BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Every day when Shannon pulled into the gravel driveway after work, she wept. “Our pastor started teaching from Malachi 3:8,” Shannon remembers. “It says, ‘Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.’” As we listened to him teach on tithes and offerings, we realized why we were in such financial straits,” Shannon recalled. “We’d been robbing God! The church we had attended before had taught that tithing was optional. If you could afford to tithe, you should. If not, you shouldn’t. We got confused and thought that it must not matter, so we had stopped tithing. Now that we knew better, we had no income. “Soon afterward, Micah got a job at the Southeast Missouri Mental Health Facility and tithed on his first check. About that same time, a cute little apartment opened up for $500 a month and we rented it. The church where I worked appreciated what I did, but couldn’t afford to pay me. Two months after we started tithing, the board met and decided to take over the lease on our apartment! Effective Doors of Ministry “I worked as a secretary for 18 months, until our pastor left, and I was asked to fill in as the praise and worship leader. They asked Micah to preach on Wednesday evenings and paid us $200 a week. “A few months later, I was asked to be the youth director. The church brought in an interim pastor and Micah became his right-hand man. The pastor asked Micah to teach healing school on Tuesday evenings. Micah loved doing it and put together a packet of information on healing. Another pastor got a copy of it and was healed. The pastor was so delighted that, with Micah’s permission, he asked his graphic artist to turn the information into a book called "Healed, Healthy and Whole in Jesus’ Name." They bought the first 500 copies and Micah gave them away as well, blessing people even in other countries. Micah put it on iBooks for free. “During that same time, the administrator of E.W. Kenyon’s twitter account offered to let Micah take it over. It has now reached 4,000 followers and is growing daily as people are blessed.” In 2011, Shannon was pregnant again and praying for her replacement as youth director. God had given her a heart for the kids who hung out at the skate park, many who lived in difficult circumstances. They welcomed them into the youth group and it had grown to a large, fun group of kids. Just before the baby was due, God sent a couple to take over the youth. On Dec. 19, 2011, Micah and Shannon’s son, Logan, was born. Afterward, Shannon was asked to start a singles group. Gone were the days of slipping in and out of church unnoticed. Like Micah, she now considered her church as almost a second home. Free of Debt By the time they’d started tithing again, in addition to their credit card debt, Micah and Shannon had another $44,000 of debt. Once they started tithing, they paid off one credit card with a tax refund, and got rid of another $11,000 debt by trading their car in for a minivan, which left them with no car payment. Two years after they started tithing, they were out of debt. “We now had five children and were living in a three-bedroom house. I started praying and believing for a big house with five bedrooms, and land. My brother-in-law was single when he bought a five-bedroom house on three and a half acres, which needed a lot of work. After remodeling it, he married and they wanted something different. He let us buy it for less than $100,000. “In January 2015, the Lord impressed me to volunteer in the community. I started helping at the Pregnancy Resource Center. In June of that same year, they hired me as their Director of Development. My role is to raise funds and God gives me creative and witty ideas. I speak at churches and organizations and get to help save babies by empowering their parents. We teach them parenting skills to help their children grow into productive adults. “As I look back over our journey, I can honestly say that without partnership with KCM, our marriage would not have survived. Through all those dark times, we often called KCM for prayer. They not only prayed for us, they taught us, they encouraged us and they stuck by us. Learning to live by faith saved our marriage, changed our lives and is now impacting a new generation.” V Join Shannon & Micah Partner with KCM today! kcm.org/partnernow 1-800-600-7395 (U.S. only) BVOV : 21

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