life as we know it...

Life as we know it is about to change in a HUGE way. Who am I kidding, it's already started! God has asked us to walk by faith and put all of our eggs in His basket, so that if He doesn't show up, we're sunk! It's been an extremely exciting couple of months, and it isn't about to change :)

In the past months, we have seen God do some amazing things. We felt God's direction to sell Ben's business, God gave Ben an opportunity to be ordained, we were invited to join a full-time ministry team (in April), and after 2.5 years we found out we were pregnant! WOW has the Lord been showing up greatly in our lives!!!

Here is a copy of the letter we sent out to some of our loved ones (written by Ben):

Dear Friends and Family,

This year looks to be one of great change for the Thackers!

Since very early in our marriage we both had a great desire to be involved in vocational ministry, yet we never felt freedom from the Lord to pursue it. This past summer all of that began to change. As we began praying about how the Lord was leading us in that direction, we began to feel freedom to pursue a role in vocational ministry. This year, Ben pursued the Lord’s calling to be ordained. After much preparation with Pastors in Indiana and with our mentor Colin in North Carolina, Ben was ordained as a minister of the Gospel on December 2nd.

During one of our training sessions in North Carolina, we had the opportunity to meet with some of the team members of Eternal Truth Ministries. We enjoyed a sweet time of fellowship and were able to express to them our desire to partner with them in their efforts of making disciples. After the ordination in December, the board approved bringing us on as full time team members!

Since then we have begun to prepare for this large move that we have ahead of us. It is our goal to be able to move down to North Carolina in April. From all worldly perspectives, this seems impossible with all that has to fall into place. In order to move we have to sell Ben’s business, sell our home, and raise support to meet our needs to be full time missionaries. While this seems impossible in a few short months, we feel this is the time frame God is giving us. We are moving forward in faith knowing that we serve a God who is not concerned with normal time frames!

We are excited about this opportunity because God has richly grown us and blessed us through this ministry and impacted our lives tremendously. We have prayed and dreamed about joining this team since before we were married! First and foremost, our roles there will be to be disciple-makers; that is the heartbeat of ETM and is always the number one priority. As we transition, while we are building new relationships in North Carolina we will maintain our current discipleship relationships, as well as seek new disciple-making opportunities. The other aspects of our ministry will be property management and administrative tasks. In using the skills God has given us through previous work experience, we hope to alleviate some of the pressures of the current ETM team.

We know to make this happen, we need a strong prayer support team as we transition and for a fruitful ministry, If you would like to be a part of this team, here are some specific requests:
-Ben will be meeting Tuesday 1/22 with a potential buyer for his business
-For our home to sell quickly as we hope to list it in the next few weeks
-For a prayer support team
-For a financial support team
-For God’s perfect timing in when Jess needs to inform her employers of her leaving
-And for Baby Thacker who will make his or her appearance in early September 2013!!! J

If you have any questions or would like to talk about joining either of our support teams, we would sincerely love an opportunity to talk more about this!