Why SHM
At the point that the Lord decided, for me, that enough was enough, I was a single mother of two myself.
I also had no job skills or college training, and worst of all, I was a drunk.
The church that the Lord put my girls and I into was a Baptist church in the small town where we lived. It was very different from the church that I was raised in. I remember the first Sunday that we attended, I told the girls "that Mommy was going to Sunday School too." They had Sunday School classes for every age.
We were welcomed from the beginning. There was a lady that we frequently sat next to, and during the sermon she would snuggle up to my squiggly, wiggly three year old and play with her long blond hair to settle her down enough to be able to sit quietly through the whole service. She had us out to her lake home for lunch and swimming almost immediately.
I was given books to help me grow in my faith by my new brothers and sisters in Christ. At Thanksgiving we were given turkeys, and at Christmas they would come caroling to our humble little townhouse, and in between each song they would give us Christmas cookies and other food items. I don't know how many times I called my mother and would cry to her saying "You won't believe what they have done now." One year there was a family that bought gifts for my girls and brought them over on Christmas morning. There were several older couples also, that took us under there wings and loved on us like we had never been loved on before.
But the one thing that really stands out in my memory is that for a whole year, once a month, I would find an envelope filled with money in my church mail box. I couldn't understand this kind of love that was caring for us month after month. Who would do this? I came to find out later that it was my Sunday School class that had been taking up the collection for us. What a commitment.
Jesus said; if you love me, feed my sheep (John 21:17). They had proved that there love for the Lord was real and tangible. It was something that I had never experienced before. But this church was doing exactly what "The Church" is supposed to be doing. This is what the Lord expects from His Church, from His people. It was shortly after that when I hoped that some day I could have a home to help other girls/women in crisis and their families. It was all the way back then, in about 1993, that I started to dream about Shepherd House Ministries. And it was then that the Lord gave me the name Shepherd House.
And the rest, as they say, is history - His Story!
Tari Zortman
Co-Founder/President
Shepherd House Ministries
