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235. Stories Series: Jesus, Our Ever-Present Help in Trouble with Kent Heimer **Transcription Below** Psalm 32:1 (KJV) "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." Kent Heimer is a Jesus-follower and grateful recipient of God's love and forgiveness. He is happily married to Jan, father to three married adult children, and grandfather to 12. Professionally, Kent is the President at Heimer Construction Company in Taylor, Missouri. Questions and Topics We Cover: When you were 13, a significant event occurred. Will you share that story with us? What did life look like, both before and after you put your faith in Jesus Christ? Even after you became a Christ-follower, you still had troubles in this world. Will you pick up your story again? Thank You to Our Sponsor: Leman Property Management Company Connect with The Savvy Sauce through Our Website Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast! Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:17] <music> Laura Dugger: Leman Property Management Company has the apartment you will be able to call home, with over 1,700 apartment units available in Central Illinois. Visit them today at Lemanproperties.com or connect with them on Facebook. Kent Heimer is my guest today, and he is a second cousin to my mom. They grew up near one another, and they even attended the same church. God has interwoven our families, and even to this day, Kent and his wife, Jan, remain dear friends of my parents. I first heard Kent's testimony as a teenager, and it has never left me. At that time, I was not yet walking with the Lord, but his story left an eternal impression on me. I am just humbled he is willing to share it again today. Here's our chat. [00:01:19] Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Kent. Kent Heimer: Laura, I am so humbled to be able to join you today. Laura, you talked about Savvy Sauce, I'd just like to share with you a little bit how I do life. I love Psalm 32:1, where it says, "Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." So as I do life, I am so thankful to be able that when people ask me how I'm doing, as a believer in Jesus, I am always blessed. Some days I'm happy, and some days I'm sad. So I never want to lie when I'm not doing well, and I don't want to tell somebody I'm doing okay, but I am safe to say that I am always blessed. [00:02:24] And it has opened the door to share the gospel so many times, countless times in my life when people say, "How are you blessed?" And they open that door, and I get to share with them Jesus. Laura Dugger: And Kent, really, as long as I've known you, which I guess has actually been my entire life, that is so true every time I hear you respond that way. Our families go way back. And as you know, my dad is one of 10 children, and my mom is one of six. So I've always been fascinated by big families. You grew up in a large family. So will you tell us a bit about your upbringing? Kent Heimer: Yes, I'd love to. I had the most wonderful parents, Laura. There was eight children in our family. There was three girls and five boys. [00:03:25] We were a typical family. Mom and dad loved Jesus, and that was their heart's desire, that their children would love Jesus also. We didn't go to church every Wednesday night. We were raised on a farm, and with the busyness of farming, that didn't always work. But on Sundays, you could always find us at a small rural church there at Taylor called the Apostolic Christian Church. Mom and Dad, as I said, were wonderful parents. They did go through some heartache and pain. I have an older sister, Linda, that only lived less than a month. She had spina bifida, so she went home to be with Jesus. I have never met her, but I certainly look forward to that time when we will be together forever and ever. [00:04:29] Like a lot of farm families, Mom and Dad went through some very difficult times, but it was encouraging for us kids to see their faith, even when they went through those difficult, difficult times. I remember in 1959, we had a large barn there on our farm full of a lot of hogs and cattle and straw and hay and equipment, and that night that barn burnt. I'll never forget the faith that I've seen in my mom and dad as they went through that difficult time. Then in '61, they lost another. We lost our farrowing barn there on the farm to fire also. Then '64 to '66 was a rather difficult time for Mom and Dad. My dad had an accident there on the farm. [00:05:29] He was building a new fence, and it was raining, and he was setting a large corner post without the use of a tractor and a loader. He was trying to bear hug it and set it by hand and slipped on the wet dirt, and that post fell on him such that the next two years, he was in lots of pain and had two back surgeries. So it wasn't easy there on the farm for my mom and dad and with seven of us children then at that time living, but they always pointed us to Christ. Laura Dugger: Kent, when you were 13 years old, a significant event took place. Will you share that with us now? Kent Heimer: Yeah. It was May 13, 1966. [00:06:30] A good friend in school named Dean invited me to stay overnight with him and set some lines out in the river and fish for large catfish, and I caught the biggest fish I'd ever caught before. It was a five-pound blue cat, and I was so proud of that. So the next morning, I couldn't wait to show up to my dad. So that next morning, May 14, 1966, was a Saturday, and Dean's mom took me home, and my mom told me that my dad and the hired man were down at the bottom of this big hill, and they were working down there and that I could go show that fish to them, but first I needed to go to the barn and help my Uncle Gerald load a load of straw. So all of us, my brothers, our seven kids, our ages at that time would have been... the youngest would have been six, and the oldest would have been 18. So the five of us boys were old enough to help load the straw. And then we loaded up in their truck, and I had a five-gallon bucket with that fish in it, and I couldn't wait to show my dad. [00:07:59] So we went down the hill. Our farmstead was up on kind of a large high hill. And went down to the bottom of the hill, and I was in the back of the truck with some of my brothers, and my oldest brother, who was 18, was driving the truck. As we got closer, I saw that they were resting. The man that was hired by my father to help him and my dad, it looked like they were resting, and I thought that was kind of peculiar. I hadn't seen my dad rest on the ground like that. Well, my dad and the hired hand were driving a sandpoint. A sandpoint is a perforated pipe that we had a lot of hogs, and because of disease, my dad would like to move the hogs around on the farm. And being only five miles from the Mississippi River and kind of a sandy subsoil, that water table would move, permeate, and move through the ground, and you could drive a perforated pipe about 25 foot into the ground, and you would just use a pulse tow driver to drive that in the ground, and then you could put a shallow well pump on it and get water for the livestock. [00:09:29] Well, it had rained the night before, and the ground was moist. It was a very humid day on that May 14th day. So my dad and the hired man were putting a section of pipe onto the sandpoint. They raised it up. My dad, I know he knew that close by was a real electric line running. I think he felt he was far enough away from it to hoist that section of pipe up, but that day, because of the conditions, that electricity arced over and hit the pipe that my dad and the hired man were holding, and both of those men were electrocuted when we got there. As I look back at that later, God was really merciful because the pipe wasn't laying against the line and still touching my father or the hired man because some of us children then could have got electrocuted at that time also. [00:10:46] But it was an unbelievable sad day in the life of our family. We went up and told Mom, and she... I'll fast forward about an hour here, but she said she would not want to go down and look at the bodies. But she gathered the seven of us children in the living room, and she promised us that God would be with us and that God would help us through this very, very unfortunate event in our life. Laura Dugger: Wow. And between both families, many children were left fatherless that day. Kent, your mom, Naomi, just has always had the best reputation. I know my mom has said that she was one of the sweetest women she ever knew. [00:11:53] Mom even said she considered her her second mom growing up. So that is remarkable that within an hour of that tragedy that she was still clinging to God's promises and teaching her children the same. But how did your sweet mom continue to support your family? Kent Heimer: She was the most godly person that I've ever known. My dad didn't have any life insurance, so I would just like to say, please, if you're listening to this and you're a young couple out there, please have some term insurance, life insurance or something if a tragic event would happen in your life. But because of that, Mom worked two jobs at that point. [00:12:56] She would get us kids up, get us on the bus, and then close by was a motel, and she would go there and make beds, clean rooms, and then she went to the local high school where us kids went to school, and she was a cook there. So she would work before and after that noon hour, and it was her desire to get home in time to get us off of the bus and to be able to be with us. So Mom never complained. I never heard her once ever, ever, ever blame God or be angry for what had taken place. She one time told me that she was glad that she had a large family that would keep her busy, and so she was very, very busy. But she said that often the busyness would keep her mind off of what had taken place with our family there.[00:14:14] Laura Dugger: Let's take a quick break to hear a message from our sponsor. Sponsor: With over 1,700 apartment units available throughout Pekin, Peoria, Peoria Heights, Morton, Washington, and Canton, and with every price range covered, you will have plenty of options when you rent through Leman Property Management Company. They have townhomes, duplexes, studios, and garden-style options located in many areas throughout Pekin. In Peoria, a historic downtown location and apartments adjacent to the OSF Medical Center provide excellent choices. Check out their brand-new luxury property in Peoria Heights overlooking the boutique shops and fine dining on Prospect. In Morton, they offer a variety of apartment homes with garages, a hot downtown location, and now a brand-new high-end complex near Idlewood Park. Their beautiful, spacious apartments with private garages in a quiet but convenient location await you in Washington. [00:15:19] And if you're looking in Canton, don't miss Village Square Apartments. Renters may be excited to learn about their flexible leases, pet-friendly locations, and even mini storage units available in some locations. Leman Property Management Company has a knowledgeable and helpful staff, including several employees with over 30 years working with this reputable company. If you want to become a part of their team, contact them about open office positions. They're also hiring in their maintenance department, so we invite you to find out why so many people have chosen to make a career with them. Check them out on Facebook today or email their friendly staff at leasing@Lemanprops.com. You can also stop by their website at Lemanproperties.com. Check them out and find your place to call home today. Laura Dugger: Well, and even for each of you kids, you said the age range was approximately 6 to 18. [00:16:20] Do you remember how you all processed this, even emotionally or spiritually, at the time? Kent Heimer: You know, I wish at that time... our church now has a counseling service, but I really wish that us kids and my mom could have had some kind of grief counseling. That tragedy was acted out in different ways by us children. I think each one of us processed it in such different ways. A lot of the younger children didn't want to go to school for a time. I don't know if they thought that they would come home and mom would be gone too. [00:17:20] I'm not sure what those little minds were thinking. You know, being…
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