History

The idea for Emmanuel Arisen started in November 2017 when Micah McElveen visited my church to talk about Vapor Ministries. Stacy and I were nearing the point where the kids would be out of the house and we'd begin serving God full time. But how and where?

​

Four ideas presented themselves:

​

Vapor Ministries: Serve in this ministry in Africa or another location.

​

Coastal living: We would move out of the country to some beachfront location. We love the beach, though for Stacy, it was a dream of hers to live on the beach. We would move from coastal community to coastal community in some exotic location getting to know our neighbors and being a light in that community for 3 - 6 months at a time.

​

Skoolie conversion: We'd convert a school bus and travel the US meeting all sorts of people and riding together on the motorcycle.

​

Buy land: We would buy some land, build a home, and raise animals (horses for sure) and live off the land and off the grid. We would serve in a local Christian church.

​

Converting a school bus persisted in my mind above the others and I commenced to sketch out a design. The design evolved and ultimately became "convert a motor coach". I watched countless hours of videos and made so many refinements, but nothing serious until God brought the idea of a nomad missionary couple moving from campsite to campsite, park to park to tell people about Jesus. The best part was Stacy as she is beautiful and has an amazing voice and personality that clearly reflects God's glory and beauty. We made our decision.

​

Now we just needed God to provide a motor coach.

​

And He did. He provided a 2005 MCI J4500 motor coach with 400,000 miles (actually, that's a small number for one of these coaches) for $40K. But here's the God's humor part. Lots of Christians see Divine Providence in numbers. So, when I bought the coach, the seller started with a no-haggle price of $33K. Forty was really good, 33 was less than I expected, and the difference is 7. You do the math.

​

In January 2022, I bought the coach, in May we started converting the coach, and then...

​

Cancer.

​

In October 2024, I was finally able to summon the strength and desire to continue with the conversion. Many joined me in this mission and we had so much fun. I can't wait to launch the coach and the mission.