A New Creature In Christ

This year has been an amazing year. A lot has happened. I'm going to share what has happened in Ben's life. I asked Ben if he wanted to write it but he decided he was going to let me do it. Here's a little bit of the back story. Ben and me come from strong church families. When moving to Traverse City, we had a hard time finding a church that we liked. Our jobs at the time required us working Sundays and soon gave up the search. When Riley was born, I felt the need again to find a church. I wanted her to have the great experiences that we did growing up. I started going to West Side Community Church with my sister and anytime Ben had off he would go with us. Ben would go but it did it more for the social part of it and for Riley. Skip forward to last fall, I encouraged Ben to go to Grief Support, a small group that our church was hosting. (Ben lost his brother in 93' and his dad in 05') You could see God starting to work slowly in Ben's life and Ben opening up to it more. Ben had never fully dealt with his brother's death and I had worried that he would do the same with his dad's. Guy's Stuff started shortly after Grief Support and after the first couple of weeks, God moved in amazing ways in that group. It really opened his eyes and Ben decided that he could and didn't want to do it alone and gave his life to God. They ended the first year of Guy's Stuff with a retreat. He came home from that weekend a changed man. He told me he had had closure to alot of issues he had with his childhood and with his dad and wasn't doing his job as husband and father. At this point I was a little confused. Ben is a wonderful husband and father. When I questioned him, he said that he wasn't taking on the role as a spiritual leader and wasn't setting a good example for the girls but planned to do so from now on. We have always had a good relationship and family life but things are even better. We try to do when we can devotions and include the girls too. The girls love reading from their Bible and are always asking questions. Which now brings us to this past Sunday night. Ben with commiting his life to Christ, showed his faithfulness by being baptized in water. It was an awesome night. Ben, you have made so many changes over the course of this year and I am truly proud of the man of faith you have become. I thank God every day for you and look forward to seeing what God has in store for you and our family!