Our new journey...

I am finally able to share on Facebook and the blogosphere that the Gadmans are beginning a new journey in ministry! After 7 years as Pastor of Family Ministries at University Baptist Church in Houston, we are actually leaving the great state of Texas and heading to Mississippi! And we could not be more excited! This has been such a long process for us and God has taught us so much that there is no way to tell the whole story in one blog post. But I will give you the summary of God’s goodness.

Jason is going to be the Student Pastor at Pinelake Church in Brandon, MS.  Pinelake is a very large church with multi campuses and we began to talk to them in March about a different position. Jason met with two of the senior staff at the Hobby airport and came home and said that he felt a strong connection with them, and it felt natural and good and we were excited to see where it would go. They called soon after to say they were going with someone else for the position they had talked to him about, but they felt a strong connection with him and wanted to know if he would be interested in talking about a different position. We had decided long ago in our marriage and ministry to never close a door on a possibility but let God do the door closing. So we began to talk about student ministry as a possibility.

After many phone interviews, Jason and I went to visit July 4^th weekend, and walked around the whole weekend with our mouths open in awe that God would allow us to serve in such an amazing place. When we left, we knew that was where God wanted us. We even kind of seriously joked with each other about quitting our jobs and moving there even if he didn’t get the job. We loved the community, we have always wanted to raise our boys in a smaller area where they would have the opportunity to be involved in more things, but yet have a more laid back atmosphere. And we loved the church. There are so many things about it that we have always dreamed of in a church. When we came back, we felt like we had left a part of ourselves in Mississippi.

They called that week to say that they really loved us and thought we would be a great fit. But that they needed to wait a little bit because they needed to do some staff reorganization first. And they didn’t know how long it would take and they didn’t expect us to wait on them if God opened another door somewhere else. It was kind of a devastating call to get. We were ready to move. But over the next two months, God taught us so much about His sovereignty, trusting Him and about prayer. We learned to pray in faith for miracles and that He is the God of the impossible, but we also learned to pray for his will to be done and his kingdom work to be accomplished. And we finally got to a point of giving it back to him and acknowledging that if it didn’t happen, it would be ok. We trusted him. It was a hard waiting period, but I wouldn’t change it for anything.

After two months, we thought about calling them to check in on Monday, Sept. 23^rd. But over the weekend, Jason really felt convicted that we wanted God to do this, not us. So we prayed that day, that they would contact us before 6:00 if God still had that door open. And would you believe, they emailed him at 5:30?! Chills. And they were ready to pick up the conversations again if we were. They were going to call us on the 10^th to arrange the next step of the process and instead called on Oct. 2 to say they wanted us there on Oct. 21^st to meet the personnel team. So we went, and when the plane landed, I said, “We’re home”.

We have been praying for a long time that when God was ready to move us that it would be as clear to us as it was for the Israelites to follow the pillar of cloud and fire. And it has been that clear. We are so thankful and grateful for all that He as blessed us with in this process. Jason starts his new ministry role on Dec. 1 and the boys and I will follow at Christmas to let them finish the semester. They are doing well with moving. I’ll do another post with more details on that. You can check out our new church at www.pinelake.org. We will be at the Reservoir campus. He will be leading the student team, middle school through college. God has called Jason to be a coach of a team, and he is so excited to lead this team to change the lives of students in Mississippi! Once we get settled, we would love to have visitors and show off God’s goodness!