Month: April 2025

1984-1985

In last week’s story, we got to the Miami airport with all our stuff, traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, eventually made it through Immigration and Customs, and then a convoy of friends and people from Bread of Life Church got us safely to our new home in Vanity Fair, Linstead, St Catherine, Jamaica. As we settled into our pastoral duties and began to identify potential leaders in training, we were introduced to Enos Barrett, President of the Local Kiwanis Club. The Kiwanis Club had been working for over two years to start a school for developmentally disabled children. In rural Jamaica at that time “crippled” and “retarded” children, as they were thought of there and then, had nothing. Parents often kept them confined at home, even restrained if there were challenges. There was shame for the parents and abuse for the children if they were seen in public.

Enos Barrett and the Kiwanis really wanted to begin to change those attitudes and improve the outlook for those children and their families. They had secured a building on the east side of Linstead, remodeled it, furnished it, and had teams of “recruiters” going through the nearby villages and bush settlements to find the children with special needs and win the approval of their parents to allow them to come to the school.

The Peace Corps was involved and had been able to get some supplies and materials from the US Embassy in Kingston. Now they needed a teacher to get the school started! When Enos Barrett found out about our nineteen-year-old daughter Stephanie and that she had some experience with special needs children, he immediately asked if she’d be willing to be the teacher! So God did one of those “God Things”!

I’ll let Stephanie take it from here (The following is Stephanie’s Story):

When I was a student at Mid High (8-9th grade) in Medford, Oregon, I got involved in a Program called the SKY Club sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club. Sky Club students volunteered to work in special education classes throughout Medford schools helping teachers work with their students. It was an incredible experience and gave me me such a sense of purpose and joy working with the kids and seeing the sense of accomplishment they experienced!

Then life took a bit of a turn! In my 11th grade year, our family made the decision to move to Jamaica to serve as missionaries. After discussing things with my parents, I chose to take my GED a year early and not try to do a senior year in another country. The plan was to spend some time in Jamaica with my family and then move back to the US to attend college. That summer (1984) we moved to Springfield, Missouri to prepare for our move to Jamaica, and arrived in Linstead, St Catherine, Jamaica in October.

In Linstead we lived on the church property and we all got involved in church life pretty quickly. My dad was getting involved in life in the community outside the church as well. He was doing devotions for Dinthill Technical High School. In conversations with Enos Barrett, the Principal of the school, Dad talked about Melissa and me and told the principal of my plans for future education in Special Ed. The principal asked if I would be interested in helping to start a school in Linstead for special needs kids. In thinking back it is pretty crazy that a nineteen-year-old who hadn’t even really finished high school was helping to start a school for special needs kids. How does that even happen?

It all happened so fast! A lovely lady named Liz from the Peace Corps came along to help and there were a few moms of the future students and a teacher from one of the local schools that helped as well. I remember meeting the principal at the building where the school was going to be. It was so clean and had 2 class rooms. They had worked so hard on it, and it was amazing! It was pink on the outside and the security bars, which were a necessity there, were painted a cheerful red and white. There were school desks and supplies. We decorated the rooms with alphabets and numbers and lots of cheerful pictures. Then suddenly the school was open and I was the teacher!

I remember being nervous and feeling a bit of the “I don’t think I can do this” – impostor syndrome before it had a name. I also remember feeling so grateful that I got to be a part of bringing hope and help to these overlooked, disadvantaged children. We were full-up from the start. I remember one little boy the most. His name was Dougie. He was an amazing little kid with Downs Syndrome, and I can see him and his mom coming up the stairs. She was pretty shy and hanging back a bit but Dougie was pulling her up the stairs and ready to go! He was dressed in his Sunday best and had the biggest smile. His mom was so proud of him and proud that he was going to be able to go to school! This opportunity was huge for them. Dougie greeted us the same way every morning—a huge smile and a big hug!

The school continued after I left to go back to the states, and I know that it changed my life in many ways! It changed how I saw the world outside of myself and I realized that saying “Yes!” to something I don’t think I can do, can change more than just my own life. I didn’t end up completing a degree in Special Education. Instead, I came back to Jamaica after a year of college to help my parents with the Bible Training Centre they were developing in Kingston. I tutored the special needs son of another missionary couple in Kingston for a few months. Then I moved back to the States with my sister and got involved in ministry in the church we were attending in Atlanta. I worked several jobs involving office work and I managed a retail store. But I have never lost my heart for children with special needs.

In 2007 my husband and I adopted our son Jesse. He is an amazing kid and my heart swells every time I think about him! When he started school he was so excited and I was too. But that year wasn’t what we expected. He struggled with the class, with the curriculum, with behavior, with school. It was really hard and very sad! But the next year he had a wonderful teacher who saw Jesse as a person and saw who he was behind the struggle. She helped us get him diagnosed (ADD) and into a program that gave him resources and strategies that changed not just his school experience but his whole life. I believe that in my little school in Jamaica in the 80’s, God was preparing me and my heart for Jesse!

Our education system is not built for kids that don’t fit into a box so we have had to fight for Jesse’s education. It has been a tough road but I know God has placed people along our path to help us. There were so many times where I felt some of the feelings of hope and thankfulness that I experienced when working in the school in Jamaica!

Jesse was in middle school when COVID happened. That meant that he started going to school online and it really changed his education experience. He thrived! When COVID was over, he just wanted to continue with online school. We found a school – it was online and local, but the struggle continued. We were denied the transfer and had to appeal. Our family prayed and I prayerfully and thoughtfully wrote our appeal. We sent it and again I believe that God went before us. Jesse was released and was able to start his new on-line high school journey. Jesse and I worked together, argued together, and celebrated victories together. I know my time working in the special education classes and the school in Jamaica helped me help Jesse.

Jesse is amazing and has fought many battles in his time in school. I’m so proud of him! As I’m writing this, Jesse is on a week-long trip to Washington DC with other students just before he graduates this June. God has been so faithful to bring people into our lives, direct us to the right programs and schools, and strengthen our family through this journey! And God used my time with the kids at the little school in Linstead all those years ago for purposes I couldn’t even have imagined!

Jim here: Thanks so much, Stephanie, for your story about the school in Linstead, St Catherine, Jamaica, and how it helped not only those kids forty years ago, but is still helping today!

Next week, we’re going to continue with some stories about our early days in Jamaica. It’s been so good to remember and relive these experiences of God’s faithfulness!

As always, I’d love to hear from you! Reply to the email or post a comment on the blog page.

Grace to you today, Jim Stephens

• • What if our ride doesn’t show up?
  • What kind of vehicle can take the four of us, on a 94 degree hot Miami afternoon, on eight miles of Miami freeway, along with our 22 pieces of luggage, and get us to the airport on time?
  • If it’s a van, it could take us but not all our luggage.
  • If it’s a pickup, it could take our luggage but two people would have to ride in back. In the heat. On the freeway.
  • If it’s anything else, it’s not going to work anyhow!
  • What if our ride doesn’t show up? (oh yeah, I already did that one didn’t I?)

1. 1. Let’s remember that God already knows what he’s going to do.
   2. Let’s remember that God understands our weaknesses, is gracious in his love and care for us, and he’s there to help us where and when we need it most!

June 1984
Thinking back to the story from a couple of weeks ago about the Miracle on the Rio Cobre, our relationship with Jamaica, the Jamaican churches, and a growing number of good friends in rural Jamaica kept developing. After that month-long tour of service in 1978, we made more short-term ministry trips to Jamaica from Bible Way Church in Richland, WA over the next couple of years until our move to Medford, OR to plant a church in 1980. Then, after the move to Oregon, we continued to stay in touch and our hearts continued to be linked to Jamaica.

We went back to Jamaica in 1983 from our church in Medford to visit and minister. Old friendships were rekindled and new friendships formed. A situation had arisen in a new church in Linstead that had required the missionaries, who had started the church and were currently leading, to leave and move back to the US. The mature Jamaican leaders in the church and the US leaders of the small missions organization asked Jean and me to consider moving to Linstead to lead the church and train some local leaders. Everyone agreed that it would be at least an 18-month commitment.

We felt God wanted us to take this step of faith and began immediately to make preparations for the move. We were pastors of Grace Bible Fellowship, a small non-denominational church in Medford that we had launched four years earlier. Our friends Darryl and Martha Rodman were pastors of a small non-denominational church in Central Point, just a couple of miles north of Medford. Somehow, the idea surfaced of joining the two churches together under the Rodmans’ leadership. It seemed good to us all and to the Holy Spirit so we began making the plans and implementing the process of the merger.

Darryl and Martha contacted us just two days before the five of us, Jim, Jean, Stephanie, Melissa, and our dog Bo, were due to leave Medford for a cross-country drive to Springfield, MO to begin connecting with the churches of an area missions supporting group in Missouri, Kansas, Georgia, Ohio, and a couple of other states in which we had potential contacts. They came by our home, empty now of most everything but sleeping bags we were using as we disposed of years of accumulated possessions. (Have you ever visited a week-long free garage sale? But that’s another story!)

By the way, my parents Joe and Alice Stephens were preparing to accompany us to Missouri in their Chevy pickup towing a U-Haul trailer. They would be carrying the items we wanted to keep and store for an eventual return to the US, and the items we planned to take with us to Jamaica, but we still hadn’t found a vehicle that would get the four of us to Missouri! We were waiting for some money from the four-years-earlier sale of our home in Richland, WA, which we had earmarked for the purchase of a vehicle for our next season of life in Jamaica. If that money had arrived, we would have used it by this time to make a hurried purchase of a vehicle for the trip to Missouri and subsequent support-raising travels in the southeastern states prior to our planned October departure to begin our new life and ministry in the Caribbean.

When Darryl and Martha arrived at our house that day, they told us that God had clearly indicated to them that they were to lend us their big Dodge van to make the trip to Missouri and to use as long as we needed it until time to move to Jamaica! What an amazing offer! But we immediately began to see practical objections to their offer: “How would we return the van to them?” “What would they do for transportation while we drove their van all over the southern states?” Plus a few more! Their response was a simple, “If God wants us to lend you our van, it will all work out! Don’t worry about it!”

So we agreed with the Holy Spirit’s prompting and the Rodmans’ generosity and our immediate transportation need was settled! And we could keep moving forward! That very day, the check for the money we’d been waiting for came in the mail! If the check had come a day earlier or if Rodmans had made their offer a day later, we’d have hurriedly spent the money for a vehicle for our travels and we wouldn’t have had it for the unexpected expenses we encountered over the next four months and for the Ford Escort Station Wagon we purchased in Miami in October and shipped to Jamaica in December and that served us so well during the seven years we lived and ministered in Jamaica!

So we hit the road on schedule, and Rodmans’ van accumulated a lot of miles very quickly! First the initial move to Missouri, then support-raising and friend-making travels across the southern states. We remember a scary late afternoon failure of the radiator and cooling system on a freeway in Missouri, a blessing of generosity and effort by a mechanic in a small Missouri town who stayed open into the night repairing the van and the sent us on our way with enough fried chicken and fixin’s to last us a couple of days. And didn’t even charge us for the repairs!

A couple of months later, after our major travels in the van were done, the church we were working with in Springfield, MO hosted a missions conference. David Crook, a good friend who was pastor of a church in Chehalis, WA attended the conference and he and his wife Janet volunteered to drive the van back to the Northwest and deliver it to Darryl and Martha Rodman! Nobody saw that coming! But God knew all along there’d be a way to get Rodmans’ van back to them!

That was not the only time Darryl and Martha provided us with transportation. About eighteen months later, when we made our first visit back to the US, we flew from Jamaica to Miami to Reno, NV where one of our key supporting churches, New Hope, led by Ray and Ann Stokes, was located. After a few days of ministry and rest in Reno with the Stokes, Darryl and Martha drove to Reno in their same van and picked us up and took us as far as Medford, OR, where long time friends and supporters Tom and Donna Schneider came to get us and drove us to our next stop in Richland, WA. Through the years we served in Jamaica, Darryl and Martha continued to loan us their own vehicles for use on our visits to Northwestern US. Looking back, I think it was largely their generosity and faith that stirred in Jean and me a desire to bless others with transportation and the gift of vehicles.

Since that blessing of the use of Rodmans’ van in 1984, we’ve been able to give cars to several other families. In some cases, giving our own car when we moved from one country to another, in some cases giving our car when we were able to get another one, and in some cases being able to purchase cars specifically to give to someone in need.

Sorry (Not Sorry)! One thought, one memory, leads to another and the stories just keep coming to mind! There have been so many instances and experiences of the faithfulness of God and the generosity of people through the years that it’s almost overwhelming to dive into the stream of remembering!

Here’s a couple of important takeaways from the Rodmans’ Van Story (and subsequent experiences):
• Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s promptings builds faith, and faith acted upon produces blessing and builds faith in others.
• Generosity breeds generosity. Every generous gift sets in motion waves of blessing. The recipient is blessed. The giver is blessed. Those who hear about the generous acts of love and faith are blessed. There’s blessing all around! (2 Corinthians 9:6-15)

Thanks for reading my stories. I hope you find some encouragement and that these stories stir in you some remembering of your own!

As always, I’d love to hear from you in the comments, or with stories of your own!

Grace to you today, Jim Stephens

Medford, Oregon, about 1983

The four years we lived in Medford, from 1980 to 1984, prior to moving overseas as missionaries, were four wonderful years! Those years were filled with the joy of planting a church and caring for the people God brought to us, of being a family (a family that more often than not had other people living with us in our home) and of trying to make the mortgage payment and keep the bills paid every month.

I worked part time at a gas station for much of the time we lived in Medford, and the contacts made there became the key to the growth of the church for a season.

Because money was tight, we were fortunate we could heat our home with wood. We went to the mountains several times each summer and fall to cut wood and our wood cutting expeditions became the basis for some of our most exciting adventures!

One Saturday morning, Jean and I drove north along the I5 freeway just past Central Point to where we had seen some trees blown down by the wind. We found a couple of rutted dirt roads that got us to the trees and I fired up the chain saw and began cutting into the maze of tree trunks and branches while Jean started tossing the cut wood into the old Dodge truck.

I was in a hurry that morning, and the cutting was good so I got careless and violated about three things everyone knows about cutting wood from downed trees. Suddenly, as I stood on one branch while cutting on another branch (Don’t ever do that!), my saw cut released the tension on a trapped limb and it snapped toward me, slamming the saw bar and the rapidly spinning chain into my knee.

I felt the shock of it and saw the cut in my leg with bone and ligament showing white and other stuff showing red. My first thought was, “This is going to ruin a good pair of jeans. I hope we can make shorts of them”! I called to Jean and then limped to the truck and got a towel—not very sanitary of course as it was an old towel I used to wipe oil and grease off the saw. Jean cut the leg of my jeans just above the knee and we wrapped the towel tight around my knee and fastened it with a bungee cord. Jean and I threw the wood we had already cut into the truck and I backed the truck around facing toward the road (no power steering!). Then Jean drove home while I kept pressure on the leg. Going to the ER was not an option as we had no insurance and no extra money.

When we got home, Jean pulled the half-full truck into the alley and into the back yard by the garage. Our neighbors Lyle and Glory and their four-year-old son Christopher were in their back yard and saw me get out of the truck holding the blood-soaked towel to my leg. Immediately Christopher wanted to know what was wrong and when we told him, he said “I want to pray for Jesus to heal your leg!” So I sat on the back step as Lyle, Glory, and Jean laid hands on me and Christopher prayed the simple healing prayer of a four-year-old. Then we went in the house and unwrapped the towel and began to carefully wash the dried blood off my knee and leg so we could see the extent of the damage.

I guess I was still in shock to some degree and so I wasn’t really feeling a lot of pain. As we carefully washed the blood off with a cloth, we were amazed to see that the large, long, ragged wound we had both seen as we wrapped my leg with the towel had already mostly healed, leaving only an inch-long cut that we closed with a small bandage. The knee was slightly stiff and a little sensitive for a couple of days. Now I have a small scar, about an inch long, that reminds me of God’s goodness and through the years, I have had no adverse effect from the injury. I was healed by God’s power released through the simple prayer of a four-year-old child!

I’ve thought about this experience many times since that day, and I’ve come to realize that if we’d had health insurance or if we’d had money to be able to pay for treatment at the Emergency Room, the story would be much different. It would be something like, “Jim cut his leg while using the chain saw and Jean quickly drove Jim to the hospital emergency room. The emergency team cleaned the wound, stitched it up, gave him some antibiotics and pain meds. Jim was instructed to stay off the leg for a few days and come back in if it showed any signs of infection. In two weeks they took out the stitches and all he has to show for it is this three-inch scar that looks kind of like a lightning bolt. And it still hurts a little sometimes. But it’s all good!”

I like the “Christopher prayed for my knee and God healed it” version better, because that’s just how it happened.

Thanks for reading my story! As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments!

Grace to you today, Jim

Jim Stephens

We moved from Bible Way in Richland Washington to Medford Oregon in July of 1980 to start a church. Several people moved to Medford with us to be part of the church planting team.

At first we all lived together in our big house on Lindley Avenue, then the others quickly found housing and work in the area. We started right away with Sunday morning meetings, Sunday evening fun and fellowship gatherings, and Midweek Bible Studies in our home.

After a few months we moved the Sunday morning meetings into rented space. Finances were tight! I soon began doing part-time work as it became available and before long took a part-time regular job at a Texaco Gas Station near our home. My younger brother Bill worked there and actually got me the job!

I had owned a Mobil service station with a partner in 1965 and early 1966 and when I was drafted into the Army during the big troop build up in early 1966, Jean and I simply signed over our share of the business to our partner Don. When I returned from Vietnam at the beginning of 1968 and started school at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, WA, my ex-partner Don gave me a part-time job with fairly flexible hours working evenings and weekends as I attended College.

A few months later a long-time friend proposed that he and I buy a service station as partners. He wanted to get out of the police business and I missed the cars and the customers, so we bought a Texaco Station and named it Jim & Walt’s Midtown Texaco. We ran the business together for about a year and then Walt moved on to greener pastures. The business gradually thrived and we owned and operated Jim’s Midtown Texaco in Richland, WA until selling the business to go into full-time ministry with Bible Way Ministries.

So when I took the part-time job at Dahl’s Texaco in Medford I actually had more service station and mechanic experience than anyone else on staff! Dick Dahl, the boss, was gracious and helpful and allowed me to work as much as I could, but was flexible and understanding of my additional responsibilities as pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship. I usually opened the station on weekdays and then worked until everyone had lunch then went home. I was off by 2 or so most days.

The service station became a point of contact with the community and a point of growth for our little church! Several key people who became part of Grace Bible Fellowship came as a result of my meeting them on the pump island and getting acquainted and inviting them to church.

One Monday morning, I arrived for work, opened up for business, and took in a service job on a van for Norco, a company that delivered oxygen to doctors, clinics, residences, and the local hospital. They used 1-ton vans that were too big to fit into our service bays to service on the lifts, so they had to be serviced lying on one’s back on a creeper with a drain pan and a hand operated grease gun in front of the station. It was a dirty and messy and thoroughly unpleasant job to do!

The company had three of these vans and we had the service contract for all of them. As it worked out, we probably serviced one of them a month and when one came in it turned out to be a “stall and avoid” thing for the three employees who worked on service jobs. On this morning, I had come in wearing a freshly laundered uniform, and as the other two guys showed up and we checked the job list, everyone began to find ways to avoid going out and servicing the van. It had to be done by noon, so after doing my share of trying to avoid the task, I grabbed the creeper and drain pan and grease gun and headed out to get it done.

I pulled the van around to the pad, blocked the wheels, lay down on the creeper, and proceeded to drain the oil, replace the filter, diligently grease the chassis and suspension joints, and check the fluids and tires.

As I finished the job, rolled the creeper from under the van, and stood up wiping my greasy hands on a greasy, oily rag, I heard The Voice! I heard The Voice say, with just the hint of a smile behind it, “You’re not going to be doing this much longer!” And as I heard it, I knew God was pleased and that a much-longed for change was coming. Somehow.

That same evening, one of the key couples in the church phoned and asked if they could come over and talk for a few minutes. If you’ve ever been the pastor of a small church, you know the icy chill that floods over you when you hear the words, “Pastor Jim, we’d like to come over and talk for a few minutes this evening. Is that all right?” and I said, “Sure, come on over! See you in a few minutes!”

When Chuck and Donna came in, everything seemed fine, and some of the apprehension began to dissipate. We did “small talk” for a couple of minutes, then Chuck said, “What we wanted to talk to you about is: We’ve sold a piece of property in California and we’d like to give a tithe of the money to the church! Is that all right?”

The tithe that Chuck and Donna gave became the boost to the church finances that we’d been praying and hoping for. Within just over a week, I was able to quit the job at the Texaco station and become a full-time pastor to Grace Bible Fellowship. That gift lifted our spirits, freed my time to lead the church, and led to one of the most fruitful seasons of ministry that we experienced at Grace Bible Fellowship from the time we started in 1980 until Jean and I left to become missionaries in Jamaica in 1984.

That experience in 1982 or ‘83 wasn’t the last time we felt the pressure of tight finances or felt hindered in doing what we believed God was calling us to do because of financial limitations. But this experience has always been there as a memorial, a reminder, a call to act in faith because of the unfailing faithfulness of our good God!

By the way, that wasn’t the only time I’ve heard “The Voice” through the years. There have been a few other times and I plan to tell you those stories as we reach them chronologically in this series of God Encounter Stories. And I still struggle a bit sometimes when people say. “God Told Me…” and I still hesitate to say “God Told Me…” when I’m remembering one of my own experiences.

But here’s the thing, I’ve heard “The Voice” referred to as the inaudible but unmistakable voice of God and I’m okay with that. My experiences have normally been that “The Voice” is something I hear on the inside. It’s normally not religious sounding in form or tone or content. In fact, it usually sounds a lot like my own voice when I’m meditating or praying. Anyhow that’s the way it’s usually been for me.

I’d love to hear from you with comments or questions. So far, there have been more than I expected. I’ll do my best to respond.

Grace to you today!

Jim Stephens