“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”
It was 1971 — about a year after Joy and Frank moved their family to Northeast Bible College in Pennsylvania — and they found it necessary to sell their new manufactured home in order to pay their next semester’s tuition.
When the semester ended, they still hadn’t been able to sell their home. On the day before they were to leave on a trip, in a mere 24-hour period, they sold their home for cash, and were allowed two weeks to move out. The problem was that they hadn’t found any place to relocate.
Green Lane County Park
It was Frank’s hope that they would be able to rent one of the tiny “cottages”in the Christian camp adjacent to the campus. These little shacks had been built to house summer campers. They were uninsulated, had primitive plumbing and toilet facilities, and the rooms were very small. They rented for $25 to $35 per month, plus electric. As primitive as they might sound, there were no vacancies.
School was out, the campus was deserted, and Frank and Joy were parked in front of the administration building, praying about what they were to do next. A man in work clothes approached the car. He introduced himself as the campus custodian, and told them that he’d heard that the Beckers needed a home.
He said that an elderly lady had broken her hip, and perhaps he could arrange it that they could rent her vacant house. He sent them down to the Montgomery County Park, and the Green Lane Reservoir. Frank and Joy had never visited the park, and were in for a surprise. It consisted of several lakes, each at a different level, separated by dams, with hundreds of acres of lawns and woods surrounding them. There was even a public beach and picnic area.
The photo above is of the house as it looked when the Beckers lived there. They had about an acre for their front yard, and they looked down over the end of the upper lake. Hundreds of Canadian geese made this their winter home. The Beckers built a tree house for their two little girls in the tree on the left, and set up floodlights so that they could play badminton on the front lawn at night.
When their best friends, the Salays, came to visit from New York Helen got out of their minivan, looked around, and said, “Jesus really loves you, Frank.” The truth is that Jesus loves all his children, but it’s also pretty obvious that Frank and Joy were enjoying his favor when one realizes that the Lord provided this house for just seventy-five dollars per month.
Frank & Joy had returned to college to prepare for the ministry. Here he is, a year later at age 31, in the study of their Green Lane home. They lived in this house until they completed their course work. Prior to that time, they were called to pastor a church in Lyons, New York, and they moved there the day after they completed their studies.