this place.

Now the exciting part! I’m going to paste the letter that Joel wrote to his dad this last week. I hope your own faith is strengthened as you read it!

Subject: Deep freeze moments by Joel A. Anderson

Here is our story.

I distinctly remember where we were on the night this all started; it was January 1, 2007, just getting dark and we were on Highway 10 southeast of St. Cloud. Our family was traveling back home from visiting my family at the ARC, and we decided to listen to a CD set that we had gotten from a company called Vision Forum. The set is entitled “Financial Freedom” and it is a 20 segment course on allowing God’s biblical money management principles to guide your financial decisions. It’s not about creating a budget or where to invest, but one of the segments is about getting out of debt and staying out. It’s also goes into great detail about praying for needs and waiting on God to meet those needs rather than jumping ahead and getting loans when He doesn’t provide things according to our timetable.

Anyway, we were so impressed with the series that we called several of our friends when we got home and invited them to come to our house every week for a two hour financial video and snack meeting. We had several families come every week, and all came away with a new commitment to allow God’s principles to guide our lives, financial and otherwise.

Now, fast forward 7 months. A friend of mine, Shannon, had a big chest freezer break down with $500 in food inside. He had nowhere to put the food, and so he decided to use a credit card to purchase a new freezer. One other thing we learned from the series is that accountability among friends is a good thing, so I got on his case right away. I told him, “God wants to bless you, but you need to allow Him to do it and not go in debt just because you’re nervous about the food spoiling.” He told that to his wife and they decided to wait on the Lord. The next morning he got a phone call from a friend in a nearby town who he hadn’t talked to in quite a while. He said, “Do you happen to need a freezer, because I have one I just cleaned out and I’d like to get it out of the yard?” OK, that’s one. Immediately following that call, he got another call from another friend. “Do yo u happen to need a freezer, because there is a commercial freezer at a house near you and they want you to come get it?” That’s two. Shannon spent the whole day driving around picking up FREE freezers. It turned out that neither of these friends had heard of Shannon’s need, they just happened to have a freezer to get rid of and thought of Shannon. From then on, we’ve been calling blessings, “Deep freeze moments”.

Same place, two days later. I was over at Shannon’s house helping them butcher chickens. Into the yard came a neighbor who, quite frankly, has not gotten along well with Shannon for various reasons. Still, Shannon has felt a prompting to bless this man when possible because it might open the door for him to share the gospel. Shannon goes over to the pickup and a few minutes later comes over to me and says, “Do you need some OSB (oriented strand board)?” We do, because we are asking the Lord to help us build a house debt-free, and we need to get it done by next summer. Long story short, the neighbor works at a local OSB mill and offered to give us some. We now have 132 4X8 sheets of OSB in our shop. The stack is almost 5 feet tall and weighs almost 5,000 lb. All FREE!!!!! Deep freeze moment.

Two days ago I was at a friend’s house who is struggling with some very serious problems. I prayed with him, and as I was leaving, I showed him a decoy that I had bought for Jaden to help in the training of his yellow lab. Jaden, Julia and Grace all bought this lab as an investment to raise registered pups to sell, and so Jaden is training him to retrieve, sit, stay, etc. The next day, Jamie got a call from my friend. “Would Jaden be interested in a job?”. Jamie asked what kind of job it was. “Training labs.” You have to understand something about Jaden. He wants to become a police detective in a K9 unit and train dogs on the side. He absolutely loves training his dog, and he’s doing very well at it. This job could have been some farmer calling because he needed someone to pick rocks. It wasn’t. It gets better.

Jamie and I took Jaden out to this farm the next morning to find out what Jaden would be doing and meet who he would be working for. We soon learned that “Whispering Bill” is a world renowned dog trainer. People send him dogs from all over the world. Right now he has dogs from New York, Michigan, and Texas; 18 in all. At least three of the dogs are worth over $50,000 and one is worth $80,000. The first thing Bill said to Jaden was, “I hear you have a lab pup, did you bring him?” When he found out that Jaden hadn’t, he said, “Make sure you do tomorrow.” Not only is Jaden getting paid to learn dog training from one of the best trainers in the world, he also gets his own dog trained every day for FREE. Bill and his wife Gerri treat Jaden like a grandson and they feed him lunch every day. Again, God could have provided any old trainer out there, but instead He prov ided the BEST. I told Jaden that God deserves our best effort too, and he’s giving it. By the way, let me tell you what Jaden’s job description is in a nutshell: Ride around on a fourwheeler all day and play with dogs in the water. DEEP FREEZE MOMENT!!!!

I could go on and on. I got a call from Jamie’s uncle this week because he’s going to fly me out to Missoula, MT in two weeks to help him with a business he’s starting and needs some technical assistance. He said, “The company I bought this stuff from offers technical assistance, but I’d rather you get the money.” House money. DFM!!!

We have no idea how God is going to provide for this house, but I have NO DOUBT that He will. He wants to bless us, but he also wants us to trust Him and not our own judgment. TRUST HIM, TRUST HIM, TRUST HIM!!!!!!

The one thing that actually is the most important part of all of this, I forgot to mention. God does this all for HIS glory. We are blessed so that HIS name is glorified, not ours. Psalm 41 talks about how He has put a new song in our mouth and how we are put on a rock. That’s for HIM, not for us. People get saved through stuff like this!!! Awesome!!

(Here’s the website of the guy Jaden works for…) www.autreykennels.com

I’ve never “blogged” before…and haven’t even really read many other blogs! But I kind of see this as my own personal journal, that others get to read. I want to have a written account for our children to read someday…so they can see the work of God’s hand in our lives.

We are the Anderson family. My name is Jamie, and I’ve been married to the love of my life for 16 years..as of this last Thursday. Joel and I met at a Bible School in Minneapolis in 1988, and became best friends (while *dating* other people!) When we realized that we were best friends, and couldn’t imagine life without each other, God led us to get married in 1991. We hadn’t started *dating* each other until the spring of 1990.

Before we got married, I had read Mary Pride’s book, The Way Home.

I mentioned the whole idea of “Letting God plan our family” to Joel…and he basically said, “yeah….whatever….” Well, obviously, he hadn’t really thought it through that much. He didn’t think we’d be pregnant within 3 months of getting married…and again when the first baby was 9 months old. etc….

I was in my glory, since I always wanted to have a TON of children! It was easy for me…my pregnancies are AWESOME, and my deliveries are just as great!

The funny thing is, Joel would NEVER ask me to use any kind of birth control…because of the risks, abortifacient factors, etc. So although he struggled with the reality of all these babies, we never tried to prevent them.
It took several years, and quite a few children before my husband came to *fully* embrace the quiverfull mentality. He was worried about how to provide for them…and I would just keep telling him that he didn’t have to worry about that. GOD was the provider for them. I kept praying about it, and God kept working on Joel’s heart. I think that it was after baby #7 that he was completely CONVICTED in his own heart about the blessing of children. Part of that conviction came as a result of different businesmen walking through his office, and commenting on the pictures of our children. Some men would cry, lamenting over the fact that their children were grown up already, and how they wished they had more. Others would say, “I always wanted to have more kids, but my wife didn’t want to.” Things like that.

Joel’s heart was changed. Now we have 10 *little lumps of clay* that the Potter is shaping, and we are taking care of them for Him. We feel so blessed and excited to see how God wants to use these little “lights” for His glory, in this dark world!

Here is a quick rundown of our family dynamics:

Jaden-15, Julia-13, Gabriel-11, Grace-10 next week, Angelé-7 1/2, Abram-6, Mareah-4 1/2, Malachi-3, Caleb-almost 2, and Hudson-12 weeks.

More later….