How It All Started

 

Here we go, the long version:

Josh and I (Joanna) with our three kids, Channing, Alan, and Jewel currently live in the beautiful prairie land of North Dakota, USA. Josh was born and raised in Nebraska under the teaching of the Word by his parents. After graduating from highschool and finding himself in utter darkness, he cried out to God in desperation and was finally heard by Him in the same hour that a hundred+ people were praying for him during the Workers and Elders conference in Oct, 2000. I grew up in northern Minnesota, also in a home centered around the Word of God. I sought to know God with my whole heart from the very beginning, and He personally revealed Himself to me at a young age, and has only continued to do so.  

Josh and I met while working at a children's Bible camp in 2003. Josh knew after that week at camp that I was "the one," and we were married the following year. We settled together originally in St Louis, MO where we spent the next seven years REALLY getting to know each other, haha. After having our first child, Channing, we moved up to ND to be closer to family. Two years later, our second boy, Alan, was added to the mix. Josh worked with my family in home building, where he eventually partnered up with my brother in managing a construction and snow removal company. Josh's parents moved up from NE to join in the business. They ended up buying a twin home with us, with Josh's parents in one side and us in the other side. Shortly after, God blessed us with a daughter, Jewel. One big happy family!

After having my first child, I began to experience unexplained health issues. I began to feel anemic, although my iron count always showed fine. I was so thin and could not gain weight. I always felt lightheaded and like I had just finished running or working out. My limbs ached like they were asleep. And the constant brain fog caused normal things like grocery shopping to overwhelm me. With the birth of each child, my symptoms worsened. One doctor I saw told me I was perfectly healthy and I need to just snap out of it. Another person suggested I go see a psychiatrist. I began to wonder if I really was losing it... like, everything. When I look back on that period of my life, I only ever picture myself laying there lifelessly staring up at the ceiling wondering where God was in this. I began to question everything I ever valued. All became vanity. I despaired of life itself. And then God sent angels to minister to me in the form of three different life stories: the first was John Bunyan's autobiography called Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. I don't know how that book landed in my lap but it breathed life back into my veins. The second was a little book called First We Have Coffee, which is the life story of a faith-full mother. And lastly, Madame Guyon's autobiography completely sealed the deal in my heart that God WAS in all of this and HE LOVES ME. During those years of "dying," I began to crave and cry out for new life. Eventually, the Lord restored my health, but by that point, I didn't care about that anymore. I had caught the scent of treasure, and in my simple mind, I was stuck in a barren wasteland as long as I was yoked to a husband that was perfectly content there. So I prayed and prayed.

Finally by the start of the year 2020, the Lord used various pressures of life and business to bring Josh under intense conviction of empty “wilderness living," as well as the near return of the Lord for His people. Josh began to agonize over the years of waste in his life. After crying out one night, the Lord suddenly touched him and restored his heart to love God once again. He too began to crave the Lord and devour the Word, through which God began to speak directly to him. He began to feel pulled to a new life, and that he couldn't continue living the way he had. He sat in the work truck one day telling his business partner (my brother) that he was feeling this way, but that he didn't know what it meant. He told him he wasn't sure how he could ignore what he's seeing and just "go back" to his normal life. He got out of the work truck and walked inside for lunch, picked up his Bible to continue reading where he had left off that morning, and read "...and Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle upon him. And he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee?" His heart was pierced and he knew what God was asking him to do. He continued working with the business through that summer, but by the end of summer, his guilty conscience caused him to be so miserable to himself and everyone around him. He was done, he "sacrificed the oxen." No more career or hobbies. The old Josh was gone. It was like a death, unfair, bitter, and hard. But he believed God and pressed on, seeking the Lord’s purposes for him.

After a year of sitting before the Lord, the Word began to point him towards the “rebuilding of the altar,” starting in Jerusalem. At that time, Israel was a closed country to travel due to COVID, so we sat tight and waited for the Lord to prove His Word. After time and prayer, Israel dropped all COVID restrictions, and the Lord opened up miraculous accommodations for Josh to travel there in September of 2022 to survey the what/why/how’s of moving to Israel. What the Lord showed him during that time confirmed to Josh of the Lord’s heart towards a work being done in that land, that has already begun, and our role in it.

Josh's last day in Israel, while sitting in the airport waiting for his flight home, a Jewish lady asked about his "Jewish surname." Josh said, no, Kleymann was a German name. No it's not, she insisted. Come to find out, after hours of research, several documents were discovered from Holocaust death records of the Kleymann name. Josh was able to trace his lineage back to the Prussia region in the 1700's, which was a large Jewish settlement. All evidence points to the Kleymanns being Jewish! His family had not been aware of that or maintained any of that history. And so the journey began... or continued... to "go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem." Mi 4:2

"But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it." Mi 4:1