My Father is a pastor. In 1975, He had accepted an invitation to be the dean of students for a private Christian prep school. He was thrilled with the prospect of a new and very different challenge. But before the moving van was packed, but after the church said its warm good-bye, the school had some form of difficulty and removed the job offer. Therefore, my father was not only deeply disappointed, he was unemployed. It was a very low point in my Dad's life.

The job search ended in Lancaster California where he because the senior pastor of a great church. I was a freshman in college. That summer I went to my new home in Lancaster forvacation. It was there that I was quite taken by the beautiful church pianist who was a senior in high school. A couple years of friendship with Kay turned into courtship and later marriage. I had never connected the dots until I recently was talking to my dad about that difficult time of unemployment. My kids were in the room. You would not believe the look on their faces as we suddenly realized that if that school had not removed the job offer, they would not be here.

In 1978, after recieving his MBA, my brother David was working for a small and rapidly growing software company in the Seattle area - yes, it was Microsoft. The owner called him (guess who) to let him go. He quickly landed a job with Exxon in Houston Texas. As he was preparing for the move, David's wife Vivian was given the news that she had cervical cancer that needed to be removed as soon as possible. They chose to postpone the treatments until they settled in Texas. A few days later, they were at a specialist's office in Texas who said; "I do not know anything about cancer, but I do know that you are pregnant." The 'cancer' that was to be removed by the Seattle doctor is named Gregory. He recently graduated from UCLA with a double major, married and moved to Japan to spend his first year of marriage teaching english. God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His name.

As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of this ministry we have looked at our history. There were countless events that happened, that from our earthly eyes, were absolutely necessary precursors to the start of this ministry. I will share just one of those event as told my Warren Christie, who is writing our history:

The movement of Christian youth rallies that started in the thirties expanded further with the millions of soldiers

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