Consider It All Joy

As I recall God’s goodness to us over these past few weeks, I couldn’t help but think about our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan. The fear they must feel, the uncertainty of not knowing what their next breath holds, the faith needed to seek God’s face in the midst of such trials is overwhelming. How much more so is God’s faithfulness, love, kindness, peace and sovereignty through it all. While I am in no way comparing our situation to those whose lives are literally being martyred, I am saying the same God who is faithfully leading them through their trials is the same God who faithfully leads you and I through ours. “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you unblemished in His glorious presence, with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all time, and now, and for all eternity. Amen.”

My hope in writing this is to encourage you in the faith and give glory to God for His kindness and care in the midst of our struggles. As James writes in his epistle, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Throughout my years as a follower of Christ, I have always pondered this verse as it seems so impossible to believe. I mean, is it realistic to consider trials a “joy” as you suffer loss, pain, and persecution? To be forthright with you my answer to that question is no, it’s not realistic but the more I experience God in my life and watch Him work in the lives of others, I don’t think that’s what the passage is saying. You see, joy is not only the result of what our trials produce but even more so the effect of God’s presence with us in the midst of them. 

To that end, Trish and I have been closer to God over these past few weeks than we have in some time. While 2020 was a year full of opportunities to seek Him, these past few weeks have proven even more valuable. For those of you who have not been following our story on Facebook (and I encourage you to do so as we post almost daily about what the Lord is doing with us) allow me to describe His care for us. Over the summer we were blessed beyond measure to have two of our supporting churches send missions teams to the Ranch, Quail Lakes Baptist in Stockton and First Christian Reformed in Ripon. It was so good to see familiar faces from home (California’s Central Valley) and serve alongside them for back-to-back weeks. During this time, we experienced an abundance of love, friendship and fellowship as the Lord worked through these churches to bless us in so many ways. Looking back on it now, I am sure the Lord was filling our cup for what was about to come in the weeks that followed.

On August 3rd a lighting strike started a fire some 20 miles from the Ranch. While disconcerting at the time, I remember seeing a very small amount of smoke in the distance and thinking, I hope that doesn’t turn into a problem. Ten days later that small amount of smoke turned into a 75,000 + acre fire which threatened the homes/lives of many in our small mountain community. Now a fire of this size and proximity is cause for concern in and of itself; however, of even more concern was the fact Trish was due with our fifth child on August 13th. Somewhere around the 10th we were put on level 2 evacuation status with level 1 being get ready, level 2 get set and level 3 go! So, for that week we wrestled with questions such as: how do I lead this ministry and make safety decisions for our students and ranch families? Where will we go as a Ministry? How can I care for the boys? How/what do I properly communicate to parents? Where will we have the baby if we get evacuated (we planned on a home birth)? Where will we live? Where will I give aftercare to Trish postpartum? Who is going to care for the other kids if I’m gone with Trish?

Moreover, adding to that the boys and five staff men were on our annual 8-day survival hike and out of contact with their families back home. This meant (at least in my mind) I was responsible for their families in their absence and needed to help their wives pack, plan prepare etc. in addition to my own. 

As you can imagine there was a lot of uncertainty,especially since we were getting unsubstantiated claims form locals that we were in imminent danger and the fire would be upon us at any second. After a week of this and Trish being several days overdue, we decided to ask our midwife to induce labor. I remember Trish praying and crying out to the Lord seeking His peace and presence in this decision. Just before the midwife arrived, she was praying for God’s clear leading in all of this and yet for His will to be done not our own. The induction consisted of a three part process, the first of which started before the midwife arrived. Once she was here the midwife took Trish’s blood pressure and reported she was uncomfortable with how high it was, given the medicine she was about to give her would increase it even more. This was strange given Trish’s blood pressure had been perfect throughout the pregnancy but understandable considering all the stress she had been through. After an hour of waiting for it to go down the midwife said she was not going to complete the process, it was just to unsafe for the baby. I cannot express to you in words how disappointed Trish was upon hearing this, she was so ready, so needing this to happen it was hard to see what God was doing. After five minutes or so of struggling through our emotions we received a knock on the door from the emergency services director of Yakima County. The first words from his mouth were, “I know you don’t want to hear this but for the safety of everyone I’m going to move you to level 3 status, you need to evacuate immediately.”

One of our greatest concerns during this whole time was that Trish would be in the middle of labor when we got the call to evacuate. Well, our Father took care of that concern in fabulous fashion. That night roughly around 9pm the whole Ranch caravanned out of here as we took shelter at a local church for the next several days. This time was even more uncertain as we were living in a trailer in a church parking lot. After several more days of this we decided to induce at the local hospital, something neither one of us wanted to do. The hospital scheduled the induction for Monday morning but wouldn’t you know it, once again God had other plans. Sunday evening the evacuation director called me and said of the 3% of the fire considered contained the Flying H happens to be included, you can go home now. So we packed up went home and at 3 am that morning were blessed with a healthy baby boy! 

My words fall extremely short of capturing all that God was doing and what we were feeling here but to put it mildly, we were overwhelmed by His grace. While none of this happened as we would plan it the Lord provided for our every need. To that point let me list just some of the ways in which he did so: protecting the ministry and the safety of all of us, providing a local church – Tieton Drive Bible Chapel – who took amazing care of us, providing us money through giving when we couldn’t afford to sustain ourselves in our trailer, keeping us from going into labor during an evacuation, giving us our hearts desire in having our child at home, mom and baby being healthy, calls emails and texts from so many of you, an amazing team of missionaries who helped me shoulder the burden’s so I didn’t have to do it on my own, friends from church who cared for our animals and brought us food, parents who supported us even though this situation caused them financial and emotional discomfort, and most importantly no loss of life in our community!

Frankly, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of God’s blessings during this time. “ Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” As I said at the beginning, it was unrealistic to thank God for our difficulties but right to give thanks for His presence in the midst of them. 

Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement, your spiritual, emotional and financial support not only keep us going but keep our eyes on Christ and our lips full of praise. Please continue praying for our ministry, our community and everyone fighting this fire on our behalf. More so plead for God’s abundant presence in the lives of those suffering persecution abroad. We serve an amazing God, thank you for letting me share His goodness with you!

With Love,

Richard, Tricia, Gabriel, Abigail, Elesha, Brielle, and Peter!