An Adventure of Faith~A Story from Cordell Baker

An adventure of faith

I completed my hookup of the small mobile home I was to leave in Missouri to be sold and contemplated the journey I was about to begin. I was leaving a good job with General Electric in Linton, Indiana to accept the call to the ministry of a little (seven-member) mission church in Bridgeport, Washington. I would pick up my wife, Virginia in Missouri and we would have two deputation meetings in churches in Central Iowa. We would continue on two thirds of the way across the continent at our own expense. The church where we were to minister would pay the tremendous salary of $10 per week. In addition another larger church had promised to support us for $45 per month. But the immediate problem was that we did not have enough money to get us to Wyoming, much less to the middle of Washington. But we were certain God had called and some way he would provide. I wiped away a couple of tears, got in the car and started out.

In Iowa we had two meetings scheduled in which we would explain what we were going to do and challenge the people to join us in prayer for its accomplishment. In those times, the mid-fifties) a church usually gave a home missionary an offering of $20. We had two meetings, but forty dollars just would not cut it! We finished the first midweek prayer meeting and to our delight they gave us an offering of $100.

The second meeting was our home church at Ames, Iowa. The church gave us an offering of about hundred dollars. Then at the close of the service we stood on opposite sides of the main door greeting the people, many of them our friends. Over and over again we would shake hands and pull back a five dollar bill or a $10 bill hidden in the palm. We would stuff the money in any convenient pocket and reach out to the next person. Neither Virginia nor I knew that the other was going through the same routine. When we counted it up, we discovered that those generous people had loaded us with over $100 at the door, in addition to the offering.

A couple days later, we were at my parents home, when we saw a man come up on the porch and ring the bell. It was an elderly gentleman, a carpenter who had been an old friend of Virginia's family. He didn't have time to come in, but he handed us an envelope, saying the Lord had laid upon his heart to give it to us. After a brief chat, he left and we open the envelope. In it there was a $100 bill.

During that one week, God had open the hearts of his people not only to pay for our entire journey, but also to feed us for the first month of our ministry. It was the beginning of four years of walking by faith. We never knew in what way it would come, but we never lacked. Week after week we found "fellowship" in our mailbox at just the needed time. Sometimes we would meet the bread route sales man as he delivered to our supermarket and he would load load us with bread. Occasionally a church would give us a food shower: sometimes it was a matter of temporary secular work opening up. We never ate better in our lives than during that time.

Our Lord, who knows the end from the beginning knew then and still knows our every need. Jesus gave us one of life's most practical lessons when he said "seeking ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you."