You're Going Where?

You may have heard rumors about us moving to Las Vegas. Yep, it's true! Jason and Lauren Koemans are moving to Las Vegas, Nevada. Don't worry, I didn't expect that either. Here's how it happened:

Frontier School of the Bible is a three year program to receive an associate's degree. For a bachelor's degree students have the option of doing a 9-12 month internship anywhere as a "fourth" year. As Jason moved towards the end of his third year at FSB, we began to pray about an internship opportunity. Both of us felt like we would be willing to go anywhere. Well I know now that I should have been more clear with God, haha.

A church in Byron Center, MI, had caught our attention early in the year. Michigan had always been a place I was drawn to because my grandparents live there. The head pastor of the church had taught one of the lecture weeks at FSB and the youth pastor was the son of FSB's dean of students. Jason and the pastor had spoken and the pastor had told him to stay in touch. He seemed like the ideal pastor to intern under. We tried contacting the church and pursuing an internship, but they were hard to get a hold of and slow to contact us. By April we began to feel like we were trying to force ourselves into a position that wasn't open, and we began to feel pressure to find an internship before graduation in May.

Shortly after that Jason came home from class and told me his teacher had shared with them about a church, Las Vegas Bible Church, that really could use an intern to help with the youth and music ministry. As he told me, I thought to myself, "Oh, that's nice. I'm sure God will provide someone for that internship but there's no way it's for us." But I was soon to be proven wrong.

On facebook a few days later we got a message from a FSB grad that Jason had worked in youth ministry with. He said, 

Hey Jason,  dude I miss ya. I know this is totally random, but I just need to put a little bug in your ear so my conscience leaves me alone. I have no clue what you're planning on doing after graduation, you probably already have things lined up for internships or whatever. HOWEVER, may I simply throw your way something to pray about. Pastor Nathan Reichert and Las Vegas Bible Church need a person/couple with a big heart for youth (which I've seen in you first-hand) and giftedness in music...

Needless to say after reading that I was hooked. More like God had hooked me and I knew even though I would have never picked Vegas, He picked it for us. So we began to pursue the internship at Las Vegas Bible Church and the doors just kept opening wider and wider!

As of August 27th we will be living in Las Vegas for at least a year! Jason with be doing a pastoral internship under Nathan and will oversee the youth and music ministries. We are praying that we can both get jobs soon and we are praising God for the faithful team we have behind us - all of our rent is covered by monthly support and all of our ministry and lives are covered by prayer. God is good!