Genevieve C. West

Our very first morning in town, we had breakfast at The Pop Stand, where the Lord provided us with free smiley face  pancakes as a warm welcome from Manager Matthew. Later that day, as we were exploring Livingston, the Lord blessed us again when Barista Chip refused payment for our coffee drinks to welcome us to town. When we returned home, our neighbor Cody and his loyal dog Buddy came by to welcome us to town with some homemade cupcakes that didn't last very long! (There were more, but we ate them!) On Christmas, the Lord provided us with a free Christmas lunch with some of our new neighbors in Livingston where we met Mark who introduced us to Martha and Stew who invited us to their church. There were fliers that said, "Yes, this is a free lunch for you, but someone had to pay for it." and then brought it right back to the gospel: "Forgiveness is free for you, but Christ paid for it with His blood." The Lord provided yet another unexpected

  5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart    and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him,    and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 We left in God's perfect timing on December 18th! We sold what we could, gave away some, stored some, packed up the trunk and cab of our little car the best we could, utilizing every nook and cranny and were Montana bound! It's amazing what becomes "necessary" when every inch of space counts. A lot of what oringinally was supposed to come with us ended up not making the cut when I ran out of room and had to rearrange the car. It felt very much like "Love Come Softly" or "Little House On The Prairie", having to dump beloved non-essentials in order to close the trunk! Weeks before we left, we were praying for a safe journey. The entire drive we were praying that the roads would be safe. There was snow on the sides of the road and I asked Eric if we should call to s

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