Life In Review – Part 1

If you haven’t received the memo yet, we kind of diverted from the “normal” life track and have found ourselves in the midst of an epic adventure (that’s an understatement).

Here’s a question that often pops up: “How in the world did you guys get where you are?”

Well, we just happen to have 1.21 jigawatts and a sweet Delorian, so come with us as we make a trip back in time (cue Huey Lewis’ “Power of Love” )…

Starting in 1997, our first few years of marriage were spent on a pretty straight path. I was finishing school with a Criminal Justice/Spanish degree and on my way to a career of law enforcement (thank you, Mr. Steven Seagal). We eventually landed ourselves in Atlanta and Heather found work at a large church for a very successful missions department under a great man who seeped world evangelism. It was Heather and another little lady who were helping to care for over 50 overseas missionaries, coordinating large mission trips, developing/designing training materials, and arranging logistics for some of the best missions conferences we’ve ever seen. We learned so much in those years about ourselves and God’s work in the world and that is when our faith really started to take some serious root.

You have to be careful in these situations, because the more we came closer to Christ, the clearer our call became: we were made to be sent out as overseas missionaries! No one else was jumping at this opportunity, but it fit us like a tight pair of P.E. teacher Bike shorts. We felt led to take a trip to Europe and the call was so loud that our ears were ringing. While working in her job, Heather was able to have close contact with multiple missions organizations and we saw the benefit to having a strong support system behind our calling. We were wisely guided to partner with an organization who specialized in missions work in Europe and had the experience to help us avoid so many of the pitfalls that were out there. We were on our way!

After returning from our time in Europe in 2002, we sold everything we had (house, cars, furniture, etc.) and bought our most prized vehicle that we ever owned: a 1984 Volkswagen Vanagon with a sunroof that could fit at least 12 portly people. She became our brown toaster on wheels, so it only made sense that she would become our beloved Toasty.

We had completely left everything behind to move forward in faith to what God had ahead for us. We spent a year on the road with a large German Shepherd (Greta) and a retired racing greyhound (Mrs. Beasley) and visited friends and family everywhere from Florida to Arizona, Colorado to Indiana, Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, Washington, D.C. to South Carolina (with several stops in between). We pitched tents, slept in truck stops, crashed family holidays, and had more adventures than we can write about here.

During this time, we had several formal and extensive missions training programs under our belts (hostage situations training included) and we felt more than ready. We were also happy to report that people came out of the woodwork to get financially behind the vision that was given to us. It was absolutely incredible to see the runway being paved so smoothly for our takeoff into a new life and everything was falling exactly into place.

And then life happened..

It was at our point of having at least 95% of all the funds we needed when we got smacked right in the face with a family emergency that couldn’t be ignored (and it was a Mucky one…). It was such a heavy decision as we were forced to make a choice between continuing with all our years of hard work or stopping everything to deal with what suddenly took all our attention. God gave us a clear stop sign and waited to see what we were going to do with it. I cannot tell you what it was like to watch the wave we were supposed to ride pass by as we just watched it disappear into the ocean. All those phone calls to supporters and multiple churches gave me several lessons on humility and letting God’s plans take priority over my own. Heather and I often still have conversations about how life would look so different if we just continued and got on that plane to Europe (we both agree that it would have been the wrong choice). Back then, we knew that it would never be a “no” to missions, just a short diversion as we got our lives to calm down a bit.

HA! Here’s something that often calms life down…

Eight months later, after trying for years to have a child of our own, Heather was finally impregnated and little Esther completely turned our worlds upside down. Hippies as parents? Ten months after that, Silas was on scene and it took child care to a dimension we never knew existed (Sy’s story starts HERE). Our lives became consumed with keeping our child alive and everything else faded to the background. Although life had given us new things to focus on, the missions thing was still closeby, staring us directly in the face. We poured our lives into a local church plant to build some great relationships, but it was still always known that the Hargers were about serving people in other cultures.

Changing from mainstream work, to ministry, back to mainstream work (with the desire for ministry work) was not easy. During a great retreat, I had God speak a vocation that made total sense to me. Firefighting and emergency medicine was never even in my view before, but it was a perfect fit and allowed me to train, gain knowledge, and use skills that could be easily transferable to an overseas missions scenario. It wasn’t as easy to change careers midstream with little babies around, but I finally got there (with the help of some spectacular friends) and began to thrive in a job that allowed me to be more of who I am. All we would have to do is wait to see when that darn missions wave would rise up again for us.

Would serving people here in my home country be where God would want me to live out the rest of my years? Was the call to overseas missions something that needed to be released and put away? What about Heather and her own personal call to missions? Would her American home and family be the mission field God had in store for her?

We’ll take a look at how God began to stir things up again in Part 2! Comment below if you have any questions.

Hasta pasta,

Jordan*

No Muck Motto: 

God’s paths aren’t always the shortest distance between two points.

Ready for the next part of the story? Click HERE for Part 2.