Our Story

On September 2, 2002, life as we knew it changed.

That night I prayed like I’ve never prayed before that God would not take my husband from me. You see, we had been married for twenty years. We were like most married couples. We both had our careers in full swing, working sixty-five to eighty hours a week, making five-figure salaries. We put off going to church on Sundays because that was the only day we didn’t have to be anywhere and could sleep in. Our two children had both gotten married to their high school sweethearts and both had their first child. Andy, our son gave us Andrew Lee Lewis the fourth (Drew) and Melissa, our daughter gave us our first granddaughter, Ally.

My husband, Andy, had not been feeling well for about three months. He didn’t want to worry me, so he didn’t say anything except an occasional comment about an upset stomach or being tired. I started noticing that he was losing weight (thirty-three pounds in ninety days) and regardless of what I cooked it never was pleasing to him. It was too salty, too greasy, too spicy, etc., and he always said the portions I was giving him were too large. (Remember, I’m a chef and he always enjoyed my meals prior to getting sick.)

It was a normal Thursday afternoon, I was at work, and I got a call from our son. I could tell by his voice that something was terribly wrong. He said, “Mom, Dad doesn’t want you to know, but he’s been really sick for the past couple of months. Today he almost fell off a ladder and I’ve brought him to the hospital. Mom, I’m really worried about him.”

After testing him for everything except cancer, they released him for follow up with our family doctor. That’s when they ordered a CAT scan and found that he had a very large mass in his abdominal area that measured twenty-one centimeters long, nineteen centimeters wide and seven and a half centimeters thick. It was causing complete blockage to his intestines and stomach. When they did the biopsy they told us that Andy had Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at stage four.

It’s funny how everything in your life can come to a complete stop. That happened when they told me my husband had a very small chance of even surviving through the night. They gave us the choice of trying an experimental drug regime that was a twice daily, eight hours per day, and repeated every twenty-one days for seven rounds. They said that might save his life, but they couldn’t promise me. But they also said he would die if we didn’t do anything, and at least this would give him a chance.

We went through the one hundred forty seven days of Chemo and then twenty-four rounds of Radiation, and praise God that got him into remission and he’s been in remission ever since.

It was the night they told me he might not make it through the night that I tried to make a deal with God. If He would not take Andy away from me I’d get my spiritual life in check and I promised I’d be a better Christian wife, mother and grandmother. It’s funny that it took Andy getting sick for me to change my priorities.

After Andy started feeling better we took a month off and did some traveling. We went to a dude ranch in Arizona, and on the way back home Andy told me he wanted me to have my dream of having a Bed and Breakfast before his cancer returned. (We’d been told that it would come back, but they just didn’t know when or where it would show up again in our lives)

We started looking for a business to buy. In 2004 we purchased the A to Z Guest Ranch, and a few years later we had the opportunity to buy into Eagle Creek Estates, which was a gated community with cabins for adult couples only.

As soon as I drove through the gate onto the property I knew this was where God wanted us to be. You see, this is our ministry to other couples. We are providing a place for you to come and spend quality time just with each other, away from your jobs, children and stress of daily life, just to work on your relationships with God and with one another.

We don’t want other couples to have to go through what we did to appreciate what God has given them – each other.