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