10/14/2026
🐄❤️ MEET REBA & DOLLY! Our newest additions to the Restoration Ministries Recovery Ranch family! ❤️🐄
Y'all, this is so much more than a post about two beautiful cows. This is a post about God's faithfulness, answered prayers, and the kind of friendship that looks a whole lot like Jesus.
There are people who love our ministry. There are people who give, pray, and sow into what the Lord is doing here. And then there are people who become family. People who don't just talk about the love of Christ but live it out in the most tangible, everyday ways.
Michelle and Keith Rhodes are those people for us.
I first met Michelle about eight years ago. She had heard our story and reached out because she wanted to know more about what the Lord was doing through our ministry. She has watched us grow from a little discipleship home into what is now Restoration Ministries Recovery Ranch.
But Michelle hasn't just watched from the sidelines.
When we moved to the Ranch, she rolled up her sleeves and went to work right alongside us. She's stopped what she was doing to come cream corn with me, opened her home to our fellas and fed them, and shown up time and time again without being asked. And I know that's simply who she is. She loves and serves people everywhere she goes. But when you're on the receiving end of that kind of Christlike love in your own everyday life, it just hits differently.
Somewhere along the way, Keith and Michelle Hanson Rhodes became so much more than ministry supporters. They became family. A brother and sister in Christ in every sense of the word. 🥹❤️
And I literally weep as I write this because there are no words big enough to express what their friendship, love, partnership, and belief in this calling have meant to our family and the men we serve.
You see, farming isn't for the weak. And recovery ministry certainly isn't for the weak.
This isn't an 8-to-5 job where we clock out, go home, and leave it all behind. This is our life. Every day. Every hour. A calling that requires sacrifice, obedience, perseverance, and a whole lot of faith.
And in just seven months on this little farm, I have watched over TEN YEARS of prayers begin to unfold before my very eyes.
Prayers we prayed through tears. Prayers we prayed when the doors kept closing. Prayers we prayed when we were exhausted, discouraged, and wondering how in the world we could keep going.
There were a whole lot of NOs along the way. There were people who didn't understand the calling, people who didn't have the time or interest, and even people who suggested that maybe ministry wasn't God's will for us because things were so difficult.
And if I'm being completely transparent, there were times I wondered if maybe we had heard the Lord wrong. Maybe WE weren't doing something right.
But here's what the Lord has been teaching me.
WE weren't the ones doing it in the first place. GOD WAS.
He was working when we couldn't see it. He was preparing people we hadn't even met yet. He was arranging friendships, opening doors, building relationships, and making a way long before we ever stepped foot on this property.
And He was doing it all in HIS timing, not ours.
Sometimes the waiting is painful. Sometimes obedience is lonely. Sometimes putting your hands to the plow means continuing to work when you can't see a single thing growing.
But don't mistake a season of waiting for a season of wasted obedience.
If the Holy Spirit has called you to something, don't ignore Him just because the road gets hard.
Romans 8:28 reminds us:
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose."
In seven months, we've planted and harvested three gardens, welcomed 20 chickens, 8 goats, a horse, 2 geese, a cat, 4 dogs, and now REBA AND DOLLY, our two beautiful cows! 🐄🐄
And every bit of it has been made possible through the Lord's provision and the faithfulness of some mighty fine, Jesus-loving people who believe in what God is doing at Restoration Ministries Recovery Ranch.
But here's what makes it even more special.
These people aren't simply looking in from the outside and assuming lives are being changed. They're putting their own hands to the plow. They're showing up. They're building relationships with our men. They're seeing the transformation firsthand. They're becoming part of the testimonies that these men will one day carry into their own homes, families, churches, and communities.
When God created man, He placed him in a garden and gave him work to do. (Genesis 2:15)
There was purpose in that work. There was responsibility, stewardship, and fellowship with the Creator!!
And that's part of what we're doing here. We're not simply teaching men how to tend a garden, care for livestock, or work with their hands. We're teaching them how to live according to God's design, to become godly men, husbands, and fathers, and to take what the Lord has done in their lives and share it with someone else.
We grow crops. We raise animals. But above all, WE GROW MEN. And we pray those men will go out and make disciples who make disciples.
Michelle and Keith, thank you for your YES. Thank you for being faithful. Thank you for showing up when you didn't have to. Thank you for loving our family and our fellas like your own. Thank you for believing in this calling and being willing to get your hands dirty right alongside us.
We love you both more than you know, and so do our guys.
And to everyone who has prayed, given, served, encouraged, or walked alongside us through the years, please know that you are part of this testimony, too.
I look around this little farm and see so much more than chickens, goats, cows, gardens, and buildings.
I see answered prayers. I see the faithfulness of God. I see the hands and feet of Jesus.
And I see the beautiful reminder that when God calls you to put your hands to the plow, you just keep plowing.
The harvest belongs to Him. ❤️
To God be ALL the glory! 🙌
