It’s no secret to those close to me that I don’t like to venture far from home when I don’t have to. So when I made the move all by myself from suburban Moorestown, NJ to Houston, TX, it was a big deal. I had just finished graduate school and accepted a full-time position as organist and worship coordinator of a large, Houston-area church. Not long after moving here, my now-wife Grace and I got engaged and she moved to Houston to be with me. We got married a year later and things were going pretty well. However, just a few months after we got married, our lives were turned upside down. Seemingly out of the blue, the church where I was working laid off several staff members due to financial shortcomings. I was one of them. We didn’t know what we were going to do. There weren’t many jobs in my field available in the area and if we left Houston it would mean Grace would have to leave her job too and we’d both be starting from scratch. This wasn’t a situation we imagined having to deal with in our first year of marriage.

Then, about two weeks after getting the news from my employer, a simple phone call changed my (our) life again, but this time for the better. A man by the name of Rob Landes from St. Luke’s UMC left me a message and said that a little birdie (whose initials start with Jeff Hoover) told him I might be looking for a job. I had always heard what a wonderful place St. Luke’s was and so I immediately gave him a callback. A week later I was interviewing with Rob and Sid Davis and was offered a job on the spot. I was fortunate to be able to start only a week after leaving my previous position and didn’t even miss a paycheck. Somebody was watching out for us and His plan was finally becoming clear.

Our lives haven’t been the same since arriving at St. Luke’s. It was less than a year later that Grace also came on staff as the Associate Director of Music and Fine Arts and both of our lives have already been filled with more blessings than we could ever possibly count.

I can’t even begin to imagine where we would be had I not received the message from Rob that day. What I do know is that suddenly, home doesn’t feel so far away anymore.

James Roman
Associate Organist & Executive Administrator