Pete and Bev Caruso love sharing the truths from God’s Word that He has deposited in their hearts and lives.

As former pastors for 35 years they have insights into the needs of individuals, and having ministered in over forty countries they’ve gained a perspective of the spiritual condition of the church-at-large that comes together to make their message significant wherever they preach or teach. Their messages touch individuals of all ages and cultures.

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Stripping the Fence

Guests to Rancho de la Paz will now be greeted by two new signs created by master carver, Rick Wiebe. The first can be seen from the main road, the second at the front gate.

Sign for the Road

Sign at Gate

The men did a number of other projects as well, including:

Repairing the Gazebo

Repairing a Wall

Not to be outdone, the ladies had their own projects besides working along side their husbands. The ladies painted the entire main living area of the middle house.

Painted Den

They dug out around each fruit tree, then filled the hole with llama beans. (For the uninitiated – llama beans are the droppings of llamas. It makes great fertilizer. It’s odorless and doesn’t attract flies!)

Llama Beans for Trees

Jackie baked for three days, filling the freezer with breads and rolls of cookie dough for the enjoyment of our guests.

Breads for Our Guests

We miss their singing of the old-time songs during their early morning devotional times in our living room. We miss their jovial banter, and their talk of our loving Lord. Yet the work done during those three weeks in February will be an ongoing blessing as we host missionaries and ministers who give of themselves in God’s work around the world.

MMAP Volunteers

Thank you to: Kerry and Judy Cameron (from Oregon), Rick and Helen Wiebe (from BC, Canada), Bob and Anita Emerson (Californians), and Bill and Judy Johnson (from Oregon).

A marriage lasting 50 years is pretty rare these days. Being married for five decades to one’s best friend is rarer still. Can your marriage last that long? Can it be that strong?

Can 21^st century marriages survive the assaults of long commutes, both husband and wife holding down a job or maybe two, schedules crammed with soccer practice and swimming lessons, the temptation of pornography in the home office, and memories of hurts and betrayal? Can you look forward to watching your children and grandchildren grow up to become godly men and women filled with love for the Lord who walk with godly character and make an eternal difference in the lives of those they touch?

My answer to all these questions is yes. This year my wife and I celebrate 50 years together. We can’t take the credit for what God has done in our family. But thanks to Him we have three grown children, eight grandchildren and now six great grandchildren each with a heart intent on serving God.

I want to share with you some how-tos for making your marriage the best it can possibly be and for laying a groundwork in your children’s lives that will carry over into their marriages and beyond to future generations.

How to Leave a Legacy Worthy of Honor

1. Understand God’s view of your marriage vows. It’s necessary to communicate in words and actions before your wife and children that “there will be no divorce in this family.” This provides a great sense of security to your wife and children. The marriage covenant is a lovely picture, lived out by two mortals, of the covenant that God made with man.

So when we marry, we are making a legal, binding agreement before God and man to forsake all others and commit our lives to walk together as one. We are choosing to turn away from any involvement with another and to keep ourselves for one another only. This is not only at the physical level but also includes any entanglement of emotions with another person.

By choosing to do this, you go against the norms of today’s society. Yet in doing so, you lay a foundation for a lifelong marriage—with no back door. It’s a marriage for keeps.

2. Set goals for your family. A number of years ago we were part of a group of couples who met together weekly. We spent several sessions talking about what we wanted for our families. We examined the Scriptures, we brainstormed, we debated, and we assembled the following set of goals for a Christian family.

• To develop complete unity between husband and wife in thought, attitude and purpose.
• To develop in the household an atmosphere of God’s presence that would influence all who enter.
• To develop within the children a reverence for God, His Word, His church and His service that would enable us to live for Him when independent of the home’s direct influence.
• To develop relationships by which each member of the family could have all physical, emotional and mental needs met.
• To fully develop each family member’s potential in life by mutually honoring and nurturing one another’s unique role and ministry.
• To develop freedom from all types of bondage to earthly values, including being in debt.

You might set similar but different goals for your family. Knowing what you’re aiming for is a huge part of success.

3. Be the kind of leader your wife and children can follow. Being the head of the home means being an administrator. Not a spectator, not a dictator, but one who oversees the whole. Headship is a function, not a status that makes us superior. A leader needs to set a good example, in both his character and actions.

4. Represent Christ to your family. In Ephesians 5, Paul teaches the role of the man in marriage by comparing him with Christ and His love for His church. The highest praise I have received was from my wife when she described my love for her as “the kind of unconditional love, acceptance and care that Jesus has for the church.” I know she sees me through love-tinted glasses—I’m not really perfect. But her assessment is a mighty good description of what Paul is referring to in Ephesians 5. If you’re a husband, I encourage you to read that chapter daily until it becomes a part of you.

5. Seek a godly mentor and make yourself accountable to him. It’s so easy for us, as men, to think we can handle life on our own without the input of another. If we’ve never experienced this kind of open and growing relationship, we can be resistant to mentoring. There’s a natural reluctance to putting yourself in the position of learner, especially for a man. If we have personal problems we tend to withdraw into ourselves, preferring to solve our own problem or to suffer alone. Or we’ll set our mind on something else, like climbing a mountain slope or repairing an engine; or perhaps just sleep, hoping the problem will fix itself. It isn’t natural or comfortable for us to seek help in becoming better persons, brothers, fathers or husbands. Yet each one of us needs someone to help us to see our blinds spots, to walk with us through the struggles of overcoming weaknesses, and to believe in us and care for us enough to hold us accountable and to cheer us onward. We never outgrow our need for accountability.

6. First, establish authority; there’s plenty of time to become your child’s friend. Every parent wants to be loved—and liked—by their children. But if your desire to be liked by your child is stronger than your desire for him or her to become a responsible, caring adult, then in the end you’ll lose the child’s respect and probably their friendship as well. We’re admonished in Proverbs 19:18 to “Chasten your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction.”

7. Consciously and intentionally teach your family God’s ways and principles. Perhaps this is one of the hardest things to follow through with. Our careers, hobbies and busyness get in the way of our being proactive in training our family. Yet it doesn’t have to take hours a day. God told Moses in Deuteronomy 11:19: “Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Perhaps the best time for most families is the dinner hour. Even if your family can share a meal together only a few times a week, you can guide the conversations to include things you want them to learn.

8. Have fun with your family. No matter how you provide for your family or how spiritual you are, your family needs a husband and father they can enjoy being with. When they need comfort or counsel, or are frightened or filled with self-doubt, there must be a foundation of love, trust and familiarity that lays the groundwork for them to come to you with their need.

9. Respect their differences. No matter how many children you have, each differs from the others. Yes, there should be household rules. But the sensitive child should be handled differently from the self-confident, extroverted overachiever. Study your children. Learn their temperaments. Identify their love language. Encourage their natural abilities. And honor each one for the person he or she is now and will become.

10. Become a good communicator. Include “listening.” Few men are natural communicators. Oh sure, we can make a presentation or write a proposal. And we can give orders or respond to a question. But sharing our true selves with our wives and children takes humility and transparency. Learning how to convey what you mean in a loving and respectful way, while making the other person feel loved and their opinion valued, takes effort. You can do it. The first step is recognizing your own need to communicate. The second is noticing how you communicate. What are you communicating with your tone of voice and body language? And perhaps most important is paying attention to what the other person needs from the communication.

11. Teach them to stand alone. The pressures on children and youth today are more plentiful and much stronger than on previous generations of young people. It would be unusual today for anyone to reach adulthood without having been offered drugs, exposed to pornography, or invited to participate in other illegal or immoral behavior. You can teach your children that both God and their parents have expectations of them and that they must learn to make choices. The younger a child is when he or she learns to stand alone against small issues, the easier they will find it to stand alone when faced with big temptations.

12. Look for ways to affirm your wife and children. Could there be a better way to love your family than to affirm your wife and our children? In doing so you can find fulfillment and meaning in your own life. Always be looking for ways to affirm them, to point out their positive efforts, to acknowledge the ways you see them growing in godly character and Christ-likeness. You don’t need to wait until their birthday or graduation day. You can use everyday happenings to let them know that you see their efforts and are proud of them.

The was the lead article on New Man Magazine’s Ezine on December 31, 2008

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A year blessed by our Savior!

When Marie’s parents moved to another state, the girls were given a choice: move with them, or take an apartment together. It was a first breath of freedom–and one they were not at all prepared to handle. The girls opted for the apartment, but the sister moved away shortly thereafter. Totally on her own for the first time, unprepared and never having faced the world alone, Marie was a disaster waiting to happen. And disaster was what I suspected the day Marie asked to talk to me “alone.” Now she was seated before me, fretfully working her hands in her lap. Her long blonde hair hung down, nearly veiling her face as she stared at the floor. Then she looked up, tears streaming down to her chin.

“I’m pregnant, Mrs. Caruso,” she blurted. “And I can’t turn to my parents for help. When I told them, my father tried to kill the guy. Now I’m on my own. I don’t know what to do.”

I tried to think of something to say–something comforting. What kept me tongue-tied, in part, was a vivid memory that played in my head. While Marie sat waiting for me to speak, my mind jumped back several years to another young woman in the same situation.

That young woman had grown up in our church, had babysat for our three children. When I learned she was pregnant out of wedlock, I was disappointed, judgmental. My biggest concern was that her younger sisters not think that we, the leaders of the church, condoned what she’d done.

Several months into her pregnancy, that young woman miscarried. I assumed she was relieved and visited her in the hospital. Her eyes looked a little glazed, which I took for embarrassment. I said something to her like, “Remember that what you do from now on will have a real influence on your sisters.”

Only later did I learn that what I’d mistaken for embarrassment was really grief over her loss. Suddenly I was the one who felt like a fool. Nervously, I waited for her to gain strength and return to church where I could ask forgiveness for my words and cold reaction to her.

She never did return. In fact, I only saw her once, but that was in public and she was with friends. I had totally blown the chance to ask her forgiveness. We lost track of her family shortly after that.

Marie’s sniffles brought me back to the present. She was still working her hands. This time, I had to handle the situation differently–but how?

We prayed together asking God to give us both guidance. Then I asked her to come back and see me in a couple of days. I knew I had a lot more praying to do.

That night I lay awake long after the lights were turned out. Pete and I had discussed the situation, of course. Yet I knew that, because of my past failure, the next move was up to me. Pete had prayed that God would speak to my heart, and said he would be with me all the way in whatever I was led to do.

I prayed, “I don’t want to blow it again, Lord. Forgive me for my self righteous attitude. Help me to love Marie as you do. Help me be a channel of your love and forgiveness to her.”

Still in an attitude of prayer, I wondered how I could be a channel of His love, what I could do beyond offering words of comfort. God had given me so much love. What could I give to Marie?

A home! The words bolted into my head out of the air. No. Not into my head. Into my heart.

There were conflicting thoughts in my head as I lay there: What will the other young people in the church think? What will their parents think? Will it seem that we’re condoning sin?

And what about our own children? Debbie’s thirteen. What kind of impression will this make on her? How can I expose our children by having an unmarried, pregnant teenager come to live under our own roof? We’ve been so careful, such a good, straight Christian family…

That last thought stuck in my brain–so careful… such a good Christian family. What was I saying?

The next morning, I checked my impressions with Pete. What did he think about allowing Marie to move into our guestroom until after the baby was born? He didn’t hesitate a moment. We contacted her that day. Shortly, she moved in with us.

At this point, I need to break off the narrative to point out some of the things we learned about forgiveness as a family and as a church from the experience.

A lot was revealed in my prayer. I’d asked God to forgive me of my self-righteousness, not fully aware just how deep that attitude was ingrained.

The first lesson we learned had to do with uncovering a sinful self-concern. In my case, it was a concern about our reputation as leaders in the church and a concern for what the “good” kids would think.

On one occasion, when the Pharisees belittled Jesus for associating with sinners, He replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’” Matthew 9:12-13.

It became clear to us all, in the months that our church family responded to Marie’s needs, that we are most often concerned about the needs of the “healthy,” while we are unconcerned or are afraid to involve ourselves with the needs of the “sick.” Let’s face it, we all want smooth, comfortable, trouble-free lives.

I’m not saying that we should open our home to every troubled person who comes along. But I am saying that we must recognize self-righteousness when it clogs our heart. And that we must open our heart to what God’s Spirit would have us to do if we want our life to conform to His living Word.

This leads to the second major lesson we learned about true forgiveness.

In the same passage in Matthew 9:9-13, we find that the Pharisees were right about Jesus—He did associate with Publicans and sinners. He ate in their homes, laughed with them and listened to their troubles.

Many of us, on the other hand, place a big distance—emotionally and sometimes literally—between ourselves and a person who is in need of forgiveness. This distance communicates the attitude, “You have to come up here on the level I’m on. Then you can be forgiven.” I have no doubt that’s what I communicated to the young woman about whose influence on her younger sisters I was so worried.

This is not the kind of attitude God showed us. In Romans 5:8 we read, “God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In a real sense, God accepted the task of bearing the eternal penalty of our sin, and He continues to accept the task of walking through the result of our sin, right at our side.

This, then, is the kind of acceptance we must be willing to demonstrate if we are to offer forgiveness fully—a willingness to accept, in part, the burden of the one who is in the wrong. What does this mean, practically speaking?

Each of us has certain areas in which we’re weak, certain ways that we always seem to “blow it.” It may be gossip that hurts and slanders, it may be sexual temptation, a problem with alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or it may be an uncontrollable temper. How much easier it is to overcome those sins and drives when we have the support of other Christians who accept us while we are on the road to “cleaning up our act.” By demonstrating the kind of acceptance we learned, we can can show the face of Christ to a weak brother or sister who is beset by sin and longing for freedom and healing.

To finish Marie’s story, our church learned how to help shoulder the burden of her pregnancy with her. Women were helpful in their counsel about her health. Marie continued to find fellowship among her peers as she continued to participate in youth activities, including a short drama the group put on.

As to my fears about the influence on my children, those anxieties could not have be more unfounded. Many evenings, the children would pass by the living room where Marie and I spent many hours talking. Sometimes the kids would see Marie sobbing in my arms. Now that they’re older, they tell us they never for a moment thought it would be “okay” to end up in Marie’s position, regardless of the love that was shown.

On the night of Marie’s labor I was at her side. After the birth of her baby, Pete and I and many others stood by her as she went through with the crucial decision she’d made about the child’s future. She had chosen to give up her baby for adoption, a very difficult and emotional decision for her to make.

Today, Marie is a happily married wife and mother. Through her prayers and forgiving attitude, both of her parents have become Christians.

© Beverly Caruso