Genevieve C. West

We gave ourselves five weeks to move, praying all the time that the Lord would tell us if we needed to leave sooner. We didn't know anyone where we were going, had no job lined up, had no place to live once we got there. We just knew the Lord would provide for us. We even held the destination loosely and prayed that the Lord would direct our path and make it clear to us. In the meantime, we kept praying that He would send His Spirit ahead of us to prepare a place for us. Before leaving Portland, Eric applied for several jobs and made several phone calls about housing, including a call to Annemari about a one room cabin on 20 acres with a creek. When I heard about the cabin, I was giddy! How quaint! A "Little House On The Prairie" cabin in Montana! Perfect! But Eric, never having read the "Little House On The Prairie" books, decided a one room cabin wouldn't be practical for our family of four. The time to leave was close and Eric commented that "doo

We started preparing to leave December 18th, but we were praying that the Lord would let us know if we needed to leave sooner or if Montana was not the destination He wanted for us. And we prayed that He would make a clear path for us and that His Spirit would go ahead of us and make a place for us there with a home, a church community and a job. During our preparations, the Lord, in His mercy, warned us that a storm was coming.  And then boy did it!  Even with the warning, we were unprepared for the intensity, severity and source of the persecution that came next.  Even though it drove us to our knees in prayer, for days we let it become a distraction from the path that the Lord had set us on.  By His grace, the Lord brought this scripture to us: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he

So, we didn't actually go west. Traveling from Portland, Oregon to Livingston, Montana is pretty much a straight shot east. But I had a dream that I was writing a blog called "Going West" and when I woke up I thought it was clever, since our last name is West and Montana is pretty much what people think of when they think of the west with horses, cowboys, ghost towns and lots of wilderness. The Lord was telling us that it was time to move and it needed to be before Christmas. Eric and I had been talking about moving for months and were looking hard at Montana. When we were deciding on the "when", the Lord brought Genesis 19:15-17 to my husband:       With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”    When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for th