So I Bought a Trailer
Or at least that’s how this story should start. But we serve a God who is much bigger and more magnificent than that, so let me take you back a bit…
It started as it usually does, a nudge. An out-of-the-blue, gentle whisper of a thought that you just know you could never come up with yourself. Every time God nudges, we are presented with a choice. Do you acknowledge His nudge or do you keep walking, pretending you didn’t feel it? After all, nobody else knows He nudged you, they can’t see His hand placing things on your heart. This was my thought process as I laid wide awake at night pondering the idea of doing trailer park ministry. I began to have this unexplainable, burning desire to immerse myself in a trailer park community, and to live there with the intentions of being the hands and feet of Jesus. But I’m 19 years old. I can’t afford a trailer and I certainly don’t know how to start a ministry!
But this vision was seemingly glued to my brain. It would not leave me alone. If this “nudge” really is God, what does that mean for me? I believe every time God calls, we give an action step back whether we want to or not. So I had a couple options I could react to this call with, and from my narrow, worldly stand point I really do mean only a couple, and they included:
Option 1: Take out a mortgage at 19 to buy a trailer in the park and build a ministry from scratch.
Option 2: Tell God no.
The first option seemed ridiculous. However, in my mind, so did the second one.
I was faced with a dilemma. I started to question if this really was God moving in my heart. I mean how could I come up with this myself? But, if I have learned anything in my walk with God so far is that when He calls you to something He will make a way for you to do it. He is not going to lead you to something He can’t or won’t do. I reminded Him of that (as if He didn’t already know) and I closed my eyes and prayed “God, if this is you, I am all in. I just need you to show me how.”
And then somewhere across town option number three was in the making as a man named Michael was praying a prayer that would answer mine.
As the Sunday morning church crowd died down, I saw Michael in the lobby. Michael and I hadn’t really talked much before, but what I did know about him was that he had a trailer park ministry in a park he lived in behind the church. He always had a welcoming smile so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask him for advice in response to this vision I felt God was laying upon me.
A week later we met up to continue our discussion. And this is when he told me he was moving out of the park as he was getting married. My first reaction was “crap, I no longer know someone who does trailer park ministry. He won’t be of much help now.” As the next hour passed, he answered some of my questions and told stories of the park. Then shared how he himself got started. He said that someone had gifted him his trailer five years back when they heard he wanted to do ministry there. He didn’t pay a penny and they gave it to him no strings attached.
It was then he made me an offer of a lifetime. He needed to do something with his trailer, and needed to do something with his established ministry. And as if he had known me for years he said, “They are yours if you want them. No strings attached.”
As I prayed for God to make a way, Michael was praying for someone to pass his trailer park ministry down to. In my awe I haven’t the slightest clue what my response to this strangely casual offer was. Except it must have been yes because somehow by the goodness of God here I am unpacking my new home.
-Brooke