How Was Your Stay?

     Now that we've been open for several months, and many families have come to visit the retreat and stay in our cozy little cabin, we thought this would be a good time to open it up and hear from some of you.

     So if you have spent some time here at Elijah's Retreat, please take a moment to share a little about your experience.  We'd love to hear from you and I know it will be helpful to others who may be contemplating a trip here.

     Thank you and God bless you!

Praise God! He's done it again!

Isn't God's timing amazing?  He's always just in time!  Right when we've decided it's not going to happen, He comes through and wows us.  Whoever said the Christian life was not exciting???

We are praising God for the granting of 501(c)(3) non-profit status from the IRS yesterday.  Many of you know the struggle we've gone through over these many months trying to attain 501(c)(3) status (which means we are tax exempt & donations are tax deductible).  After a very disturbing phone call from the IRS a few weeks ago, it seemed doubtful that they would grant us 501(c)(3) status.  But once again Mercy Ships stepped in, got their attorneys involved, and the issue was resolved in fairly short time.  Thank you, Mercy Ships!  We love you guys!

So, with our first family arriving at the retreat this Friday, God's timing could not be more perfect.  The first family cabin is completed and ready for guests.  Now we can look forward to building the other 5 cabins and the recreation center.  We have a feeling that God's plans for Elijah's Retreat are much bigger than ours!  It's all yours, Jesus - your will be done!

So now all donations are tax deductible and 100% go to building Elijah's Retreat.  There are no paid staff or board members.  But there are many who have donated their time, energy and resources to help build the cabin, put up fences, clear trails, etc..  Thank you so very much.  God bless you.   

Open for Reservations!!!

Praise God!  We are now ready to take reservations for the retreat, so if you have a child with autism, let us know when you'd like to come, beginning the first week of June and we'll get you on the calendar.  

We only have one cabin completed at this point, so reservations will be on a first come, first serve basis for our one beautiful little two-bedroom cabin.  We are requesting a donation of $30.00 per night for a stay in the cabin.  It has a full kitchen, including refrigerator, stove, microwave, toaster, coffee-maker, and a full size washer and dryer.  There's an adorable living room and dining area, and a front porch complete with a relaxing porch swing and even a ceiling fan to make sitting out there more enjoyable. 

The playground includes a swingset, slide, fort, rock climbing wall, a large sandbox and a hammock.  We're still adding to the playground, and have many great ideas to make it really fun, but it all takes money, so we're in a holding pattern at the moment.  

The opening of this cabin is just the first step in the vision for Elijah's Retreat.  Please continue to lift us up in your prayers as we move on to phase 2.  We have great dreams for Elijah's Retreat.  Seeing God bring this portion to reality only gives us greater faith that He will provide for the rest.  

To make a reservation, please email us at info@elijahsretreat.com or call us at 903-589-0145.  

God bless you!  Thank you for your support of this ministry!

Elijah's Retreat Set to Open Spring 2009

Elijah’s Retreat will at last open its doors for guests this Spring! We will be giving the first cabin its final touches over the winter, as well as completing the playground and additional fencing around the property. Spring is all about new life and new beginnings. We can’t imagine a more perfect time for our grand opening.

Researching autism on the internet this morning I came across a staggering statistic. The divorce rate for couples who have a child with autism is now over 80%! Life is hard for these families – every day – and marriages are falling apart in the midst of the stress, fatigue and turmoil.

That is why we are so passionate about what we are doing here at Elijah’s Retreat. These families desperately need support. We want Elijah’s Retreat to be a sanctuary, a refuge for these precious folks for many years to come.

(Elijah’s Retreat is a non-profit organization. All donations are tax deductible.)

Dreaming Big

Our God is a big God and He has given us big dreams for Elijah’s Retreat. What started out as a goal to build a few cabins that families could use to vacation with their special needs kids, has grown in both vision and scope. Let me give you just a peek at some of our hopes and dreams.

First of all, we will build six two-bedroom cabins, each nestled in the woods with plenty of privacy, peace and quiet. Each cabin will have a full kitchen and washer and dryer.

Second, we will build a great playground (we’ve only just begun), so the kids have a great outdoor place to play.

Third, we will build a large recreational building and fill it with sensory toys and equipment, so the kids have a great indoor place to play.

Fourth, we will build a small water park, so that on hot summer days the kids can enjoy playing in the water, without the fear and liability of having a swimming pool. Faulkner Park in Tyler has one that we will try to model after in some ways. It’s only 50 or 60 feet in diameter, but the kids just love it. We are really excited about this addition to our vision for Elijah’s Retreat!

We envision Saturday night chuck wagon dinners, eating marshmallows around a campfire, and occasional hay rides. Of course there will always be pony rides for the kids.

Are you starting to see it? It’s becoming clearer and clearer to us all the time. As this first cabin nears completion, we are filled with excitement in anticipation of finally having guests here at the ranch. We long to meet all of your wonderful families and watch your kids enjoy the great outdoors.

Yes, our God is a big God – a VERY big God. Praise you, Father, for your provision and for the big dreams you give us. You are faithful, Lord, and we trust you to see this vision through to completion.

The Generosity of Strangers

Nothing about Elijah’s Retreat has amazed or encouraged us more than the generosity of strangers. We never dreamed that so many people would extend a hand of help to people they don’t know and a place they’ve never seen.

Since we published the “Needs and Praise” page on our website, we have been inundated with supplies and furnishings for the cabins we are building. Our barn now looks kind of like a thrift store. We have washers, dryers, a stove, a refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, beds, mattresses, a sleeper sofa, tables, chairs, shower curtains, bedspreads, bicycles, books, toys – all donated by generous people, most of whom we’ve never met.

Besides the furnishings for the cabins, there have been wonderful donations of hay (we’re talking months worth piled to the ceiling of our barn), horses, and our beautiful collie, Gentle. An awesome couple in Nacogdoches, Roger & Rhonda Mills (same ones who donated the hay), are now busy making a sign for Elijah’s Retreat that will reside at the entrance to the ranch.

There have also been extremely generous donations of building materials. One of our dear board members, Dwight Omenson, donated a lot of the electrical and plumbing materials. He also donated his time to doing the electrical and plumbing installation for the cabin.

A wonderful gentleman named Michael Ridgley donated a central air conditioning unit for the cabin. We had planned to put a window unit in the cabin as we couldn’t afford central air, but Michael heard about the need and donated a central unit. He was going to come back and install it once the electricity was hooked up, but he died of a massive heart attack a few weeks later. He was only 48 years old. We plan to name this first cabin the Ridgley Cabin in Michael’s memory.

Then there are all the laborers who have joined us in this quest to build Elijah’s Retreat. The wonderful folks from 911 Air Charter who sent a team in April and again in May to help us for a weekend. The folks from our church, Fellowship Bible Church, who have helped out on many occasions. The great folks from Mercy Ships who are helping us with the pile of documents required to be filed for 501(c)(3) status, and who have hooked us up with an awesome couple in Rusk, Jeff and Sandy Carroll, who are helping with lots and lots of things. They have gotten their church involved, too (First Baptist in Rusk), so whole teams of people are coming out to help now.

A year ago we didn’t know any of these people. They were strangers. Now we are all working together to complete the vision for Elijah’s Retreat. The generosity of strangers – a most amazing and heart warming phenomenon.

Unexpected Blessings

When we pray, it’s easy to imagine how God will answer. Our imagined answers always come in ways that we can work it out to make it happen. But we are finding that God enjoys surprising and amazing us in how He will answer those prayers.

We have been surprised and amazed by God over and over again in this journey to build Elijah’s Retreat. It happened again over the weekend when a group of seven folks from a church in Rusk showed up at the ranch to help.

They are part of a larger ministry called the Chainsaw Ministry, and before you get the wrong idea, let me explain. They are a group of people who go out with their chainsaws to where there is need and offer their help. For instance, they spent a lot of time after Katrina and subsequent hurricanes helping to clear away fallen trees from people’s homes. They are a wonderful group of people, ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work, with a lot of sweat and sometimes blood involved.

So they came out and cut down a huge dead pine tree in our pasture right next to the playground where the kids will all be playing. The tree was hit by lightening a few months ago and the whole top third of it had already fallen off and broken the fence. So they took it down and chopped it up so Jeff and I could haul it away.

Next they headed down to our Beaver Pond where the beavers in the past two months have cut down three big trees which fell very purposely across our dock. The beavers had also cut down a tree that blocked the trail that the 911 Air Charter group just cleared for us over Memorial Day weekend. Do you think the beavers are trying to tell us something, like maybe, “stay away from our pond!”? Whatever the case may be, the kind folks from Rusk pulled the trees off the dock and the trail and cut them up for us. They did all of that in only two hours time! It was unbelievable how quickly they worked!

So, once again God sent a group of strangers to help us here at Elijah’s Retreat. They are no longer strangers, but dear friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, and dearly loved. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for moving in strange, unexpected, surprising, and always wonderful ways! It is so exciting to walk with YOU through this journey!

A Grandma's Prayer

Our grandson, Elijah, loves to come to our house, or as he still calls it (a year later) “Nana’s new house”. He loves it here at Divine Acres Ranch. He visits us for a weekend every month to give his sweet momma a little break.

Elijah is not nearly as interested in the horses as we expected him to be. He likes them. He knows all the horses by name and says hello and goodbye to them. He likes Soldier (our big Arabian horse) the best, and likes to rub his sides, but he doesn’t care a bit about riding him, and that’s quite okay. There are plenty of other things to do at the ranch.

He loves to run like the wind through the pastures or down the little road between our house and the barn. He gets a kick out of riding his bike through the barn, out the back door and down the little slope. He likes playing in the sand anywhere that he finds it. He loves to run with our little poodles. He enjoys the new playground that we built here at the ranch – sliding, swinging, climbing the rock wall, playing in the sandbox, or just relaxing in the hammock. When it’s hot we blow up the wading pool for him and he runs and jumps into it over and over and over again. Two of his favorite things are throwing rocks into the creek and climbing trees.

In so many ways, Elijah is a typical eight year old little boy. He likes to run, climb, play with dogs, and ride his bike just like every other eight year old little boy. The majority of the time he is here over the weekends, he is pure joy to be around. He is funny, charming, handsome, sweet, extremely lovable, and he minds very well.

Then there is the other 10% - 15% of the time when he is a bit of a challenge. Those are the times when his sensory issues get the best of him, or he gets frustrated with himself because he can’t understand something or he messes up a page that he’s coloring or he wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and banging his head against the wall. Those are the times my heart aches for him. I want so badly to help him, but often there’s nothing to do but back off and let him vent. It is painful to watch him. It is frustrating to feel such helplessness as a grandparent who loves him so very much.

These are the times I pray and give him again into the Lord’s hands. Only the Lord can help him when he retreats into his own world so full of anger, pain, and frustration. I ask the Lord to fill him with peace, to calm him, to love on him, to hold him when he doesn’t want anyone to touch him, to comfort him, and to heal him. I pray for wisdom and discernment as to what to say or do at that particular moment. I pray for patience and understanding and a peace within myself, so that I don’t lose it or fall apart myself.

Ever since Elijah was born, before we ever knew he had autism, I have prayed that the Lord would one day use him to bring many to Christ – that he would be an awesome man of God with a powerful testimony of God’s love and grace. I still pray that, and I believe with all my heart that the Lord will answer that prayer – the quiet prayer of a loving grandma.

Perseverance, Patience, Trust

Perseverance, Patience, and total Trust in the Lord - these are the qualities God is trying to hammer into us lately.

Elijah's Retreat, which was going at a fast and furious pace for a couple of months there, has slowed down to a trickle as Jeff and I continue to nail up paneling and finish out the interior of the cabin with the few building materials that remain. During this time, we have been on our knees seeking the Lord's help and guidance. What He has told us is this:

Keep going - you are right where I want you. Don't fear or lose heart. Persevere and do not worry. Trust me, seek me, cling to me and I will see you through.

Perseverance, Patience, and Trust in the Lord - good attributes all. God is in control. We wouldn't want it any other way.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2-4)

Mercy Ships to the Rescue

Elijah's Retreat has been tremendously blessed so far in our short existence to have amazing groups come alongside of us to offer help. Mercy Ships, a wonderful ministry based in Lindale, Texas, just a few miles north of us, is one of those. Jeff and I were absolutely blown away when they first called and asked if they could come out and take a look at what we're doing here. When they arrived we felt immediately that the Lord was in it and that He was planning something big.

We really don't know exactly what the Lord has in mind for this partnership, but we do know that whatever it is, it's going to be good! We are excited about it, praying about it, and giving it all to the Lord daily.

If you are not familiar with the ministry of Mercy Ships, visit their website when you get a chance. Mercy Ships is a huge ministry. They have done incredible things throughout the world.

Thank you, Lord, for making our paths cross!