Saturday, June 02, 2007

Dallas Bound

I am convinced that God has a sense of humor... For most of my life I often said that I never wanted to live in Los Angeles, and where does God send me a little over two years ago? The north end of Los Angeles! I have also often thought that I would never want to live in Texas...and where is God sending us? Dallas, Texas! The moral of this part of the story: never say never to God!

At the end of July (July 29, to be exact), we will be driving our Penske truck (I'll never use U-Haul again--if at all possible--after the bad experience that I had moving down here from Santa Rosa in 2005) after our morning service at Northridge Christian Church on our way to Dallas, Texas.


Allison has been hired by the Covenant Christian Academy (www.ccanet.org) in Colleyville, which is just west of the Dallas - Fort Worth Airport. I will be attending Dallas Theological Seminary (www.dts.edu), pursuing a ThM (Masters of Theology) degree in Bible Exposition / Biblical Counseling, which usually takes 4 years on a full-time basis...so who knows how long it will take me... I currently don't have a job lined up, but am praying that God will open the door for me minister somewhere...


There are a few primary motivations for the move:
  1. We're convinced that seminary is a part of God's plan for me. I have always wanted to further my education, and now seems to be the time. When I moved down here to the San Fernando Valley, I had hoped to attend the Master's Seminary, but God closed that door.
  2. Allison and I desire to start a family. If God should enable us to do that, our conviction and desire is that she would be a stay-at-home mom while the kids are young...and that's very difficult in the economy of the LA basin--especially on a youth pastor's salary...
  3. We also desire to move from the renter category to the owner category. Tiny condos in ghetto neighborhoods of our current start at $300,000, and fixer-upper houses are closer to $500,000. That's well beyond our means. In the Dallas area, you can actually purchase a fixer-upper house for less than $50,000, and a decent home for under $100,000.
We do have a few friends in Dallas: my best friend, Matt Montgomery, and his family are in Dallas where Matt is attending Dallas Theological Seminary, and my former intern and good friend, Mike Baker and his wife Zoe, are living in Dallas while Mike is attending the seminary and serving as a youth pastor. A couple of friends from Allison's school also are living in the Dallas area.


We are excited about God's leading and following His calling, but we are saddened to be leaving our friends and ministries here. We'll also be considerably closer to Allison's family (her brother and sister-in-law and their kids are in St. Louis, and her parents live just north of Orlando, Florida, in a huge retirement community called The Villages), but will be considerably further away from my family (my parents live in a little town by Stockton, California called Rio Vista, and my brother lives in Sacramento).

We would greatly appreciate your prayers as we transition out of West Valley Christian School and Northridge Christian Church and make our way east at the end of July... Two specific requests are for our housing and for employment for me.

For His Glory,
Kevin & Allison Peterson

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr and Mrs Peterson,
i know all of the 8th graders @ west valley are extremly happy for your decision to follow God in life. We know He will use both of you to open the eyes,hearts, and souls, of many other students and people to Godthroughout your lives.Because you have done so for us.
We will miss you both so much and will pray for you every, you will both be in our hearts for touching our lives,we can only hope that we've touched yours.

All the love I can give
Melissa St.Pierre

Megan @ SimplyThrifty said...

Wow! I am so excited for you. May the Lord bless your move and your new life in Texas. I have many wonderful memories of HS group. By the way, Penske is the BEST. We moved from PA to CA w/Penske and thought they rocked! We'll never use Uhaul either.

Dana Nassau said...

Welcome to DTS!!! I am in the Pastoral Ministries office (Todd 310) Stop by and say hi!!

Anonymous said...

HI Mr. and Mrs. Peaterson

I am sad but happy that you are going to Dallas i am sad cause we wont have a great teacher and a great pastor showing us the way closer to God i have learned more of the Bible with you than with my old school(which if you knew my old school it's a HUGE compliment)i am happy because you will bless so many lives in this way i thank you for the years that you have put for my life and i thank God for the time you will bless someone else's life like the way you guys did thank you so much

I'll love you and pray for you guys always

Mauricio Guerrero