In 2001, as the world struggled to grasp the reality that America had been attacked on it's own soil, I had my own reasons for being dazed. While my heart was broken for the tragic loss during the terrorist attacks, I was also quickly falling in love with an amazing woman that would one day become my wife and prove to truly be a Godsend for His eternal purposes. In October, I met Alecia as I was serving as an intern at Teenmania Ministries in Garden Valley, TX. Alecia grew up near Nashville, TN but at the time of our first encounter she was attending New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in pursuit of her Master's of Divinity. You may be thinking, "How did you two meet being so far away?" Well, we had the thrilling experience of meeting each other in a Christian chat room long before it had become "cool" to meet someone over the internet. We hit it off right away! After a riveting first conversation, we began to exchange emails and then that led to several late night phone calls. It didn't take long for us to realize that we were made for each other.
In 2000, Alecia had spent some time in Costa Rica as a short-term missionary during the same time that I had been in Venezuela serving in the same kind of work. God had long birthed a desire in both of us as individuals to reach people around the world who had never heard of Jesus Christ. When Alecia was 8 years old, she told her mother that she wanted to be a missionary. Little did anyone know, God was already compelling this special little girl to offer up her life to ministering to a lost world. He had done the same in me. When I was 13, I gave my life to the Lord and in less than a month I was preaching at every church in northeast Alabama that would allow me to join them in worship. I too knew that God was calling me to give my life back to the Him for His work in ministry.
After a brief interruption in our correspondence, Alecia and I met in person for the first time as I traveled up to Pleasant View, TN from my home in Fyffe, Alabama. I visited her there for three weekends in a row and on the fourth week I took the plunge and drove into her hometown with everything I owned, $25 cash and an old clunker of a car. God had brought us together with love and with a common desire for ministry. He began our journey that neither of us could have ever imagined for ourselves. We had only dated for 4 months when I already wanted to ask her to marry me. I wanted to at least appear responsible, so I waited another 4 months and finally popped the question. We spent the next 3 months preparing for our wedding and after only 11 months after meeting in person, we were standing before our family and friends saying our vows. It was truly an amazing (and emotional) day.
The "honeymoon" seemed to last for at least 2 years. We spent countless hours together in our new life and home. I had began working for a lawn care company soon after I arrived in TN and I continued to work there for almost 5 years. Alecia and I attended church often but we seemed to always struggle with finding a place to really settle in. It seemed that the more we trenched ourselves into our life in TN the more restless we became. Three years into our marriage, we had bought a nice house and we both had most anything we wanted in life. Something was missing in our lives and we were oblivious to that fact. We had our first child in 2005, a boy, Hudson Blake Williams. He was truly a gift from God. He enriched our lives greatly as we stumbled through all the wonderful experiences of early parenthood. Yet, something still seemed to be missing.
Alecia had noticed that I was becoming increasingly restless and so on one monumental night she posed a memorable question to me as we laid in bed. She asked, "When you get to the end of your life, what do think you will look back on and be the most fulfilled by?" In short, God was using my wife's words to bring me to a crossroads that would force me to decide what I was going to do with my life. Something had to change. As we talked through the skills I had acquired, the career paths I had often considered, and the current opportunity that I had to advance in my job, none of it seemed to be the answer. She didn't even have to say what she was thinking. We both knew that God had called us into a life of full-time ministry and somehow we had let 5 years slip by without pursuing that call. We looked at each other and smiled.
After that, I didn't hear anything about the whole thing for several days. One day, Alecia casually asked me which city I would be open to living in. I didn't think much of the gravity of the questions she was posing. I answered like we were talking about what we were going to have for dinner. My final answer was Kansas City, MO. I had always been a Kansas City Chiefs fan and I liked the idea of living in the middle of the country for a change. I had never really even been out of the south and I really didn't even know what any other place was like. Several days later Alecia was filling out some paperwork and I asked her what it was all about. She said, "I am enrolling you at Midwestern Baptist College in Kansas City, MO." I smiled because the idea was exciting to me. She had taken the initiative to follow God's leading for how we ought to prepare for the ministry work that He had called us both to serve. We began to discuss the details after that and then as our feet were moving God began to confirm that we were headed in the right direction. The day before we were going to put our house of the market, we had a knock at the door by a man that want to buy our house right away. We sold the house to him for more that what we had even paid for it. We still had 4 months before the fall semester was to begin and now we didn't have anywhere to live. We found a temporary place to stay and then in August 2006 our little family of 3 departed with all that we owned. We drove into Kansas City not knowing one person. As we pulled onto the campus, tears streamed down my face. I called Alecia and we laughed and cried together at the same time. I had never felt so much peace in all of my life. Our journey in ministry was continuing with a move of faith to prepare for a life in ministry.
We hadn't planned to seek out a ministry opportunity at any churches, but God quickly provided one instead. In January 2007, we accepted an opportunity to serve in the youth and evangelism ministries of a local church. A few months later, in July, we had our second child, a girl, Haven Blakelee Williams. For more than 3 years God used us in ways that we both felt unworthy and incapable of doing. It was a growing experience to be in our first place of ministry and God continued to shape us for what He had in store for the future. In April 2010, we had our third child, a boy, Hadlee Brock Williams. Later that summer, we left that church as the Lord lead us and we had nowhere else to go. After preaching in a few churches around Kansas City, the Lord led us to Pastor a church north of Kansas City. I remember thinking, "Lord, I am only 28 years old. I never expected to be a pastor at such a young age." Again, we felt inadequate to serve where God knew He wanted to use us. It seems that at every turn, we had always had a sobering sense of dependence upon God's power and providence as we followed His guidance into the next season of His work through us.
We were blessed with our fourth child, a another boy, Hunter Brodee Williams in February of 2012. After spending almost two years as Pastors of this rural church that we had grown tremendously close to, God began to draw us away for yet another season of ministry. During this time, we had grown especially close to a very special man of God at our church. He became like a family member and it became increasingly evident that God would use Him in amazing ways in our lives in the coming years. In late spring of 2012, we began to pray about where God would use us to serve Him. Every step of the way during this process was emotionally draining and we found ourselves being poured out with little energy to gain some much needed clarity about God's direction. We became increasingly unsettled as we sought out common ministry opportunities that we had always been a part of in the past. Sleepless nights, despair, and anxiety grieved us as we prayed that God would continue to use us where we were because we could not gain clarity about where we were to go.
The Lord then opened our eyes and reminded us of our common desire to reach the lost around the world as missionaries with the message of Jesus Christ. The very mention of it brought peace to our restless hearts. That peace blossomed into an escalating joy. Our joy burst with more and more excitement each day as we prayed to be sure of God's leading. We had spent years talking about one day reaching out to people in southeast Asia but never really fully committing to leave our lives in America to go. Alecia and I had always had a great compassion for people in that area and we had prayed for them often. As we began to discuss in greater detail about where we might go and how we could get there, the Lord began to shine His light on our path. We researched several countries throughout southeast Asia but one seemed to spur a divine interest in us with every detail we learned. We read about a little country called Cambodia for days and grew increasingly burdened for the people there. As the Lord confirmed His desire in our hearts, we surrendered ourselves completely to a commitment that would carry our family of 7 almost 10,000 miles around the world to a place where less than 2% of the population are believers in Jesus Christ. Our journey to Cambodia had begun.
No comments:
Post a Comment