Feature by Anna Gorra "Our life is an open book because that's the way we teach truth," Mrs. Massie said. "We can say to people, 'Look we were totally messed up.'"

Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous Features | Send mail to The Voice Family proves following God leads to adventures The Massie family enjoys country living. -Gabriele Massie, photo Imagine moving more than 40 times in your life. Or living the life of a prince and then the life of a pauper. Or taking home paychecks of a quarter of a million dollars and later scampering to the local food pantry to feed your family. If you were to imagine such things, you would only begin to unravel a bit of the adventurous life that students Michael and Gabriele Massie have led. "Our life is an open book because that's the way we teach truth," Mrs. Massie said. "We can say to people, 'Look, we were totally messed up.'" Mr. Massie first met Mrs. Massie when he was in his 20s, working in a bar. At the time they met, he had never been out of the country; Mrs. Massie had been all over the world. "For our first date, I took him to the Caribbean," Mrs. Massie said. Mrs. Massie, who is part Native American, had always been intrigued by the spirit world. Her fascination engulfed her mind, and her dreams were sometimes so vivid she thought they were real. "As a teen, I started to get visions and dreams," Mrs. Massie said. "I wasn't quite sure where it was coming from; so it led me into all kinds of occultic things. Part of our traveling has been in search of answers. As I was growing older and was digging deeper, [the visions] would come out stronger. I began to lose my mind." Mr. Massie, on the other hand, came from a background where his father was an atheist and his mother a Catholic. After he came to Christ at 15, Mr. Massie maintained a universalistic worldview thinking that as long as no one was hurt, people could believe as they liked. To Mr. Massie, the Scriptures were man-made and therefore corrupt. He admits that he was never discipled in his faith. "I started finding out [more of the things she was into], and I found it really intriguing," Mr. Massie said. "Satan deceives like that when you don't really have a firm foundation and you don't really know God." Mr. Massie was also somewhat familiar with the occult world and had experimented with ouija boards. Their search led them up and down the United States. Embracing their love for the mountains and Mrs. Massie's interest in Native American life, Mrs. Massie had a tepee made. They carried the weighty tepee poles up the Colorado mountains and set up their wilderness home at 8,000 feet. Isolated from the rest of civilization, the couple squeezed into the 21-foot wide tepee and lived there for a winter, even during Mrs. Massie's pregnancy of their first son, Jonathan. On their last night in the tepee, the temperature dipped to 20 degrees below zero. Mr. Massie and Mrs. Massie took their family on the road many times, sometimes staying in one place as little as a week or as long as a month. For the children, the traveling was actually an adventure. As parents, Mr. Massie and Mrs. Massie never gave their children reasons to worry. But at the core, their marriage was holding on by a bare thread, crumbling under the enormous weight of financial burdens and Mrs. Massie's visions and dreams. Mrs. Massie was suicidal, and Mr. Massie fought to keep their family together. His parents had been married for 60 years. "I wanted to keep the relationship together at any cost," Mr. Massie said. Mrs. Massie began having crippling pain in her legs for about 14 months, and she couldn't sleep because of the dreams. Every time she would close her eyes to sleep, she would see a lot of blood, she said. The Massies returned to traveling again in an old, black ranch truck with a 5-by-8-foot trailer for 55 days, still searching for answers and for a place to feel safe. With only $3,500 to their name during the middle of winter, they followed the Rockies from Montana to New Mexico and back. "I've lived all over the world; I've never really had a home before," Mrs. Massie said. "She wanted to find the mountains, and I wanted to go build a house way back in the woods and be self-sustaining," Mr. Massie said. He has always had an interest in constructing a non-traditional building. Mr. Massie struggled to find work. They were living in a campground in the heart of February, where no employer could reach him. Their only phone was a pay phone. With only 99 cents in their pocket on Jonathan's birthday, they decided to buy a boxed cake they found on sale in a store. Then a job opened up for Mr. Massie in a lumberyard. "We began re-establishing our household," Mr. Massie said. They settled into a new house with the bare necessities in downtown Big Fork, Mont. They had one plastic bowl each, an air mattress, and one folding table that had been left at the house. Within the first week of living in Big Fork, after a failed suicide attempt, Mrs. Massie accepted the Lord. "No one had ever witnessed to me. God picked me up. It was like a big hand, and he lifted this veil. I asked God to heal our marriage, to teach me how to pray, to take away the dreams and voices immediately. I saw all of the spirits for what they really were. He completely turned our lives around," she said. "The Lord began to grow us up quickly," Mr. Massie said. "Everywhere we went, we ended up in leadership positions." They lived in Montana for five years before they left their surroundings to move to Portland, Ore. Mr. Massie had been looking for a Bible college for two years and just at the point when he was going to enroll in an extension program, a friend mentioned Multnomah Bible College. The Massies, living below the poverty level, were unsure how they would finance their college educations. Multnomah's admissions and financial departments have helped them find money to pay for school. Mr. Massie enrolled at Multnomah last fall; Mrs. Massie started this year with a desire to major in journalism. They want eventually to start a discipleship training center in the country, which they will call "Golden Manna Farms." God already is bringing people into their lives who will help them accomplish this. "It's amazing when you follow God; it's a journey," Mrs. Massie said. "Anybody who thinks the Christian life is boring is not living for God." Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous Features | Top Of Page Send mail to The Voice| Journalism department website © 2003 The Voice. 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