In Search of A Refuge

‘Road to Terra Numa’ is a series of posts and other content (ie: podcast episodes, etc) laying out the vision, journey, and process by which this ministry unfolds.

(Editor’s Note: This raw reflection by Pam was written over a year ago when we were ‘houseless’ for 3 months. It was a heart-wrenching time but also has deeply marked in us an even deeper desire to pursue a ministry of hospitality, spiritual renewal, and discipleship to Jesus in the context of farm life. After our time in the ark we came full circle and have been renting a townhouse not far from the townhouse we rented when we first moved to the area in 2006. We are still looking for a property – now in Amherst County)

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It happened in 1996, shortly after I met the Lord; the idea of a retreat center began to unfold. Not just me but my family, well most of us. “Refuge”, it would come to be known after my Dad got this name from the Lord. We began to keep ideas for retreats, classes, hospitality, and other general thoughts of what it would be about. I was 23 at the time and the idea went dormant for a few years until I got involved with a church plant in DC and new forms of the idea came to mind. Communal living with others doing the church plant and a ministry house idea both came in view. The idea of the ministry house came from a fellow church planter, Jason, who later would become my husband. He said that he was given the idea several years before, I think around the same time my family was brainstorming about Refuge. His ideas were very similar to mine.

We were married in 2000, started having children, and eventually decided that the life we were living in northern Virginia was too busy/chaotic. My parents and sister, along with her family, agreed and we started to consider communal living on property together in another town. We prayed and searched, brainstormed and talked for about a year. We decided to all move to the Lynchburg, Virginia, area – sadly though, not on property together, but separately. Over the next year, we all moved; us in February of 2006, my sister’s family in July, and my parents in September. During our year of prayer about moving, I found a farm property that I really wanted called the Village of Curtis. It had a main house, a cabin, a cottage, an old country store with an apartment over it along with a barn and a few other outbuildings all on 33 acres. I was enamored with the property but Jason and my Dad laughed at the $1.2 million price, and that was that.

Jason and I were living in a townhouse for our first year in Lynchburg when I got a call from my sister, her husband had gotten an offer to do some remodeling on a house in the area, after they moved down, by a couple they met through mutual friends. It turned out to be a couple that helped start the church we were a part of in northern Virginia who had bought a property in the area and needed some help with repairs. The property just happened to be an old village, by the name of Curtis! I was floored! Jason had a dream that night about them and the farm, so on Father’s Day 2006, we took a ride to find the property; the place I had wanted to buy over a year earlier.

We pulled into the driveway of the cabin on the property and were greeted by Joe Dittrich. He showed us around a bit and asked if we wanted to be a part of their home church after they were settled. We accepted, and this began our twelve year relationship with the Dittrich’s, ten of which we would spend living in the cabin on the property. Joe and Teresa are people who love the Lord and love young people, so there were always folks coming to the farm for various reasons. Mostly just to be loved on by them.

They had a lot of interesting ideas about cottage industry, hospitality, and ministry that took the spark in our heart for a retreat center and stoked it to flame again. They also invited us into helping care for the farm animals and gardening – things we already were eager to dive into. We had a huge garden for several years. On the farm were sheep, goats, chickens, guineas, a Great Pyrenees dog, and various cats. Eventually a milk cow was added to the mix and at times her calves. We became farm people and we would never be the same again. The retreat center idea became about connection to the land from which we were formed. About becoming the caretakers of animals as we were designed to be. And finding Jesus in it all. A new flavor of Refuge emerged and now has become Terra Numa. We are made from the ‘terra’ (earth) and given life through the breath (pneuma) of God. This has become us, or should I say, God has formed in us this call and it is who we are.

We were asked to move from the farm in 2018. Our hearts were broken to have to leave the place where most of our kids grew up. Where we were changed to be people of the land. To leave the place we had connection with. Since leaving the farm we have been wandering for the last 7 years, holding this hope that with each change, it would be the one in which God brings us back to land to be grounded in Him and in the land, so that His dream of Terra Numa could be realized. We lived in town for 2 years and in a small cabin next to Jason’s work for 4.

We were recently asked to move out of the cabin by Jason’s work and we were convinced, through a series of circumstances, that now was the time. That God would do miracles on our behalf, because He knows we cannot afford the scope of property we would need to see the dream for a place of ministry and hospitality come to life. We had a lot of folks praying with us and many asking daily if we had found anything yet. We prayed fervently. The day before our move came, and we had no where to go. No miracle had happened.

We got a call from a woman we had met at church a few times, she had heard of our situation from another person from church. She knew that, despite the chaos going on in her own life, she had the room to share and was being asked by the Lord to do just that. Jason told me of the offer and I immediately said NO! He asked me to think about it. God, very clearly, told me that if I want to be a person of radical hospitality, then I needed to accept it. UGH! I told Him that it was so awkward, and to that He told me to be open and honest about that.

So on a rainy Tuesday night at 10pm, exhausted from last minute moving chaos, we found ourselves pulling into a strange driveway like weary refugees. I had no idea where this house was that we would be staying in and as we came to the driveway I saw that it was the old Holy Land USA property, a now defunct walk through the life of Jesus started in the 1970’s. I learned that we were going into the building that is shaped like Noah’s Ark. God really has a sense of humor.

So, here we are, in the Ark. This Sunday (2 days from now), it will be forty days since we entered the Ark. The springs of the deep in us have all been opened. Many tears have been shed. Ones of disappointment, disillusionment, confusion, loss (many from loss), and even some from boredom. I have a tiny idea of what Noah felt. Yet, we cannot be different, we cannot be normal, we cannot be anything than who He formed us to be. Terra Numa is part of us. We live it out with what we have, though there is much of it that we just cannot live out without land to root in and grow on. We are here for a reason, that is clear but that is all that is clear. I hold on to this hope that He will finish the work He started in us, in me.