Since Tabernacle has been a church and a ministry for almost as long as I have been alive, there is a widespread group of people who have been part of us in the past. Human nature can focus on those who fell away, either when they left or sometime afterward. Was their profession of faith real or only something they did to gain acceptance? Only God knows in most cases.

But there are hundreds of people who have left for other places and have served the Lord valiantly there. Today our family is remembering our dear friends the Davises, who left the year Pastor came in order to be nearer to Melanie’s mom, who had breast cancer (and survived, PTL!). Jeff was the choir director; both taught at TBA.

They spent several years in Ohio, then moved to Danville, Illinois, where Jeff grew up. They had four children after leaving us. They have raised them in the same Christian academy where Jeff graduated (and where Lois Randle graduated!). Melanie teaches there; Jeff teaches in a public school that has a large population of economically deprived students whose families were moved to Danville from Chicago by the state to try to raise them from poverty.

Today the Davis’s eldest, their daughter Aubrey, is celebrating her high school graduation and, though we cannot be there in person, we are praying for her as she starts out on her adult life. Just as her parents did at Tab only weeks after their college graduation!!!