Stan and Janet's Journey

Friday, July 26, 1974 was first time Stan Nowell and Janet Reid went on a date. They had met the previous weekend as Stan led the music for a youth revival at First Baptist Church of Tutwiler, MS. They fell in love and two years later on June 13, 1976, also Stan's birthday, they became united in marriage at the same church. Their first child Laura Beth joined the family in 1979 and then Rebekah came along in 1983. It was in November of 1984 while serving on staff at Oakhurst Baptist Church that Stan was surprised when the call to become a foreign missionary came one Wednesday night while at church. After realizing that God had extended the call to Janet in the summer of 1974 they united and surrendered to the call by making a public decision on a Sunday morning at Oakhurst Baptist Church. Realizing that finishing seminary was a must, they moved to New Orleans in January 1985. Stan lacked two years of study to complete his master of divinity degree. Soon after arriving, they attended their first missions interest meeting where they began the "process" with what was called at the time the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. In September of that year Stan was called to be the pastor of Mt. Vernon Baptist Church in Amite county Mississippi. This call also included pastoring the Amite River Baptist Church. This historic church met twice a month and it was a part of their wonderful experience during this time. Loving the country life, the Nowells moved into the pastorium at Mt. Vernon and Stan commuted for a year and a half to finish seminary.
There were some dark days during this time as Janet suffered two miscarriages over a couple of years and as Stan lost his uncle and first cousin, father and son, on Christmas Eve in 1985. They died when their truck was hit by a train as they left from a deer hunting trip on that morning. God used these difficult experiences to shape and prepare Stan and Janet for the years to come. Then in April of 1988 they received the precious gift of their red-headed son Christopher Caleb. The following fall they attended a candidate conference at Ridgecrest, North Carolina where they hoped to be appointed as missionaries with the FMB. To their surprise just before being examined by a psychiatrist, they received a phone call from the medical clinic where they had had their physicals earlier in the day and they were informed that Janet was pregnant with their fourth child. After some consultations it was decided that they would take a two year delay in their "process" and make sure that the new addition to the family arrived safely and in good health. Jamie arrived in June of 1989 fourteen months behind his brother Chris. The Nowell family was now complete and ready to move forward to what they believed would be smooth sailing toward appointment as foreign missionaries to the country of Honduras. God had other plans and after six and a half years in the appointment process with the FMB, Stan and Janet received news in February 1991 that they would not be appointed as missionaries with the FMB because of Stan's potential health problems. Concern over the possibility that he might become a diabetic led to this rejection. This news led Stan and Janet into another period of shaping and forming to prepare them for what God had planned for their lives. It was a dark and difficult time as they knew that the "call" was real and that they had done everything they knew how to do to achieve their goal of becoming missionaries in obedience to God's call. After being rejected by the foreign mission board Stan was invited to Chattanooga by his longtime friend Wayne Barber. Wayne was pastor of Woodland Park Baptist Church and he knew Stan was hurting and he just wanted to be a friend and minister to him at this time. Through Wayne's counsel Stan realized that God hadn't said "No", He had just said "Wait." Sure enough by the fall of 1991 Stan was on his first mission trip to Honduras. Stan was now pastor of the East Fork Baptist Church at Route 4 Liberty, MS. This was the home church of Jerry and Homerline Clower. When Stan was invited to go on a medical mission trip to be one of the preachers, the church agreed and sent him and one of their deacons to Honduras. During that wonderful week in Honduras God confirmed His call on Stan's life to serve in Honduras and Stan was approached by two board members from the ministry Baptist Medical and Dental Mission International. They had heard about his desire to be a missionary to Honduras and they shared with him that the leadership of BMDMI had been praying for five years that God would raise up a missionary couple to come and serve with them in Honduras. BMDMI's founders were Charlie and Caroline Herrington. Charlie had died in Honduras in 1986 and Caroline suffered from a neuromuscular disease called myasthenia gravis. In 1992 Stan and Janet were appointed as missionaries with BMDMI and Stan was given the role of Field Director. This appointment meant that they would have to now trust the Lord to provide for all their financial needs through a network of supporters or ministry partners. BMDMI required all their missionaries to raise their own support in order to serve with them. This was a completely new idea to Stan and Janet as their denomination's missionary program provided for all then needs of their missionaries. As they began to pray and seek the Lord in this matter, God led them to Proverbs 3:5-6. It says," Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths." This verse became their life verse and by faith they trusted God to provide for their needs. They wrote everyone they knew whom they thought believed in them and their call and they asked them to prayerfully consider becoming a "Lifeline Partner" with them. Many responded and on the last Sunday in May 1993, they received their last official paycheck and they believed by faith that God would provide for them from that moment forward. They moved back to Clarksdale for the summer where they prepared to move to Costa Rica in August with their children. Through this step of faith God manifested His ability to provide over and over again. One such demonstration came on the day that they loaded all their belongings on several pickups and trailers and took them out to a spot alongside the Jerry Clower Highway in the East Fork community. There they sold most of their possessions on that Saturday in May of 1993. Around noon that day a man stopped by and came over to Stan to ask what was going on. Stan shared their story with the man whom he had never met before. The man got back in his car and left. Later that afternoon the man returned and walked over to Stan. He said,"God told me to give you this" and he shook Stan's hand placing some money in his palm at the same time. Stan simply put the money in his pocket and said thank you! The man turned and left. As they were finishing up that afternoon they began to count the money that they had received from selling their possessions. Stan remembered that he had put the money from the stranger in his pocket and when he reached in to get it he was astounded to find a roll of twenty two one hundred dollar bills. God demonstrated to Stan and Janet His ability to provide for their needs at any moment using complete strangers if He so desired. He has continued to faithfully demonstrate this over and over for sixteen years now. Not only did He demonstrate that He could provide for their financial needs, but He demonstrated how He could provide for their physical needs also. As the time drew near for their departure to Costa Rica for a year of language school, God showed His power and provision again. The Nowell family would fly to Costa Rica out of New Orleans on a Friday in early August. They were in Clarksdale preparing to leave on Wednesday when Janet ran into the nurse from the children's clinic in Walmart. They began talking and Janet shared how that their son Chris was having some minor problems. This led to the nurse getting Janet to run by the clinic with Chris to do a urine test. This simple test showed a potential problem and they immediately called their church and put Chris on the prayer list. They were scheduled to leave the next morning and travel to East Fork, MS where they would have a going way party with their friends from East Fork Baptist Church and Mt. Vernon Baptist Church. The doctor called Stan from the clinic and said that she was concerned about Chris and that he could have a very serious problem. She shared that she had done some blood work that would show if Chris had a dangerous kidney problem. She also shared that the results wouldn't be back until Friday morning. Stan and Janet had followed God's call now for nine years. They had overcome rejection by their own denomination. They had stepped out by faith and trusted God to provide for all their needs and they had been faced with one obstacle after another. Now their son's potential health crisis threatened to stop them in their missionary journey for good. Stan shared with the doctor their call and their belief that they were supposed to get on that plane on Friday and fly to Costa Rica. He shared that they were going to go on by faith trusting God to take care of Chris and that on Friday morning they would stop and call her office from a pay phone to get Chris's test results. If they showed that Chris had a serious problem then they would turn around and come back. They pulled off the highway at Kenner, Louisiana on Friday morning and Stan made the call. With everyone in the car waiting anxiously to hear the news, Stan heard the doctor say, "Stan the test are completely clear and Chris is just fine!" Once again, God demonstrated His care and provision to the Nowells. After a wonderful year in Costa Rica, the Nowells moved to Honduras in June of 1994. It had taken ten years from the time of the call until they arrived in Honduras. If you don't believe God has a since of humor, the night God called Stan to be a missionary, a young lady was sharing her slides from a medical trip she had taken to Honduras. Stan was in charge of the program that night and after she made a comment in her presentation about no missionaries having ever been called out of that church, Stan took that statement and began to chastise the crowd. To his surprise God said in that still small voice, "What about you?" Well, long story short, ten years later Stan and Janet were in Honduras serving with the same ministry that that young dental hygienist had gone to Honduras with ten years earlier. Yes, it would have been so much easier if God had laid out the details very clearly that night and shown Stan that not only was He calling him to missions but that He wanted him to serve with BMDMI in Honduras! However, God had a lot of molding,shaping and preparing to do in order to get Stan and Janet where He wanted them to be. After working with a mission team from their home church in Clarksdale, MS, Janet and the children returned to the states to begin preparing to move permanently to Honduras in January of 1995. Stan stayed and worked with several more mission teams until September. The last team of the year came from Woodland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, TN. This was the church that Wayne Barber was pastoring and when he heard about Stan and Janet's appointment with BMDMI he invited Stan to attend their annual mission’s conference in the fall of 1993. Stan flew in from Costa Rica and it was there that he met WPBC missions pastor Larry Frick. Stan and Janet were adopted by WPBC and this church began helping support them financially. It was as that time that the first mission trip to Honduras was planned by Larry and Stan. Now one year later they are together in the mountains of Honduras in a small village called San Julian.
The week was wonderful and God used this week to introduce Stan to a very godly man named Ed Fleming. Ed was a member of WPBC's mission council and he taught a men's Sunday school class at the church. He had a tremendous heart for missions and who could have imagined that within a ten years Ed would become the man wnom God would use to help Stan incorporate Forgotten Children Ministries. But that's another story! After serving with this mission team, Stan also returned to the U.S. where he began preparing to move to Honduras in January of 1995 with his family. The children attended school that semester in Clarksdale and then the family moved to Tegucigalpa, Honduras in January. The children started school at Escuela Vida Abundante (Abundant Life School), Janet got busy being a homemaker in new culture and Stan began working as Field Director facilitating the medical and dental mission teams that began coming to serve in Honduras. This meant spending many weeks in remote mountain villages directing the teams. The work was very tiring and he was basically on call twenty four/seven. The responsibilities of directing the ministry in Honduras were huge. Not only directing and facilitating the teams but directing the work of the Honduran staff also. Then the summer came and there were mission teams every week from June until August. As time went by Stan became fatigued and exhausted. He was running constantly being very busy working for the King. So busy in fact that he didn't make any time to spend with the King. This lack of walking in a close relationship with the Lord began to bear fruit in his relationships with his Honduran staff and by the end of the summer he was completely frustrated with missions, mission teams, and all the people around him. One afternoon as he traveled alone through the mountains returning from working with another mission team he suddenly pulled off the side of the mountain road. He decided to let God know how frustrated he was with everything. He reminded God of all he had been through in order to become a missionary. The rejection, the trials, the struggles and then he began to remind God of what he had accomplished and achieved for Him. How for ten years he had worked every day to achieve the goal of getting to Honduras as a missionary. Then as only the Holy Spirit can do, God spoke in that still small voice and asked Stan, "Now when did I ask you to accomplish something for Me and when did I ask you to achieve something for Me? He continued "All I have ever wanted is you, just you nothing else." In that moment Stan realized that he had let bitterness lead him off the past of surrender and walking with God daily to the path of self sufficiency, self reliance and self centeredness. Stan began to cry and ask for God's forgiveness. He felt so stupid as he realized that he had walked in his own strength for years and that was why he was now so weary. He cried out to God and prayed with all his heart, "Lord do whatever it takes to make me into the servant that you desire me to be." That was one of the most serious and heartfelt prayers that Stan had ever prayed. Within a couple of weeks Stan, Janet and the children returned to the U.S. where they would do some traveling and speaking in order to raise more support. Stan's father Earl was in his second and final battle with cancer when they arrived in the states. A week after they arrived home Stan went to the doctor with his Dad and on the way home from the doctor Stan suffered what would later become known as a partial simple seizure. His Dad was legally blind so Stan was driving. When this happened Stan felt as though he may have been having a stroke or something so he tried to drive quickly to get to the nearest hospital in Cleveland, MS. Finally, being afraid he was going to wreck the car he pulled off the road. When he opened the door to stand up and get some fresh air, he fell back across the seat and passed out. Someone passing by stopped and called 911 and Stan was taken by ambulance to the hospital. A C.T. scan was done and he was released later that evening after things returned to normal. The next day he received a phone call from his personal physician and he told him that the results from the C.T. Scan showed that he had a tumor called a meningioma on his brain. It was now three weeks after Stan had prayed the prayer,"Lord do whatever it takes to make me into the servant that You want me to be." This began a journey that would end in complete physical brokeness. After getting several medical opinions Stan had brain surgery on February 1, 1996. What was thought to be one meningioma turned out to be 3 ossified lipomas. The surgeon gave Stan a piece of one of the tumors in a plastic bottle and it was as hard as a rock. Janet quickly agreed and said that it only confirmed what she had thought for years! Stan has a complicated medical history that began when he contracted rheumatic fever as a first grader. While in recovery from the brain surgery he had a grand mall seizure which required eight people to keep in from coming out of the bed. The seizure was so severe that he fractured the T-9 vertebrae in his back. This was much more difficult to overcome than the brain surgery. One unrecognized blessing during this time was that Stan and his Dad were able to spend some very special time together. His Dad would die on June 7th just a few months later and through God's grace Stan was able to be at his bedside. God in His abundant grace would allow Stan,Janet and the children to return to Honduras in August of 1996 and continue their journey as missionaries with BMDMI. Stan served two more years as Field Director. He served with a different attitude and new understanding of allowing God to work through him instead of doing his work for God. He could no longer physically do the work without complete dependence on God for His enabling grace. His work became more administrative as God brought another missionary family to work with the mission teams. However, in December of 1997 the missionary who had been working with the teams had a mild heart attack while in the states for a short furlough. Dr. Tony Byrd who along with his wife Mary had joined our missionary family in Honduras was told by his doctors that he should not return to the harsh conditions of Honduras. So in January of 1998 Stan found himself returning to the remote mountain villages with the mission teams. It wasn't long until the physical stress of this work once again began to take a toll and without warning Stan began have mild seizures once again. By March, Stan, Janet and the leadership of BMDMI agreed that he would have to return to the U.S. to have some neurological studies done to find out what was going on. Once again Woodland Park Baptist Church came to their aid and offered a house for them to stay in during their medical furlough. The decision was made to have the neurological studies done at U.A.B. in Birmingham, Alabama. It was only two and a half hours from Chattanooga. The Nowells arrived in Chattanooga in early July of 1998. The physical problems were one thing but the uncertainty of their future as missionaries was very disconcerting. During the next few months there was a darkness and heaviness that settled upon Stan and it seemed to him that he had failed God and that he was no longer useful to God. The neurological studies were done and revealed that there was a lot of scar tissue from the surgery. Also they learned that the three main triggers of seizure activity for people with brain injuries are fatigue, sleep deprivation and other chronic illnesses like sinus and allergy problems. Stan was experiencing all of these in the work he was doing with the teams. So it appeared that this part of his missionary service was over. By now it was October of 1998 and something was about to happen that would change their plans and give them an unexpected new calling and direction in their lives. A hurricane formed off the north coast of Honduras and it was given the name Mitch. Honduras has two seasons. A rainy season that begins in mid-April and ends round the first week of November. Hurricane Mitch struck the northern coast the last two days of October. It struck at the end of the rainy season which meant that the mountains had been saturated for five months and the rivers where at their full capacity. Hurricane Mitch then did something that no other hurricane had ever done in the history of Honduras. It turned inland and moved south until it came over the capital city of Tegucigalpa. In two days it dropped fifty inches of rain on the city which is surrounded be mountains on all sides. Over eleven thousand people died and over 1.5 million people were left homeless. Seventy five percent of the infrastructure was destroyed and according to some estimates the already impoverished country was set back fifty years. Stan and Janet were broken hearted as they watched the devastion in Honduras on the news. Then on a Tuesday night the week after Hurricane Mitch struck the program called Nightline with Ted Koppel came on television. He was in Honduras on the streets of Tegucigalpa doing a special on the plight of the street children. He showed two small girls holding a photograph of a fifteen year old boy. They lived on the streets and the boy in the photo was their adopted big brother. They were crying and as the interview continued they revealed that the boy in the photo had learned that his entire family had been killed in one of the many mudslides during the hurricane. Distraught and hopeless, he drank pesticide and killed himself. Next they showed video of children being placed in body bags and being buried in mass graves. The street children sought shelter from the storm under the bridges along the Choluteca river that runs through Tegucigalpa. The water rose so rapidly that dozens were washed away by the flood waters and they drowned. As they watched Stan and Janet were devastated by what they saw. After the program ended they went to bed for the night but Stan was so troubled that he couldn't sleep. He got up and tried reading to help him get sleepy. As he returned to bed to try and go to sleep, his mind began being flooded with thoughts of doing something to rescue the street children in Tegucigalpa. Realizing that he was not trying to think of something new to do for God he prayed and asked, "God if you want to speak to me I am desperate to hear from You! Please I ask You to speak to me through Your Word." Not wanting to tell people that God spoke to him, Stan ask for God to speak to him through His Word in order that he might have the Word to cling to and guide him in what God wanted from him. Getting up and opening his bible Stan found himself reading in Isaiah 25. It talked about the city being destroyed by the rains and the floods. As he tried to understand what God was saying, he saw the cross reference 4:6. He turned to Isaiah chapter 4 and verse 6 and this is what it says, "There will be shelter to give shade from the heat by day and refuge and protection from the storm and rain." Stan then began to write all his thoughts in a legal pad and this lasted all night until Janet awakened the next morning to find him already awake. He shared with her the vision that had been birthed in his heart to rescue the homeless, abandoned and forgotten children of Honduras. Janet affirmed the vision and gave her full support to join with Stan in following God in this new direction and plan for their lives. That was over twelve years ago now. Since that time their journey led them to resign from BMDMI and step out by faith and form a ministry that would be committed to rescuing the street children of Honduras. A ministry that would give these hopeless children a hope and a future. The journey finally led to the founding of Forgotten Children Ministries by Stan. The ministry was incorporated in March of 2003 and today almost eight years later there are sixty two boys and five girls in our custody. The ministry consist of Noah's Ark Shelter for Homeless and Abandoned children where between 15 and 20 rescued boys between the ages of five and twelve live. It consist of Noah's Ark School where six teachers educate all the rescued boys and girls from the first grade through the sixth grade. It consist of Grace Farm, a forty acre farm which FCM owns where 45 rescued boys between the ages of 12 and 20 live. Just recently FCM opened Grace Girl’s Home and our first five rescued girls arrived in January, 2011. The four fold focus of the ministry is to one, disciple and evangelize the boys and girls introducing them to Jesus Christ. Secondly, to provide them with an education. Boys and girls in grades one through six go to FCM's school and those in the seventh through 12th go to the public go in the village of Monte Redondo and other surrounding villages close to Grace Farm. FCM has a transition house for our boys who graduate from hight school and seven rescued boys are now attending a university in Tegucigalpa. The ministry also consist of Noah's Ark Baptist Church which serves the community of Monte Redondo and last year a new church was birthed which ministers to the people who live around the city’s garbage dump. We have a national staff of thirty Hondurans along with north american missionaries Richie and Lori Womack. We currently have two couples in language school in Costa Rica who will study for a year before moving to Honduras and another couple will start language school in January, 2012. Also, through a series of unexpected events in his life including the death of his wife, Ed Fleming joined Stan in ministry and together they incorporated the ministry in March of 2003. Ed serves as FCM's Executive Director and runs the day to day operations of the ministry. Stan and Janet live in Harrison, TN along with their four children and their grandson. Stan spends between ten and twenty weeks a year in Honduras. He also travels around the U.S. presenting the ministry in churches that are interested in sending mission teams and supporting the ministry. Janet maintains the home front and also works part-time in Chattanooga. The ministry has recently received a $400,000.00 grant in Honduras from the U.S. Department of Defense. This grant will be used to construct a high school, a medical clinic, dental clinic, a kitchen for feeding the poor children of the village a free a meal every day. This along with everything else about the ministry from the birth of the vision up through today has been a total God thing. It is His heart for the children that brought this ministry into existence and it is His provision and blessing that sustains it. All Glory,Honor and Praise belong to Him! The journey continues!