Dear Praying Friends and Family,
Benjamin and I have an announcement to make. Some of you have heard this news already as we have asked you to pray with us about this decision, but we are making a public announcement at Upper Room Bible Church this week and are ready to share with everyone the news of how God is leading our family into a new season.
This is our announcement in brief: We have been offered, and are accepting, a full-time ministry position for Ariel Ministries at Camp Shoshanah in upstate New York. Our family will be moving in May to begin this new position.
For further explanation, I am pasting below part of the announcement that Benjamin is sharing at Upper Room Bible Church, which explains our history with Camp Shoshanah and how God has recently led us back to this ministry. I apologize for any confusion you may have after reading my description in our last blog post / prayer letter of how our family is currently serving at our present home church in Illinois.
Before I paste Benjamin's explanation, I want to share two things:
1) Our family is very excited about this opportunity to serve full-time with a ministry whose work we whole-heartedly support. We marvel at the ways we have seen God's hand at work in the details guiding us to this destination and look forward to all that the Lord will teach us as we serve Him in New York.
2) We have CHERISHED our time in Illinois with our Upper Room Bible Church family and grieve the separation with all of our friends here. We feel as though this has been a safe harbor for our young family and we are now putting out into open waters. We are so grateful to have been a part of this loving and God-honoring church family and treasure every memory made here.
Now, from Benjamin:
"Dear church family, I have some exciting news. Some of you already know as we told the Youth last week during our very late Christmas party; but, at the end of May, we will be moving to upstate New York to serve full time with Ariel Ministries. We are excited for this opportunity to join a ministry that is very dear to mine and Megan’s heart. I would like to spend the next few minutes explaining how this ministry has been a huge part of our life.
So let me give you the quick history. We are going to go all the way back to 1960 where a man named Jacob, and later his son Allen, worked at a Christian summer camp called camp Heathcote, located in upstate New York. Many years later, in 1974, the camp was given to Arnold Fruchtenbaum, founder of Ariel Ministries who had attended Memory Camp on this campus as a boy. The name of the camp was changed to Camp Shoshanah (Home - Ariel Ministries Camp Shoshanah), and the emphasis was switched from a children’s camp to a university-level Bible teaching camp. Fast forward 34 years, and now the granddaughter of Jacob was working at Camp Shoshanah. Her name was Megan, my wife, and she worked there from 2012-2017. In 2015 she received an offer to go and tour Israel with the founder, Arnold Fruchtenbaum, for a 5-week tour.
In 2015 I was living in Northern Maine, single, and had no ideas of what the future would hold. My pastor at that time came up to me one summer month and said that a school was starting in upstate New York and he thought I should go. The name of the school was Ariel School of Messianic and Jewish Studies (Home - Ariel College of the Bible and Messianic Jewish Studies). He let me know that this was an intensive, one-year, Christian school that focused on the cultural perspective that the Bible was written in, and he encouraged me to pray about it. I felt the Lord clearly tell me that He wanted me to go to this school. And the Lord provided for me to go in some very miraculous ways, ways that I would love to share if anyone is interested later. This school by the way is run by Ariel Ministries (Home - Ariel Ministries™), the same ministry that runs Camp Shoshanah, and they are both on the same campus in upstate New York.
During that year, I fell in love with the Word of God. It was like a veil was lifted on the Bible and I finally could read it with understanding and comprehension. While at that school, I also received a scholarship from Arnold Fruchtenbaum to go and tour Israel with him for 5 weeks. It was on this tour that I met Megan. A little fun fact that Megan and I learned was Arnold was trying to set us up with each other on that tour - something that we are forever grateful for. After the tour Megan and I worked together at Camp Shoshanah, and 2 years later we got married. The gentleman who married us was Mottel Baleston and he is one of the teachers at Camp Shoshanah. We got married at the church that Megan attended, which is about 10 miles from the camp. We then moved to Northern Maine and lived there for 2 years.
Ever since Megan and I got married, we have both had a desire to join and work for a ministry. So, when an opportunity came to move to Illinois and work for relatives in Loda, who seemed to have a ministry that we could join and work for, it seemed like an answer to prayer. We both felt that this was an open door from the Lord. We moved and signed a 5-year contract to work for our relatives. But, as many of you know, that job fell through within a few weeks of us moving here. Our 5-year plan of moving to Illinois and working for a ministry fell through. But instead of rushing back home to New York or Maine we prayed and felt the Lord tell us to stay and commit the next 5 years to Him to grow in our work skills, ministry skills and family. And because of Upper Room Bible Church and the kindness of the people here I was reemployed at a new job within one week. It was because of this church family that we were able to stay and thrive in this little town of Paxton.
Over the past 5 years, we have grown in our work skills and family, but it was only in the past 2 years we had the opportunity to work on our ministry skills. This came through going on a trip to the Philippines with Dave and Paul Hohulin and by leading the youth group here at URBC. Doing these things have helped solidify the desire to be in full time ministry.
It was out of that desire that this past spring we had decided I would quit my full time HVAC job and start a part time handyman business and look for a ministry to join. That’s when the Elders approached us and asked if instead of looking elsewhere to serve would we be willing to serve a year here at Upper Room Bible Church? We were incredibly honored to have been asked; and, on the same day that we said we would like to serve at Upper Room, someone else contacted me. It was Mottle Baleston; the man who had married us. He said that Camp Shoshanah was in need of a cook for the summer. This offer seemed like a great way to go back to our old stomping grounds, see family in New England whom we had not visited since we moved out here, and have a summer to restart and reset before coming back to Paxton to serve here. So, we went back to New York to work at Camp Shoshanah for the summer.
While at camp, the new CEO of Airel Ministries, Dr. Tim Sigler, approached me and asked if I would be interested in a full-time position at Camp Shoshanah: to be one of the permanent caretakers of the facility and a representative of Ariel Ministries to the surrounding area. This offer was exciting, but we told Dr. Sigler that we had already made a commitment to our church and that we would need time to really pray about this and to talk to our elders about it.
When we got back to Illinois, we informed the Elders of this offer from Ariel Ministries and asked them if they still wanted us to continue this year with the position of youth director at URBC. And to that they said they still wanted us to serve here for the year even if we ended up deciding to take the position at Camp Shoshanah. In early December, Megan and I, after much prayer, decided that we would accept this position with Ariel Ministries in upstate New York.
"What will we be doing for Ariel Ministries?" you might be asking. Well, during the summer, Camp Shoshanah has over 150 students from around the world who come to hear university level Bible teaching. I will be in charge of the kitchen: preparing 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, for 200 people. During the off-season, I will function as one of the caretakers: looking out for the well-being of the facility, which sits on 800 acres in the Adirondak mountains. Also, we will function as representatives for Ariel Ministries. This will involve traveling to local churches in the New England area to teach and show them what Ariel Ministries is and what they have to offer. You have all already been exposed to much of the material of Ariel Ministries as every time I have taught in this church it has been mostly from Ariel’s material.
I know that was a lot about me and my family and what we have been through, but Megan and myself both felt that you deserved to know and hear directly from us what the Lord has done in our life and what we see Him continuing to do. I cannot overemphasize how thankful we are to this church and how the people here have invested in us. We have felt such closeness to many of you, and we can truly say that you have become family. And because of this we don’t feel as though we are abandoning our family, but we feel as though we have been equipped by our family for the work of the gospel and that we are being sent out to continue that work in New York. So, I want to personally thank this church for all of your prayers that you have offered up for us, thank you for the unbelievable kindness you have shown us, and a huge thank you for the opportunity to serve alongside you.
..."
We are excited for this opportunity! Even though there are some unknowns ahead of us and this change will not come without some trials, we trust that the Lord is the one who provides and that it is He who goes before us.
We take encouragement from Moses in Deuteronomy 31:8 when he told the Israelites before going into the promised land: “The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” And from Joshua 1:9, which says,
"Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."
Thank you for reading this long update! We will be letting you know later how you can partner with us as we transition into full-time ministry with Ariel's Camp Shoshanah.
Please be in prayer with us for:
1) Our URBC church family and the transition our move will cause for them next year.
2) For our family as we seek to serve well and finish strong in the ministries we listed in our last newsletter.
3) For our move to New York this June!
(The family we mentioned in our last newsletter whose house had burned down on Thanksgiving Day are temporarily renting a house while making long-term plans. Thank you for praying!)
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out!
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Benjamin and Megan at Camp Shoshanah in 2017 |
His,
Benjamin & Megan,
Nathaniel, Evangella, Mariyah, Jason