The Desire of Their Hearts

I got my degree in architecture from Notre Dame in ’72 and was nationally certified and registered to practice in seven states. I had a successful practice for more than 20 years in Nevada. So how in the world did my wife, Carol, and I end up living as the resident directors of Oakwood/Slater residence hall with 99 freshmen males for the past 10 years?

The Lord blessed our business life, allowing us to work together. As our daughter and son grew, we found our hearts tugged toward the younger people of our church. We were asked to teach senior high Sunday school, and that led to our leading youth group. The blessings of our business life ended up facilitating our desire to work with youth for more than 12 years!

Then we noticed that the desire of our hearts was changing as young people graduated from high school and disappeared from the church. God had led our own children to Bethel College, and we watched the incredible growth they experienced here. Our hearts were now being tugged toward the college-aged. In ways that are very clear to us now, but were difficult to understand at the time, the Lord helped us to close down our business, sell our home and move to northern Indiana. We knocked at the door of Bethel College and told them that we didn’t care what they had for us to do, but we knew that we were supposed to be there!

Henry Blackaby, in his book “Experiencing God,” points out that, “Since we know that God is always at work in the world … we should always be looking to see where He is at work, and when He shows us, we should join Him in His work.”

Here in Oakwood/Slater Hall, we’ve been involved with nearly 1,000 young men at a critical point in their lives! We may have seen some things that we’d rather not have, but by far the desires of our hearts were fulfilled by the Lord! Each of our paths is different, but I highly recommend “joining Him in His work!”

And I haven’t even mentioned the six incredible grand-children born while we worked here!