Jonah and The Whale

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The name, Butterflies Chasing Mustard Seeds Ministry Inc was formed during a soul search  for God's will. May-July, 2024

A Traveling Ministry? 

Me, GOD nobody wants to hear my testimonies. 

While there were many miracles that took place, there was also a whole lot of sadness. 

There was tug on my heart and it  was not going away. 

Nothing, I did , and no matter where I went. 

I felt as if I was smothering inside out. 

It was not until God spoke to  me in my spirit while reading the book of Jonah that I come to realize that I was in the belly of a whale similar to JONAH. 

I felt as if, I could not breathe and nothing I did was going to change. 

I was smothering and I would continue to smother.  

I said, " Yes, Lord. I surrendered to a higher calling.

Show me how to set up a ministry and what to name it. "

God showed up. 

I felt a call in my spirit of Restoration twenty five years earlier at  New Hope Church in Sevierville, Tennessee during Heavens Gates and Hell's Flame two week revival. I bought a set of cassette tapes after one of the services on restoration.

I ignore the call. I think I was working or had just gotten my real estate licenses. I desired the good life for my girls. 

I wanted them to have everything I never had.  

I  rented a small one bedroom apartment in Sevierville, Tennessee. It was of October, 2023. I had hopes of picking up my  real estate career in Sevier County where l had left off after the displacement four hundred miles away. 

My heart was shattered and I did not know the real estate market nor the people along the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach.  I just  knew going back would be easier for me than struggling to start over  in Conway, South Carolina. 

I managed to sell two places. 

I  looked for a part-time job and, the doors were not opening. 

I encountered two mold infections.  No one would hire this experience waitress on a part-time basis. 

I needed a job to keep $1200.00 a month rent payment made.

I would spend many days and nights in that apartment alone, seeking God's direction. 

I was broke, broken, and tired. All, I wanted to was to live near my grands, family, friends and work real estate like I had eighteen years earlier. 

 My world had grown cold. It  was as if everyone, I knew enjoyed watching me suffer. I was open about how I felt.

I would spend hours praying  consistently without ceasing letting my request be made known unto God. I read and studied   God's word day and night every chance I could. 

It was during my last six weeks  in the apartment when things began to make a little sense.  

I was not my own, I  belonged to God for his purpose. 

In the days following,  I went about my daily schedule, but I paid close attention to the direction I was guided in, and to where I was  lead throughout the day. 

I surrendered! It was one day in July that Butterflies Chasing Mustard Seeds Ministry name was founded.

The name was founded during this time. 

I was struggling desperately to move on with my life. 

The horrific trials and tribulations  of the last twenty two years had taken it's toll on me. Our lives were turned upside down July 18th, 2018.

The move back to Conway, South Carolina away from everyone and everything we had known for the past twenty seven years was devastating. We had not recovered from so much trauma that occur before and after my liver transplant  and Richards horrific stroke.  We had planned to sell the Conway home and continue our lives in Sevier County.

I found myself enjoying little rest in my life.

There was a battle going on in my mind between good and evil. 

How could this have happen to two people who worked together and gave all? 

My mind was telling me to walk away. 

Give up on all our dreams. 

My heart was saying NO. 

NO, God, did not do this to you. 

The struggle physically and mentally was horrific, like never before to market myself in today's  real estate world. 

I was broken financially, and in body and spirit. 

The world that came so naturally for eighteen years from 2002-2018. Richard worked and helped me with homes I listed and sold. However, nothing gave us the peace we needed. 

I missed my family, our church, our work, our life. 

God spoke to me, I was pressing forward in life at a pace of what you would think that a wonder woman would do.

In 2016 God spoke to my heart to find thise little red bibles and to start handing them out. 

How little did I know,

I was about to become a Salvation Seed Planter for Jesus Christ.

I received a little red salvation bible in 1971 at an outdoor revival with grandma Hardwick.  

I'm pretty certain the old man was the founder of the little red bible ministry.  

It was late 2017, 

Our family had experienced numerous grief from the horrific battles we had been facing over mine and my husband's chronic illinesses. This was during the time we were struggling to keep from losing our dream home we built from the bank taking it. 

In July, 2018 we were abruptly displaced.

There were so many battles to get Insurance, to keep insurance, the many hospitals and physician visits, the seven plus years to get a liver transplant, me working in a fallen real estate market, my husband experienced a stroke that paralyzed him.  

(The good news , fifteen years later at seventy two he is better.)                                            

 Both men, my husbandand my daddy were suffering from horrific strokes at the same time.                             

I was taking care of my daddy. I brought him to Tennessee from a nursing home in SC. and placed him in a nursing home in Sevierville,TN. 

I was forced to move him an hour away to a Jefferson City, Tennessee.  I was very sick, fighting and working daily in hopes to get a liver transplant in 2008 when I moved him to TN,

The fight over and again to keep a sick young man's liver on top of all the many othe folks I was trying to carry...became to heavy. 

                                                                                                      Richard could longer could build homes, daddy had two massive strokes, left to never talk again, except for one sentence that God blessed daddy to say clearly, many times a day until the last six days before he passed in 2011.  I lost my mom in 2019 seven months after the loss of our family dream home,

The only home my husband would ever build for us.

We had moved Mr. Ales he was forty six years young, the first family,  I had sold a piece of land to. 

died of liver cancer a week after moving him into our home. 

I had taken POA to help care of Mrs. Ginny Davidson who passed at ninety three years young.

 I traveled to Fort Mill, S.C. in 2012 to bring Ginny back to Tennessee to live out the rest of her life around her church family. 

During this time, I had place Mrs. Ginny in the Widows Care Center, then Assisted Living, and in Pigeon Forge Nursing home, and after death, cremation.

 Mrs. Ginny, a christian woman who loved and prayed for everyone she came into contact with. 

Ginny received a social security check. 

it took ten months working with the state  of Tennessee to get Mrs. Ginny on medicaid after President Obama had taken office.

Mrs. Ginny had no family to step up to take care of her. 

I believed when Mrs. Ginny when she said she was praying for me. I believe Ginny's consistently praying my family and me for years before and during transplant made a difference. 

My heart kept sensing Mrs. Ginny's need for someone

to care of her in her last days. 

I would prayed consistently and earnestly for God not to let me turn my back on her if he had called me to help. God called. :)

I no longer could visit Mrs. Ginny every week,            

My sister, Kathy Hardwick moved in our big house  with us during the horrific battle to hold onto our home while fighting her own horrific battles.

Kathy selfishly stepped up into my place and visited Mrs. Ginny every week while we were moving out of our home. Literally, a move from hell. 

Kathy spent two hours reading Mrs. Ginny her bible, and polishing Ginny's nails and toes.

It takes a humble soul to touch others during their dying days. 

Mrs. Kathy is that kind of a woman after God's own heart.

I spent near a year searching for that little red bible.

One day, Mrs. Ginny received a letter in the mail from a old friend in Pennsylvania.

 It was not until, I began to read the last page of the letter, surprised is an under statement, there it was, the same little red bible taped to the back of the letter with an address.

The same little red Bible, I received from an old man, at age eleven at an outdoor christian revival grandma Hardwick and I attended in Marion South Carolina in 1971.