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Welcome to Faith Stories. My name is Matt, and I'm introducing our speaker this morning. Ann Marie is out of town.

So we have Beth Straw here with us this morning. She's attended Faith Church for 14 years, where she teaches women's Bible study, serves in the kitchen, and helps each year with kids camp. She and her husband, Raymond, have been married for 55 years and are both retired.

Beth enjoys spending time outdoors, especially when it's warm. She enjoys sewing and spending time with her grandchildren. So let's give it up for Beth.

I want you to come on up, and we'll pray, and you can get started. And I'll try to advance the slides. If I lose attention, you just bang on the microphone.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Beth. We thank you that we can come together this morning and learn more about her faith story.

We pray that you would bless our time now and bless our conversation afterward, that it would be edifying and glorifying to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Do you really believe God is good all the time? For my 76-plus years, that has always been a challenge to say and to truly believe.

To say he is good some of the time, or most of the time, or usually would be easier, but all the time? I was born in 1949 while living in Jasper, Indiana. I was the first, four pounds, four ounces, followed in two years by my brother Bruce, two years later by my sister Mary. My parents, Bob and Helen Campbell, were awesome parents.

Dad worked as a radio operator at the Jasper State Police Post, and Mom forfeited her nursing degree and career to stay at home with us kids. An opportunity came along for my dad to get in on the ground floor of the new microwave communication system for the Indiana State Police. We moved to Bloomington in the middle of my second grade year, settled on three acres, two and a half miles outside of Bloomington, and began a welcomed life of a Bloomingtonian.

To this day, my favorite place and my favorite town is Bloomington. We attended a small country church where God was preached, Sunday school was expected of all the kids, and a week of vacation Bible school was provided by the parents every summer. I can honestly say I've never not believed in God and was baptized when I was eight.

Yet, how I viewed my faith has drastically changed over the years. The church pastors pretty much preach fire and brimstone, a continuous list of do's and don'ts, and if the good outweighed the bad, you might make it to heaven. Well, I was a pretty good kid, so I thought I had a pretty good chance.

School progressed normally until middle school and high school. We were districted to attend IU's lab school, and at that time, I was told I needed to explain this. At that time, Bloomington had two schools.

Bloomington South, it's always existed, and then we were districted into IU's lab school, which was university school. So it no longer exists. It was a bad experiment, so they did away with it, and now there's Bloomington North.

But at the time, we were at the lab school with about 125 per class. I was a very average student. None of the subjects sparked my interest until I reached high school and home ec was offered as an elective.

Finally, I found something I was good at and that I absolutely loved. In high school, the academics was hard enough, but the social aspect became unbearable. Today, we call it bullying.

Back then, it just hurt. The high school clique was cruel, and the endless tricks and remarks made school totally unbearable. My parents listened and tried to offer advice and encouragement, and even though we were faithful churchgoers and I had a belief, I had not discovered how that could help me now.

I thought that believing God got us to heaven, yet was of no earthly or practical good now. I begged my parents to let me drop out of school. No.

My class ranking was in, I was the last one in the upper half of the class, and my counselor, Miss Lackey, ugh, said she would not recommend college. Rather, find a good man to marry and let him take care of you. Yeah.

I sincerely thought I would have to tie my mom down to keep her from going to school after her. Dad was determined more than ever that I would attend IU. IU welcomed Bloomington graduates, very different then, to attend, and if you graduated, great.

If you made it, fabulous. If you didn't, well, okay, you tried. I had finished 10 years of 4-H and taken all of the classes in high school in HOMAC, so my degree would be in HOMAC education.

I was petrified, but now I see where bullying was a great motivator. I'd show them. I had been, I lived at home and commuted to the campus four miles away every day.

Dad furnished us a car. He paid our tuition and our books, and I worked for the rest. I had been working at the Indiana Memorial Union since I was a sophomore in high school, starting in the catering department as a waitress.

By then, by the time I was in college, I was now promoted to set up. Catering was one of the best jobs I have ever had. Hard, hard work, long hours, but a lot of fun.

College was great, lots of work, but no mean girls. Then I heard about a group that met every Thursday night called Campus Crusade for Christ. I tried it out.

I was absolutely blown away by the type of students there. They were real. They had a plan and a direction for their lives, and they talked about Jesus in a way I had never heard of before.

I needed to know more. Over the course of the school year, I discovered that Christ wants a relationship with you. The more I learned, the more I wanted.

I shared with my parents. They transferred to a new church where Christ was alive. Mom got involved in the newly formed Bible Study Fellowship.

Dad became active in ways I'd never seen before. God is good all the time. He takes what is hurtful and ugly and uses it for an opportunity to grow.

Romans 828 has always been a verse that I cling to. And we don't, and we know that all things work together for good, for those that love God, to them who are called to his purpose. Also, Psalms 136.1. Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Fast forward to my senior year. I was still working and catering 40-plus hours a week, carrying a full school load. A member of the Campus Crusade Master Action Group.

And to my dad's delight, I was on the dean's list every semester but one. My relationship with Jesus was growing by leaps and bounds. God was indeed good all the time.

Then a guy came to the catering department to apply to be a much-needed 21-plus-year-old waiter. We needed those to do off-campus serving the booze. Anyway, I was the supervisor, so I did the hiring, the training, the firing, all of that stuff.

I can say that it was not love at first sight. That story takes a whole nother, we don't have time. Later, it's a good one, though.

But we eventually began dating, and we married in June 19, the 19th of 71. Last Friday was our 55th. A month after I graduated, OK, Ray still had a year to go.

He had a year to complete at IU, since he had served three years in the Army. I had my first teaching job at Brown County High School in Nashville, Indiana. God is good.

Two-plus years later, Ray began his career with Indiana State Police as a motor carrier safety inspector. Then as a trooper. Jason was born February 1973, and Ian followed in March of 1977.

Our first assignment had us living in Clinton. I would not recommend that. Our 10 years there was not the best.

We struggled to find good friends, a good church. God was great in providing a wonderful friend for me, Alice, a believer and real sister in Christ to this day, and also a second mother to our boys. While we were in Clinton, I completed a master's at ISU and helped establish and run a community daycare center for seven years.

As I said, Clinton left much to be desired, but God used all of it for good. You truly can learn from not-so-positive experiences. We then moved to Sanborn, Indiana, which I'm sure most of you don't know where it is.

Way south, two hours south of here. Ray, it was Ray's so-called hometown. He was an Army brat, but his parents identified Sanborn as their home base, too, and that's where they retired when they finished in the Army.

We bought his parents' house. They moved to South Carolina. I love Sanborn, still do.

It's a very small, rural farm town of about 450, if you count the dogs and cats. We became members of the Baptist Church. God was so good to bless us with close, God-fearing friends, mentors, pastors.

The boys were doing very well in school. Then Jason hit high school. Behavior started going south.

He picked a tough crowd to hang out with and making poor choices, dabbling in drugs, drinking, sneaking out of the house at all hours. Whatever we tried didn't seem to slow it down. Jason was an extremely intelligent kid with a magnetic personality.

He found life thrilling while dancing on the edge of the cliff. He tried Vincennes University, which is about 25 miles south of us, and after a year and a half, took a break. He and his girlfriend, Lisa, quickly married after finding out she was pregnant.

Sunny Day was born April the 28th, 1999. It would take several hours to recount this journey. The ups, the downs, the ins, and the outs of jail.

Continuing ed at ISU and IU. If it hadn't been for God's constant assurance that he is good all the time, we would probably be in a loony bin somewhere. Jason and Lisa divorced after a year, and he moved to Bloomington and found solace in a woman nine years his age.

Eli was born September 2001. The hole continues to grow bigger. On the other hand, Ian graduated with honors from high school, where he was president of the National Honor Society, and then on to IU.

Ray has now put in 27 years with the state police, so retires and immediately takes a position with FMCSA, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. I was in my fifth year of teaching, 7 through 12, at Linton High School Middle School. And it was probably the best job I've ever had.

Wonderful job. Best teaching job. Small-town kids who were very personable and ready to- very needy.

They were just ready to be loved at all. I was the head of the two-person home ec department, so could design it the way I wanted. Guess I did OK, because the fourth year, I was awarded Teacher of the Year by the State Department.

I was honored by my peers. Ray called me at school one day to tell me he had accepted the federal opening in Minnesota. I told him I would go anywhere, as long as it wasn't north of Indianapolis.

He jokingly explained that he thought I said Minneapolis. Ha ha. Oh, God, help.

I hate the cold. Hate the cold. Off to Minneapolis we went, or Minnesota, for 12 years.

God continued to add to the many life lessons of trusting him for everything. Finding a house, a teaching job, a church, new friends, the whole list. He used a scary experience to show us he is good all the time.

Our 12 years were packed with everything we needed and more. I had a couple of different teaching jobs. I got riffed from one, so on to the next.

I found wonderful friends through our church, Wooddale. And it had an attendance a little different than this, 5,000 to 6,000 a Sunday. It was a great place.

Ray plugged into the choir. I led evening women Bible studies. I volunteered at the ticket desk and helped in the kitchen.

We had a chef and a pastry chef on staff full time. Yeah, it was different. I even grew used to the long, cold winters.

The first winter I kept track of the snow. 75 inches. And no school cancellations.

No late starts. We are wimps here. I spent 10 years as the assistant costume manager sewing costumes for the Minnetonka High School and the community plays.

Minnesota was a great time. God did indeed have us saying that he's good all the time. In 2010, it was time to come back to Indiana.

Most of our family was here. We couldn't convince them to move north. Believe it or not, Jason had graduated from IU with a general ed degree.

It only took him 13 years. Ian had graduated from IU with an accounting degree. His first job was in Chicago.

That's where he and Sarah began dating and married. Couldn't have picked a better daughter-in-law. She's awesome.

From there, they spent three years in Arizona, where Kyla was born in 2007. They moved back to Indiana, to Carmel, in 2007. They moved back to Indiana in 2008, realizing that they were too far from family.

Our move to Indiana, back to Indiana, and retiring from FMCSA was inspired by their expecting number two, and wanting me to quit teaching and to nanny him for the first year. Besides, Sunny was growing older, and we had always had her every summer while in Minnesota. But her needs were becoming greater.

Her mom was an unpredictable mess, and Jason was trying to juggle his collapsing life. She needed some stability. I moved in with Ian and Sarah over Christmas of 2010, and while, because Xander had been born that September before.

And Ray stayed in Minnesota for another year to finish his work. It was a wild year, but one where we saw God working. I also began church searching.

That's always fun. After eliminating most of the churches, because they didn't have a traditional service, that's a Ray requirement right there. I came to the last church on my traditional list.

It was Faith. As the usher turned to hand me a bulletin, he said, Beth. My response was, Bill.

It was Bill Beguman, who was Ray's boyhood and family friend from Sanborn. Small world. That, in combination with the Word of God being preached, the warmth of the congregation, and a peace only God can give, I knew we were home.

God was indeed working all things for good. It was a wonderful year. Nanning Xander full time, Kyla two to three days a week when she wasn't in daycare.

Sunny joined us most weekends. I'd pick her up at her house in Terre Haute on Friday after school and take her back Sunday night. And that became a pattern that continued through middle school and high school.

She was safer with us than left to her mom's wild weekends and whatever guys she drug home. The spring of 2011, we bought our house after our Minnesota house finally sold. Ray rented an efficiency in St. Paul in the building where he worked.

I returned to Minneapolis for three days to help pack him up and pack our house up to move to Indiana. The process was filled with God things, all of which would take another hour to explain. It was very interesting, though, but it was God.

Ray was here for a few days before he had to go back and finish his time at his, well, the last few months at his work. Sunny and I spent the rest of the summer cleaning, unpacking, watching Xander and Kyla, because she was still spending every summer with us. For a 12-year-old, she was one fabulous worker.

That kid could put anyone else to shame. I joined Phil Johnson's small group, an evening women's Bible study. Life at Faith was great.

In November, Ray and I packed up his small apartment, said goodbye to his fellow workers at FMCSA, and we drove to Indiana to stay. Life for Jason continued to be an endless up and down. His years of bad choices had left their mark.

He fiercely, fiercely loved his kids, Sunny and Eli, but their moms were always demanding money, that he do this, that he do that, never satisfied, always nagging. On the evening of February 14, 2014, we received a call from his friend, who he was renting a room. He had overdosed.

The EMTs were able to get a pulse. He was in the ICU at Bloomington Hospital. When we arrived, he was on life support.

He would remain on life support for 48 hours, then be tested for signs of life. We had to wait. We told everyone that he'd suffered a heart attack to avoid further distress for Sunny and Eli.

Family and friends joined us for the wait. Could I still say, God's good all the time? Ray and I knew that God was the only reason we had made it this far. The signs of Jason giving up had become apparent in the last two weeks.

I had told Sarah that I was afraid we were going to lose him. He was neatly tying up all the loose ends with Sunny and Eli. The mothers were making all kinds of unreasonable demands.

Eli's mom, Christy, had filed false charges against him again, and he was facing jail time. He had lost 30 pounds, and I can go on and on. I tried to tell him and assure him that God had not forgotten him.

Jason assured me he and God were good. But would I please remember to write Eli often? 48 hours later, Jason was declared dead, his attempted suicide complete. Parents should never have to bury their kids.

Where are you, God? Well, he's standing right there with us, his arms around us. We held a memorial service in May on the shores of Lake Lemon. That was the last time we saw Eli.

His mom makes sure we have no contact with him. We pray for his safety and that he will find Jesus. We would appreciate it if you would also keep him in your prayers.

Ian and Sarah have been wonderful, amazing parents to Kyla and Xander, except they failed to provide a spiritual life for their family. We pray that will change. Kyla just finished her freshman year at University of North Dakota in aviation.

Her goal is to be a commercial pilot, and this summer sometime she should complete her solo license. Yeah, she's a cool kid. Xander is a high school sophomore at Carmel.

He loves marching band. He plays soccer whenever he has an opportunity. As awesome as they all are, they need Jesus.

Sunny graduated from IU and went on to graduate from law school. She's now a lawyer in her second year of practice in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She and Ryan were married last October and have just purchased their first house.

They close next month, yes. Sunny knows Jesus, but has not built a relationship with him. Ryan, her husband, is definitely curious.

With all the horrific experiences Sunny has gone through, she is very aware of the role Jesus has played in her life. That saga alone would take another two volumes. God has used all to form who Sunny is today in a very positive way.

We would like to thank all of you who have prayed for her these past many years that she wouldn't have made it otherwise. Ray and I have dabbled in various jobs since moving to Carmel, but are now trying to adjust to retirement. It is fun, most of the time, to see where God directs us in our golden years.

Aside from medical issues, joint replacements, six back surgeries, cancer, arthritis, we don't want to dwell on that and we don't want to be known for that. Yet, we praise God for bringing us through all of it. I still lead a Wednesday night women's Bible study.

Those women are awesome, I love them. And I lead the team that creates the yummy snacks for kids' camp. That's fun.

And Ray and I have finished our first year with LifeWise. God is good all the time, even when we groan every morning getting out of bed. Okay.

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