Ministry part 2

I know I know I said that I would get to part 2 the next day!!! Well then life happened???

Eric put in his notice with his corporate job...they were very supportive...and we were off! I had been working very hard for the months prior to his leaving getting all the business end of things ready. Bank accounts, registering with the state, choosing a board of directors, writing bylaws and the big daddy of them all...getting our 501c3 so that we would be a legitimate non profit organization. This was an all consuming process for me...since we didn't have the resources to pay a lawyer to write it all, I researched and did it myself....that is a blog for another time!!!

I really had an expectation that when Eric quit his job....there would be churches coming out of the wood work to have him speak....they would give a love offering and we would supplement with our retirement money....that did NOT happen!! Oh Eric was busy alright...people and speaking opportunities were coming like crazy but all of them were NON PAYING!! He was speaking at public schools and sporting events sharing his testimony . He was getting calls daily to speak or meet with someone....so we lived on the retirement money. We never wanted to have a big banquet and ask for money but ever so slowly people started hearing about what we were doing and they wanted to get involved. If it hadn't been for our parents and a core group of supporters I don't know how we would have made it!

Here we are 3 years later and Eric still speaks to schools, teams and does lots of mentoring. Our own money ran out last year and I can't tell you how we have made it but we have! The Lord continues to send people our way who want to be involved with our ministry. We have big dreams with the students locally and with mission trips that we want to take....how will we do that?? I don't know but I have to believe that He will provide as he has so many times before.

I will tell you that we are overwhelmed at how others have come along side of us and helped send us into the places that we have been called. I will also tell you that I am often frustrated because there are those of us who are willing to go and many other who are willing to give it ALL up to serve all over the world and the thing that holds us back is a lack of funds. Personally I think this is a sad thing with the resources that we as Americans have been blessed with. God has given so many so much and it is wasted on material things. I am TOTALLY not against having "stuff" but when you look at your bank account it should reflect a giving heart! That is a good blog for later as well!! :)

I've been gone!!

(Don't know why this one is cut off??? If you click on it you can see the whole thing)


I have missed you guys!! We got a call about 10 days ago and were asked if we wanted a beach house for a week in Destin....there was a cancellation and we could leave in 2 days. We were finishing up a week of end of year testing and it was crazy but we pulled it together and left!!! What a huge blessing!!!! We haven't been away alone as a family for 3 years so it was greatly appreciated. The house was beautiful and we were spoiled to the beautiful beach! I LOVE THE BEACH!!!!

pictures

Remember that Lindsey was going to a photo shoot with a photographer from NY...well they came in...and here are two of them....crazy! She did not want me to post them...she didn't want to seem prideful.....but well I AM proud of her!!!!

Fashion show

Pictures of my girl in a fashion show at the church for young girls and their mama's. The point being that you can dress really cute and modest! Always proud of her!

How we got started in the ministry.

I love to tell our story. It is a story about how the Lord grew our faith, but I have been reluctant to write about it....why....because sometimes it is hard for me to convey tone in written word. So let me start off by saying this....EVERYTHING that resembles faith in our lives is from the Lord.....this is not a story about how awesome Eric and Michele Helms are...on the contrary....it is a story about the Lords faithfulness. I also want to say that there are so many who have sacrificed SOOOO much. Many have literally given their lives for Christ and many many missionaries have given up all their "worldly" goods to go and serve the Lord in countries of great poverty or persecution....in comparison.....we have NO sacrifice!

I started thinking that the Lord was calling Eric into ministry about 6 years ago....I didn't say anything because you have to be God called and not mama or wife called! 5 years ago Eric started expressing, much to his disbelief, he thought the Lord was calling him to some type of ministry. Now don't misunderstand.....he wanted to serve he just couldn't believe that the Lord would use him...he felt very unworthy....at the time he had been saved for 16 years out of a life of being a "thug"....as he describes himself....It took almost 9 months before Eric surrendered to the call to serve full time.

Oddly enough I thought that he would surrender and then suddenly all these doors would open....that is not the way that it happened....I will blog on that another time....needless to say my type A personality was put to the test!!!

While we were not sure exactly what the Lord wanted us to do...we knew what we were not supposed to do.....we did begin to pray that the Lord would make our path clear. While Eric continued to work his full time job in the corporate world we started getting everything ready....we decided on a name...Driven to Encourage Ministries...and we started getting all the legal stuff in order. It was a HUGE amount of research and work...but all along the way the Lord brought just what we needed to get the task accomplished!

We then started praying about how we were going to pay the bills......again my plans were very different than the Lords....His way required much more faith and dependence on Him???? Funny how He is about that??? Eric has such an awesome captivating testimony...I thought that churches would start calling wanting him to come and share with their people and we would get paid for that....but that was not the plan for us....God started opening doors slowly for Eric to mentor young men..which he loves...and also he started having the opportunity to share his testimony to some really small youth groups and Bible studies.....there was NO money coming in and Eric was still working his full time job. We both knew that he was supposed to quit....our only debt is our house and it has quite a bit of equity but it is small...with a small payment...we couldn't rent cheaper...so we didn't feel that we were supposed to sell it but we did entertain that thought.

After much much prayer...we decided to move all our retirement money over to an account that we could use.....it was not very large but after taxes and penalties we knew we could live on it for 18 months or longer if other money came in....so Eric put in his notice...............more tomorrow!

Nashville trip

We had such a great time in Nashville! These are a few pictures from our trip. We might have climbed a fence to get some of the pictures??? :)