“Take care of giving up your first zeal; beware of cooling in the least degree. Ye were hot and earnest once; be hot and earnest still, and let the fire which once burnt within you still animate you.” – Charles Spurgeon
It quickly became obvious to us that the forces of darkness were not happy about God sending us a new daughter. My sons and I worked building high-rise buildings while we were planting churches and three weeks after Mercy came through our door all three of us were laid off from our jobs on the same day. I was unexpectedly laid off from a six figure income job that day and was consequently out of work for almost a year and financially we have never recovered. But the three of us getting laid off was not to be the height of the spiritual warfare for that day. We came home, gave the bad news to the girls and mom, and decided to go to dinner and forget our fears and worries. On the way home from dinner an old man who was off his medication tried to run my wife off the road in our little, safe, gated community where we lived. She pulled over and the boys and I got out to see what was going on and he accelerated to about 30 miles an hour and just missed me and hit my oldest son Luke sending him smashing head first into the man’s windshield and then he flew over the car and landed on the pavement as the man sped away. Immediately Lisa took off and caught up to the man and blocked his car with hers and brought him to a stop. My heart sank to my feet as I watched all of this just a few feet from me. But God! Even though the man’s bumper, fender, mirror and windshield were dented and shattered Luke jumped up off the ground and we discovered he had no broken bones or internal injuries and only a small scratch on his head. The EMTs who arrived shortly after and saw the damage to the car could not believe that Luke had even survived much less was unharmed. That day we knew we were in a war.
Over the next several months our entire family’s lives were wrapped up in ministering to Mercy and the spiritual warfare continued on every front. We couldn’t believe the persecution we began to receive from people, even our own extended family, who didn’t think it was right that we had adopted a black girl. We were stunned. Surely no one who named the name of Christ and knew the Bible could feel that way. Families left our church over it even. Friends whom we counted among our dearest quit speaking to us. And Mercy deep down was very angry. She was all alone in another country, didn’t understand the language, didn’t understand these crazy white people and their rules, and we quickly realized just how far out of our depth we were to help this precious girl. It was very difficult for Mercy and our whole family but continually God showed up in stunning ways to show us that He was the author of this and we were on His mission.
Many days I held Mercy in my arms while she wet the front of my shirt weeping out her anger and pain and confusion. Like the Grinch in the animated Christmas special, I felt like my heart was growing ten times its normal size. Many nights my girls sat up with her and worked with her. Day after day Lisa worked trying to help her learn English, get caught up in school (she had missed several years of school due to the Liberian civil war) and adjust to her new culture. All the while we were still writing, speaking, pastoring, and doing odd jobs trying to keep afloat financially. We made more mistakes than we care to remember now but God was expanding our hearts and minds at a blinding pace and we were learning to see, feel, and act like Jesus to the least of these.
When Mercy was dropped on our doorstep we simply took her in. At the time we didn’t even consider what to do legally not to mention with preaching and pastoring and speaking, we simply had no time to even think about it. But after a year my daughter Beverly came to me (she had just graduated high school at 16) and said, “Dad, put me to work in the ministry. Give me something to do.” So I asked her to hire a lawyer, hire a social worker, do the research, and figure out what it would take to adopt Mercy legally. And she did just that. Once in awhile she would show up with some papers for Lisa and I to sign or she would tell us we all needed to go to the doctor on such and such a day to get physicals for the adoption. Finally the date was set for our home study and the lawyer and the social worker called me (I had not yet spoken to them) and said, “Mister Bullen, we were getting worried that we hadn’t heard from you or your wife in all this time and the only person we have dealt with is your 16-year-old daughter. But we looked you up online and read some of your writings and realized that you are training Beverly to be a leader and a world impactor and not just being irresponsible with your adoption and we want you to know we think its awesome.” Whew! I hadn’t even considered how it might appear! Finally the day arrived and we went to court and signed all of the papers and Mercy was now a real Bullen. Oh happy day.
Within a year of Mercy’s arrival we had experienced a total financial collapse and were on our way to losing everything. The financial meltdown of 2008 – 2009 was in full swing and we were hanging by a thread. But God was working in us in ways we hadn’t previously known was possible and our faith and our determination were growing leaps and bounds. We began to experience, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace” in a whole new way.
About this time a Tres Dias brother, David Richardson, emailed me to say that he was going on a trip to Colombia, South America with Allen Pate (the guy who broke my heart for orphan ministry) and they felt strongly that God wanted me to go with them. I told him that we were weeks away from being on the street and had our hands full with pastoring and Mercy and there was just no way I could go visit orphanages in Colombia with him. Four more times over the next several weeks he reached out to me insisting that “he knew” this was from God and that I was supposed to be on this trip. Time after time I told him no. Three weeks before the trip was supposed to leave I finally found a job back in construction with some dear Christian friends that was going to put us back on top financially. “Yes!” I thought, “God has answered our prayers. Good thing I didn’t take David up on that crazy idea to go visit orphans in Colombia.” I called David on the phone and told him that I had just been hired at this company and there was absolutely no way I could go to Colombia. I’ll never forget his response. “Well, ok brother, but I just know you are supposed to be there. Don’t be mad at me but I’m going to keep praying that you will go.” “Fair enough,” I replied, and that was it. The next morning I walked in to my new job and my friend/new boss’s face was white as a sheet. “Matt, I’m so sorry but the contract we hired you for was canceled this morning and we can’t use you now.” I assured him that it was ok and walked out the door but as I stepped across the threshold leaving that place of business I was reaching for my phone, hands shaking. “Hello, David? This is Matt. I think I’m supposed to be on that trip to Colombia with you. I don’t know where I will get the money but count me in.” I went home and told my family what had happened expecting them to be upset, especially my wife, but quite the opposite was true. They had just been watching a movie called Faith Like Potatoes and they insisted I sit down and watch it. I didn’t feel like it but agreed. The story in that movie touched me to the very deepest catacombs of my soul. To this day I can’t watch it without crying. At one point in the movie (which is a true story) the lead character Angus Buchan says, “The condition for a miracle is difficulty. The condition for a great miracle is impossibility.” That exploded in my heart because I was sitting in an absolutely impossible situation and yet I knew we were on the edge of something crazy amazing and I felt the Holy Spirit’s peace waft over me and then my wife said, “You know, Beverly will turn 18 while you are on the trip to Colombia…” “Oh!” I said, Then I shouldn’t go?” “No,” Lisa said, “What I meant was you should take her with you. What better way to spend her 18th birthday than loving on orphans in Colombia with her dad?” “But we don’t even have the money for me to go”, I replied. “Well if God can send one, He can send two,” she said. And then she finished with, “The condition for a great miracle is impossibility!”
Three days later a man in our church called me and said, “Pack your bags Pastor Matt. Some of us men are pitching in to pay your way. You and Beverly are going to Colombia.”
When Mercy was dropped on our doorstep we simply took her in. At the time we didn’t even consider what to do legally not to mention with preaching and pastoring and speaking, we simply had no time to even think about it. But after a year my daughter Beverly came to me (she had just graduated high school at 16) and said, “Dad, put me to work in the ministry. Give me something to do.” So I asked her to hire a lawyer, hire a social worker, do the research, and figure out what it would take to adopt Mercy legally. And she did just that. Once in awhile she would show up with some papers for Lisa and I to sign or she would tell us we all needed to go to the doctor on such and such a day to get physicals for the adoption. Finally the date was set for our home study and the lawyer and the social worker called me (I had not yet spoken to them) and said, “Mister Bullen, we were getting worried that we hadn’t heard from you or your wife in all this time and the only person we have dealt with is your 16-year-old daughter. But we looked you up online and read some of your writings and realized that you are training Beverly to be a leader and a world impactor and not just being irresponsible with your adoption and we want you to know we think its awesome.” Whew! I hadn’t even considered how it might appear! Finally the day arrived and we went to court and signed all of the papers and Mercy was now a real Bullen. Oh happy day.