We returned to Pennsylvania the summer of 1986. It was amazing to us how we were conditioned by 10 years of Florida’s humidity. In other words, despite Pennsylvania’s hot humid summer, we were very comfortable!

Once again, we were in search of a home. We lived in my mother’s small camping trailer parked on True Life Family Acres, a ministry began by my sister and husband, Carl. It was a community comprised of people who moved in with the Madtes family for personal care. Carl was on the faculty of a local school and met lots of troubled children coming from difficult family situations. Occasionally he would bring them to his home to stay for the weekend. Then the weekends grew into weeks, and the weeks became months. Some became family. True Life became an extension of that care and the property was dedicated to create a family for all ages combining young with the elderly.

During that time, I got a job working at a small logging operation. Yes, you heard me correctly! I was harvesting hardwood trees and cutting logs into lumber at the saw mill a few miles away from our camper home. It reminded me of my job at the box factory in Florida – hard work! I continued working at the lumber mill for about a year when Jean, Rebecca and I relocated to the Fleetwood area.

Around that time, I began working for MetLife selling life insurance and securities. Interesting, right? Cooking, box making, ministry, logging – and now selling life insurance! What can I say? It paid the bills and put food on the table.

Jean had started to bake wedding cakes for everybody and anybody. She was a baker at heart. Her dad bought her a Kitchen Aid mixer as a gift which I still use today 48 years later.

While working for MetLife we started to attend a local church in nearby Kutztown. After a few months passed, the pastor and his wife decided to leave that work and establish a new congregation in nearby Allentown. They appointed us as the new pastors of the ministry in Kutztown and I preached my first message on Easter Sunday in 1988. Things were going well until the former leaders decided to return to take over the work in Kutztown because of problems that closed their new plant in Allentown.

Needless to say, this created a whole new set of problems with Victory Christian Center’s congregation and our role as their new pastor. After four months of serving in this new role, we were bonding with the congregation and strong relationships were forming. But the only thing we could do was to resign from our position and move on with the next step.

I remember seeking counsel from my ordaining body back in Florida and after sharing our predicament with Gerald Derstine, his counsel was clear. His advice was this; if the people were looking to us as their pastors, separate yourself from the church and let the people decide what they wanted.

By the following week, we had 95 percent of Victory Christian Center sitting in our house asking questions about the future. I don’t advise starting a church this way, but this was to become the beginning of Tabernacle Church.