Bittersweet Farm

I don’t complain about the weather. So don’t consider this as complaining—just reporting the facts. It seems like it has been a long, cold, lingering, snowy winter. It’s spring now but it has been a cold spring so far. We have enjoyed some very welcome sun, but it has been cold—unrelenting cold. It’s been hard to get warm. The house is cozy and warm, thank the Lord, so we have spent a lot of time indoors and we really haven’t bundled up and ventured out too much.

Lois and I lie in our bed every night and thank God from the deepest place in our hearts for what God has done in the last year. He has been so good and so faithful to us. We love Him more all the time.

We’re so looking forward to getting out in the yard and tending to the place in the fresh air. Lois has some plants and flowers started.
Soon we will remove the plow from the tractor and attach the mowing deck. The grass will turn green. The flowering trees will open. The trees will bud and leaf. We will turn off our furnace and open our windows to the night air and the night sounds.

We love to take long drives in the beautiful countryside. It is beautiful in every direction even in the cold gray of late winter and early spring.

I’m writing in my reading chair just now where I can keep an eye on the bird feeders and watch the sun as it slips out of site over the hill behind the line of trees to our west. It is such a quieting thing to watch when I’m home in the evening. The line of trees is on the crest of a hill about a quarter mile west of us and when the sun goes down behind them the sky is a little different color every night.
Right now the leaves are bare and the stark branches are beautiful filtering evening sunlight. Tomorrow I’ll fill the bird feeders again. If I do it tonight the deer will have them empty by morning. I love to see the deer so close to the house. They seem like graceful, cautious, creatures. I don’t think they know they are safe with me.

Ken Pierpont
Bittersweet Farm
Summit Township, Michigan
April 10, 2018

A year ago today, April 10, 2017 the Red Jeep Journey began. A young named Shawn Wojtkewicz stood at the tailgate of my Jeep and handed me a gift of $50.00 to help me in my summer of itinerant preaching. I drove the the Shell station on the way home, filled the gas tank of George, the Red Jeep with gas. As I stood there pumping the gas I thought of all the states George the Red Jeep would have to travel that summer and how many times I would need to fill the tank with gas.

“Help me, Lord;” I prayed. “Please provide what we need and help us.”

I went home, packed my clothes, packed a lunch, and tossed my sleeping bag in the back of the Jeep. We formed a little circle, held hands and prayed with the family, and headed down I-75 toward Kentucky.

The little Jeep ran like a champ all summer long. My heart was full and happy to be off serving the Lord and driving down into the lovely mountains of Eastern Kentucky in springtime to preach at Oneida Baptist Institute. You can read the post here.

I drove into Kentucky and stopped for lunch at a roadside rest. The sky was clear. I sat at a picnic table in the sun to eat my lunch. When I bowed my head to pray I was overcome with joy and and tears of thanksgiving to God. At home the trees were still bare, but the mountains of Eastern Kentucky were budding green and the Dogwoods and Redbuds were opening as I drove along the South Fork of the Kentucky River into the Village of Oneida.

At that time I had no idea the miracles of provision and direction that would unfold from April 10th to September 10th. In May I interviewed at Bethel. In June I was asked to speak. In July I was called to be their pastor. On the weekend of September 10th I fulfilled all my speaking promises and on the 17th I started as the Lead Pastor at Bethel.

Now I pastor a flourishing congregation that we love and we have a delightful farm house in the countryside. If the sky is clear tonight I will walk out under the night sky and look up at the stars of God and thank Him again from the depths of my soul. I never get tired of it.

It was a year ago today.

Ken Pierpont
Bittersweet Farm
Summit Township, Michigan
April 10, 2018