Uri and Trish spent many years in ministry at Harvest and have recently returned. Pastor Walton spoke with them Guam, their time away, and their priorities.
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Episode Transcript:
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor at Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We’d like to invite you to join us at Harvest Baptist Church this week. There are two services every Sunday, the first at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM.
We have Japanese and Korean translation during our second service at 10:45, and that’s also when we livestream at hbcGuam.org. hbcguam.org. This week, we’re back in our love is series part seven from first Corinthians 13:4-8. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming Pastor Gary Walton. Hi, Pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey, hafa adai, Chris. You know, this last Sunday, part six of our series on love from first Corinthians 13, we were talking about the fact that in the English language, there’s really only one word that we use for love. But if you looked it up in the English dictionary, you’d find out that there there are some dictionaries that have as many 25 different definitions of that same word. So we use the same word but in multiple different ways. But in the original language that the New Testament was written in, in the Greek language, the Greek language has multiple words for love, each describing much more specific and nuanced definitions of it.
So what that means is that the Bible talks about love in a very different way than we, may have heard or understood it, growing up as English speakers. And in fact, the way that you interpret love might be very different depending on the context to how somebody else, interprets it or feels it. And so it’s so important that we would get the Bible’s definition. That’s what we’ve been doing over the course of this series. Just looking at the Bible, it’s given us 15 different characteristics of what love means.
And we’ve been walking through them one by one, trying to make sure we understand what, God’s talking about and then trying to apply it. It’s been fantastic. A little bit challenging, I think convicting for a lot of us, but we feel like we’ve been growing together as we’ve been studying God’s Word and we’d like to invite you to come. It’s not too late. You could pick up some of them from our website if you want to go back and get some of the background, but join us on Sunday.
I think you’ll be blessed by hearing what God says about this very important part of our lives and for sure part of the Christian life. So that’s happening on Sunday. Today I have the privilege of being able to introduce and welcome back to Harvest Time a couple of very special people to us here, Uri and Trish Schallhorn. Welcome back, you guys.
Trish Schallhorn: It’s good to be back.
Uri Schallhorn: Oh yeah, hafa adai everyone.
Gary Walton: If you’ve been around Harvest, you’re going to know Uri and Trish and their family. I have a son, J. T. Had a number of years here at Harvest back in the day. In fact, I think, Trish, you came in 1997. Do I have that right? Yes. Uri, you were here in 2000?
Uri Schallhorn: Yep, 2000.
Gary Walton: Okay. Let’s start there. I want to hear your stories in a little bit, but what brought you out to Guam in the first place? Uri, let’s start with you.
Uri Schallhorn: All right. Well, for me, you know, I’m from Michigan, And so I went to Northland Baptist Bible College. I got saved my junior year of college there. And then I knew the Herons from Northland. And so after college, after I graduated, I went back to Michigan and we’d brought our teens up to camp one year at Northland.
And so I’d been praying about what to do. And at that time the Herons were coming out to Guam, and that was about 2000. So I’d been praying about it. I talked to Pastor Herron behind the library at Northland and he said, Yeah, come. And so, you know, I was 25 and, you know, it’s adventurous.
So little beknownst to me that I’d be out here this long, but I loved it. It fit. It fits. It’s what the Lord had for me and has for us now as a family, and we are so excited to be back here.
Gary Walton: I want to tell that story in a minute. We’ll get to that part. Yeah. Trish, what about you? You come just a few years earlier than that.
Trish Schallhorn: Trish I did, yeah. I came out in ’97. I went to college in Florida at Pensacola and Harvest was recruiting there. And I talked to the principal at the time. My first question was, Where’s Guam?
And then after that, just really prayed through what the Lord had and talked to my Godparents and got their blessing. And the Lord opened the door and let me come out for three years. And then God said, Continue to stay three more years. And then the Lord allowed me, because of His grace and his faithfulness, to stay out here. That’s when Uri and I met out here.
So yeah.
Gary Walton: When did you guys get married?
Trish Schallhorn: When did we get married, Uri?
Uri Schallhorn: 2008
Trish Schallhorn: Yeah.
Gary Walton: He got it right.
Uri Schallhorn: July 26.
Gary Walton: He passed the test.
Trish Schallhorn: Yeah. July 26. We got married here at the church here.
Gary Walton: Yeah. And so how many years has it been?
Trish Schallhorn: Oh, no.
Uri Schallhorn: I think it’s
Trish Schallhorn: Sixteen wonderful years. Did I get it right?
Uri Schallhorn: I can’t remember.
Gary Walton: Around sixteen years.
Uri Schallhorn: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Something like that.
Gary Walton: Trish, where are you from originally?
Trish Schallhorn: Louisiana.
Gary Walton: Okay. Yeah, so Louisiana to Louisiana, I think you Yes. To Florida for college and then, you know, a number of years out here, which has been Yeah. Yeah. Uri, you said from Michigan.
But your parents were out here too, right?
Uri Schallhorn: Yeah. My parents My dad worked at General Motors in Michigan at Fisher Body. And a gentleman from the plant there invited my dad to come to church and finally my dad and my mom both went to church. They both ended up getting saved, asked the Lord to save them. And then from there they went to Bible College at Piedmont Bible College in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
And then from there they were going to be missionaries in Liberia, West Africa. So we went there for like a seven week short term to kind of check things out. My dad had his pilot license for small airplanes and the idea was to fly back and forth from the main city. And then civil war broke out in 1991, I think, in Liberia. Was a big mess.
And so they transitioned and decided to come out to Chuuk and Micronesia here. So they were in Chuuk for, I believe, four and a half years around there and then they ended up coming here for about four and a half years doing housekeeping and stuff here, kind of like grandma grandpa to the HBBC kids. And then my mom got cancer.
Gary Walton: And that would
have been before you came out here, right? Let’s see. I mean, your parents were here
Uri Schallhorn: in Yeah, they were in Chuuk before I
Gary Walton: And even here at Harvest before you came out. Is that right?
Uri Schallhorn: No, I think After.
Gary Walton: Okay.
Uri Schallhorn: I think that I came after I was Yeah. And so then they ended up going back to Michigan. I forget what year that was. 2016, my mom passed away. And then my dad ended up remarrying this really awesome story.
The lady of the man that invited my dad to church from Fisher Body, he passed away and then my dad ended up marrying her. And then my mom and her, her husband. They’re buried next to each other in the cemetery. It’s funny, quirky, but it’s neat how the Lord worked all that out.
Gary Walton: God has a plan in every step, every season of life. Where your parents are spoken highly, you know, around here for their ministry that it was here. Tell us about you said you became a believer in college, as a junior in college. How did that happen? You were at a Bible college, but you weren’t yet a Christian?
Uri Schallhorn: Yeah. Well, I grew up going to church and went to church a whole lot, you know, and everything. But as I got to college, I think it was Tom Farrell came through and spoke. So then I went out behind the dorm and asked the Lord to save me after there.
You know, sometimes people have fears and doubts sometimes. I’d like to say that I was perfect, that I’ve never had any fear or doubt since then. But I’ve gone back since then even and made assurance that I’m saved. And what I mean by that is that you think about II Peter 3:9, it says, “God is not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.” And that’s God’s will.
God’s will is that you, if you’re listening today and you don’t know the Lord as your savior, God’s will for you is to know Him and to love Him and to know His love. And so that helps me be solid my salvation. This is the confidence. This is I John 5:14. “This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”
And then Romans 10:9-13, He’s rich to all who call on Him. I love those verses so that He’s rich to me when I call them. So, those verses helped me, with that. So, you know, I can get fearful sometimes. So we named our son Joshua, for Joshua 1:9, and that’s basically Don’t be afraid, be courageous, right?
And then even as we were coming out here, Deuteronomy 31:8, that’s in our story coming back out here. So if you touch base on that, I’ll let
Gary Walton: Let’s come back to that. I want to ask you about it. Trish, what about you? How did you come to know Jesus?
Trish Schallhorn: I didn’t grow up in a Christian home at the age of nine. My father passed away on Christmas Day. That loss changed everything. My mother became angry and bitter and she lost her smile. For her, my older brother and I felt more like a burden than a blessing.
By the time I was 16, I dropped out of high school and ran away from home, searching for acceptance and anything that can fill the emptiness in my heart. I knew the road I was walking on would only lead to destruction. Romans 3:23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. My life did not glorify God and truthfully, I didn’t care. I didn’t seek the Lord.
But the amazing part about God is he sought me. Luke 19:10 says, for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. My Godparents have been praying for me and they opened their home and their hearts and took me in as their own daughter. And through their faithfulness, they took me to church. When I was 17, I heard the pastor preach on Matthew 27 describing how the soldiers mocked Jesus.
They stripped him. They placed a scarlet robe and a crown of thrones, thorns on him and strike him, spit on him and mocked him and saying, hail king of Jews. Then they led him away to be crucified. And then verse 35, it says, after they had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers gambled for his clothes. The pastor paused and he asked a question, what kept Jesus on the cross?
And my first thought was the nails. He had just described in Matthew 27 how how they nailed him and But then he said something that changed my life. He said it wasn’t the nails that kept Jesus on the cross. It was his love. And then the pastor shared Romans 5:8 but God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
I realized that’s what I’ve been searching for all along, love and acceptance. During the invitation time, I I went forward and I asked God to take the broken pieces of my life and put them back together to use for his glory. Psalms 40 says, I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and he heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry clay and he set my feet upon a rock making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. My walk with him since then has been one step at a time. I’ve stumbled and I lost my balance along the way. But Ephesians two ten reminds me, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And then Philippians three ten says that I may know him in the power of his resurrection.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. How old were you when you went to live with your Godparents?
Trish Schallhorn: I was 16. Okay.
Gary Walton: And then really their invitations to you, to church, started hearing. Yes. Do you remember hearing, knowing about God before, knowing about his love before then? What do you remember before that?
Trish Schallhorn: I the view I had for God was just a few times I may have been gone to, like, a VBS or something. Yep. And I thought God loves those those, children that are in nice clothes and, you know, and God couldn’t love me because my own mom had a hard time loving me, you know. Now as an adult, I look back and, you know, there’s the struggle she had and really saw what anger and bitterness does to a person. And but you know what?
I can thank the Lord because before my mom passed away, she accepted Jesus as her savior and she got to experience what I got to experience, that peace and joy that comes from that only Jesus can give. So I’m thankful one day I will get to see her again in heaven.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Well, it’s amazing testimony that all of us have in different ways of how God takes the broken pieces of our lives and he restores them and he heals them and he brings, you know, this, you know, this incredible healing to the pieces that were broken. And I love the picture of I think you talked about you knew God’s love. And what was the other thing that you said?
Trish Schallhorn: That it wasn’t the nails that kept in Yeah. Because he had just talked about the the pastor had just talked about in Matthew 27 all these awful things that the soldiers did to him. Right. And then they nailed him. And so when the pastor asked that question, just in my mind, Well, they nailed him.
Gary Walton: Yeah. The nails. of Course.
Trish Schallhorn: But then when he stopped and he said it wasn’t the nails, it was his love. I mean, it just and I didn’t understand everything, what it was meant to be a Christian or the lingo of this salvation prayer. I just knew that I was a sinner and that my life was messed up And that that verse didn’t say, well, get your act cleaned up and stop doing these things.
And I had a lot of a lot of struggles, a lot of things that I had to overcome, that God had to help me overcome through his word.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Trish Schallhorn: And, so it didn’t say that I had to get it all together. He just said, while I was still a sinner where I’m at, come. And And I just asked God to put those broken pieces together and to use them for his glory. I’m thankful that God doesn’t ever give up on us.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Trish Schallhorn: You know?
Gary Walton: Amen. God brought you guys to Guam separately and then He connected you together, gave you this beautiful family. He served here for a number of years together, maybe almost twenty. And then you have a little bit of time in The States. Tell us about that, Uri.
Uri Schallhorn: Well, in, was that ‘twenty one, we had started talking about some things and we asked our parents to pray about us maybe coming back to the state and desire to be kind of closer to them some. And so the Lord opened the door for us to go back and, you know, we were able to be close to them and enjoy the things in The States for a while. But as we’re there, I don’t know that it really, we were excited to be there, but then as I got to working and doing different things, Guam is still in my heart. Like, you know, we love it here. And so, the friendships and the relationships, I really love the relationships that we have here.
In The States, things are kind of spread out. So, you know, you might have expectations you’re going to see everybody all the time and do all things together, but really here it’s so different and it’s so nice. I love the relational part of here and the familia.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah.
Uri Schallhorn: so, And then we started praying about coming back here and, yeah, we talked to you.
Gary Walton: Well, Harvest in Guam has been a special place to you. Uri, you said the familia, just relationships. Can you define a couple other reasons why this is important to you?
Uri Schallhorn: I ended up getting a job doing delivery. And so I had a lot of time to listen to would listen to a lot of different messages on podcasts or whatever. Then the radio, you know, they had different preachers come on. And then I would just listen to Scriptures sometimes over and over. So I listened to Romans chapter 12 quite a bit.
Like I just kind of parked there and listened to it. And that chapter is like super good. It’s so rich. So that had, and for me personally, had an effect on me. And then also, I listened to Chip Ingram the specific life lesson he has an app, and so he’s got a lot of different, lessons on there and the specific one is Pursuing Your Purpose.
And we’re responsible as a Christian. God has given us different talents and abilities, but he’s also given us spiritual gifts. And so, for me, I feel like probably one of my main spiritual gifts, not in pride, but just figuring out that like, I like to encourage. I like to talk to people like after church and I enjoy that relational part of things. And so like that really kind of like dawned on me like, Oh wow.
And then like, I’m responsible to use the things that God has given me. And so I enjoyed the job that I was doing and it was fun. It was easy, but I was missing things here, like the opportunities here that I feel like this, like I told you before that it fits me. And so, you know, I’m a guy from Michigan, you know, But for some reason, the Lord has, put the desire in my heart to be here and I love it here. You know, you guys, if you see us around campus, you know, like it’s fun to be outside working and mowing and stuff, but I still like talking to the different people that I get to talk to, whether it’s school parents or out in the community and stuff.
So after you’ve been here for a long time, you have those opportunities come up and so I want to be used. Trish and I also turned a certain age this year. I turned, I’m a little bit younger than Trish. Very little by little bit. So I won’t tell you what age we turned this year, but it had, that affected me this year.
It really caused me to think, Hey, what am I doing? I’m like, Yeah, I want to be used by the Lord. I want to live for the Lord. I want to love God and I want to love people. That’s where it’s at.
That’s really what I want to do. And so
Gary Walton: Well, that’s kind of the answer to my next question, but maybe I’ll push you a little bit on it.
You know, what are your dreams? What are your prayers that God will do with this next season of your life as you look, You turned a certain age, not saying what age that is, and the next season of life. What what are you praying for that God would use you guys?
Trish Schallhorn: I’ve written here in my my I have a prayer book thing and I wrote about verses about Guam and things that I prayed specifically as God was bringing us back here.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Trish Schallhorn: And a couple of verses God has given was before we got here, was Ephesians three twenty, Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think by the power of Christ. And to continue to see that God do that.
Gary Walton: I love that verse.
Trish Schallhorn: Yeah. Yeah. And then I think fruit. I wrote, Be fruitful. And I have Psalms one here, Jeremiah 17:7-8.
And that our life will be fruitful for him.
Gary Walton: Amen. Uri, anything to add to that?
Uri Schallhorn: Yeah, I think for me, one thing that kind of sticks out for me, who we hang around with is kind of basically who we’re going to be like, you know, and I think about that for my son. JT is 10 now. He was born here. And so I think about the different guys, the men around the church, the men that work here that I want JT to hang. I want him to be around and I want him to see things, whether they say things to him or whether he just picks it up, that living for the Lord is like, it’s the best.
It’s not like some sour kind of, I have to do this. It’s like, I love to do this. And it’s the relationship with the Lord, but with people. So I want the input from the men around here and me personally, I want to be around godly men too. I need it.
I need to be around guys that love the Lord and that challenge me and help me, you know, because I’m not perfect. I need help. I need that. I need the encouragement.
Gary Walton: I’ve prayed that. Faith and I have prayed that all along for our kids, too, that they would be able to see,
to have, you know, really good, close friends, mentors, around them, but that even through our lives, they would see what an awesome privilege it is to lay down your life for Christ. That is not a negative thing. It’s the best opportunity in the world and I think, you know, I love our kids growing up with that idea that serving God’s the best thing that could happen to anybody. And so, yeah, I love your kid. I love JT being around people that have that kind of heart.
That’s awesome.
Uri Schallhorn: It’s fun to have him have aunties and uncles around him.
Gary Walton: Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. Well, we love you guys.
You guys are loved here, for sure. God brought you back. I don’t even know if we said this, but you’ve been back about a month. God brought you back a little bit over a month. So still getting your island legs back.
You’re getting the color back. Can see after a Michigan winter.
Uri Schallhorn: I gotta say I like the warm weather. Oh man. It is cold in Michigan. Oh, man.
Gary Walton: Well, we’re so thankful for God’s leading. It’s been clear that it’s been God’s leading. You wanted to follow his, plan and say yes to him, whatever it would be. But in God’s goodness, at least for us and I think for you, in God’s goodness, he said he’d come back and be part Yeah. Of what he’s doing here.
Uri Schallhorn: It’s a privilege to be back here. It’s not it’s we don’t deserve it. We’re thankful to be back here.
Gary Walton: Yeah. God bless you guys. Thank you for sharing your testimonies today.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we wanna personally invite you again to services this weekend at Harvest Baptist Church. On Sunday, we have two services, 08:45AM and 10:45AM. We have Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service, and that’s also the service we broadcast live here on 88.1FM and KHMG.org. We hope to see you this Sunday.
Thanks again for listening to harvest time.