Virginia Allen is my daughter and she just graduated from high school. Thought she was the salutatorian at her school and was accepted every college in which she applied, Virginia felt the Lord asking her to not go directly to college but rather spend six months doing an internship at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. We have an older daughter, Sarah, that is in college in Florida, and because money is very tight at our house right now, we were finding it hard to pay the needed money for the six month internship at IHOP starting in July 2011. Unlike all colleges the Internship required most of their money up-front for the room, board, and tuition.
We had sent out a letter of support asking families to consider helping Virginia financially. People at Bethel Atlanta were very generous, but with only three days left we were short of funds to the tune of about $1,400. However, this entire time Virginia seemed not at all concerned, as she said that the Lord had told her that He was going to provide the funds for her to go. I felt that Virginia hears clearly from God, but she just does not understand that there is no time to get $1,400 in two days before we left for Kansas City. We had sold almost everything worth anything to keep our older in college for three years. We had nothing of worth left to sell. Enter the Lord. Two days before we left the Lord got me up very early in the morning to pray. I reminded the Lord that Virginia really loved Him and that this IHOP plan was something that Virginia felt had come from Him. Daddy . . help my daughter go to IHOP . . . . she will be heart broken if this doesn't happen.
At about 8:00 AM that morning I got a text message from someone who said: The answer is YES! The answer is yes, I said, great . . . but what does that mean. I raced to call that person and find out what that meant . . . He said that I had mentioned earlier that we were short over $1,000 . He said he would cover the difference in what was needed . . . and did we also need gas money to get to Kansas City. Yes we did. On Wednesday July 13, 2011 we left the Atlanta area to drive our daughter some 850 miles to Kansas City with a check made out to IHOP for the required tuition, room and board money plus the needed extra funds for gas. Virginia was elated and we praised the Lord and thanked the Lord for all of the people who were kind enough to seed into Virginia's prayer time at IHOP. When we returned home we were exhausted but very grateful. In only about ten day we raised the needed support for Virginia.
Now we needed over $5,000 to get Sarah back to school. On Tuesday of this week, July 19th, my sister called me to say that our stepfather, who had died five years ago, had drilling rights to some land in Colorado. We had singed papers a few months ago to give them permission to drill on the land so now we were going to receive a check in August for $8,000 each from this company. If they find oil we will receive an additional 20% of the money that this oil well brings in over the next several years.
We are now praying that they find ten billion barrels of oil on this land. We want to be a blessing to others as the Lord has blessed us.