Seasons PT. 3

So....let's try to wrap this up.

You see just over three years ago God called me and Terri Lynn to move to Cheyenne from Gillette to help Jeff plant Element Church.

Sometime the next month we shared the news with Terri Lynn's parents, and with Ben and Jill(Terri Lynn's sister and bro-in law--who were also living in Gillette at the time).

So, here are Jan and Terry living in Alabama. And there two daughters and son-in-laws are both going to sell their homes in Gillette and move their families down to Cheyenne to do this Element Church thing with absolutely no guarantees on this end. They were excited for us. They may not have totally understood all of it--not sure we did . But they were happy for us. So immediately they started to follow Element Church from afar. Janice always read our blogs and listened the Jeff's sermons. Sometimes it seemed she knew more what was going on then we did! She was one of our biggest fans.

Here's the kicker. You see ---in my humble opinion--when Janice started to follow Element Church down in Alabama, she did NOT have a relationship with Jesus. She had professed faith in Jesus as a young child. Even raised her own kids in church. But for the last twenty years had done very little that would tell others that she knew anything about this man named Jesus.
That all changed when we launched Element Church. Soon she was discussing the sermons with my wife. Then came that day in the car I wrote about earlier. Thats when I knew that she had come back "home" to Jesus. What a glorious day!

Shortly after Janice died and went home to be with the LORD, I was talking to my friend Dereck. He kind of knew most of the story. I was talking to him about the "coincidence" of my article about "seasons" hitting the paper the same day Jan died. He said " Ya creepy--In a good way". He then said "Well, Element Church just sent their first person to Heaven!" "What do you mean?" I asked. He said "Well if I'm understanding this right, the fact that you were willing to risk and come down here and plant this church is a big reason that Jan came back home to Jesus". "Ya I guess" I said. "Well" he said " the way I see it is that your mother-in-law is in Heaven today because of you." "And I think that is THE best gift a son-in-law could ever give their mother-in-law!" " And because of that, Element has just sent their first person to Heaven". Wow! Obviously I didn't know what to say. Still don't. Thanks DMan.

Like Jeff says--"for the one". We would do all of this over again for one person coming "HOME".

Grant