Here we GO!
Theresa Berry
Me & my boy in St. Petersburg, Russia.
My husband and I have always been driven. Early on, at the beginning of our 26 year marriage, we moved away from our small town in Tennessee to go to bible school together. Upon graduation we sensed Gods leading for us to go on to college. These steps would wind up being the best and most difficult decisions, but this would ultimately shape us and play a key role in the organizations that we founded and are leading now.
We began our journey believing that we could accomplish anything with hard work and a do not quit attitude. You can...it just always cost more than you could ever imagine along the way. We had moments of very good highs as well as very significant lows.
There were a ton of sleepless nights in college, as we were both working full time and taking a full load of classes. We made our way through in a little over 4 years, applying for every scholarship we thought we qualified for and paying for the rest with student loans and our full time jobs. Upon graduating a masters program, we left our college life with both of us having only $19,000 in student loans. Success!! It was an amazing feet as most of our friends were graduating with a minimum of $50,000. But it almost cost me my sanity...more on that later.
There are lots of highs and lows in this story that I'll eventually get to. But what's so tremendously significant is that we didn't really have any idea how much of a key this season of our life would wind up being until years later as we began developing our first organization...Project 1615. Each step of our life and journey adds to the next step we take. If we don't listen to our heart and the witness of the Holy Spirit and take those steps, even if the cost seems too great, we will not have the tools we need to go to the next step of our life.
The tools we received in those early days of our life and marriage would initiate a whirlwind of faith steps and activity that would thrust us into over 30 nations over the years, printing books & bibles, inspiring new church plants in Asia, exploring different cultures, helping underprivileged children in Asia gain access to an education, working with underground churches, meeting countless people from all over the United States and touching lives all over the world.
My husband is an amazing guy. I don't say that just because he's my husband. I say that because of the journey of faith he's taken us on and what he's accomplished by simple obedience, pure raw passion and steps of faith that sometimes made this "rules girl" teeth cringe and hair twist so much that I didn't have any left. Ha. He's lived on the edge of life and faith so many times I have began to lose count. His deep passion for Jesus and the people of Central Asia is so beyond natural. He's resilient, caring, generous and a lot of times doesn't know when to stop and just take care of himself. It's cost him more than we've ever shared, more than we ever thought it would and those things I will also share in the blogs to come. It took 26 years to create this story so it'll take time to open it up. Ha.
This blog is an open window into our life with our underground missionary efforts, life as an entrepreneur, our personal life together. It's me and I am being vulnerable about relationships and love lost, painful regrets, lessons learned and those awesome moments when you reach that mountain top. All of this has defined who and what we are today.
We are different, we are seasoned and we are about to embark on the best and most fabulous Next20 years of this amazing life & mission. One.Thankful.Girl.