We Got a Boat - and the Miracle Behind it

Introducing: Carlene

Some stories remind us that God continues weaving His purposes long after someone has left this earth. This is one of those stories — the kind where the kindness of one life becomes the breakthrough for many.

A few years ago, a husband and wife from the Glory Project community were looking for a small piece of land to build on. A routine day led the husband to visit a quiet older woman named Carlene, simply to retrieve a tool he had left behind while doing work for her. In conversation, he asked if she knew of any nearby property that might be for sale.

To his surprise, Carlene owned seven acres of beautiful land just across the road. Developers had approached her over the years, but she never felt right about selling to any of them. But with this couple, she felt peace. She offered to sell the land for whatever price they believed was fair.

They agreed on a value and planned to pay in increments as they completed each small building project. But Carlene made one unusual request — a request that puzzled them at the time. She asked that the contract include a clause stating that if anything happened to her before the land was fully paid off, the remainder would be forgiven and the land would belong to them completely.

She looked healthy. No one imagined anything was wrong.

Months later, everything came into focus.

Carlene was suddenly placed in a nursing home. Then she was sent home under hospice care. A close friend of the couple, someone who often helps care for those in need, was able to move in temporarily to assist her.

It was then that the truth surfaced: Carlene had been silently battling stage 4 cancer. She had no family with her. No one advocating for her. And she knew, even when signing the contract, that she would not live to receive the remaining payments.

She hadn’t sold them the land. She had given it to them.

For the final days of her life, she was not alone. The caregiver and the couple’s children brought warmth, presence, and love into her home. During that time, Carlene heard the gospel clearly and experienced the love of Christ. During her last 11 days on earth she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior. 

We believe heaven welcomed her with joy.

And her legacy did not stop there.

Because of the land she gave, the couple was able to tithe from its sale — and they chose to sow that tithe into something that would matter eternally: bringing the gospel to people who have never heard it.

That gift became the seed for something extraordinary: A boat for the Moken Initiative, an answered prayer that will bring the gospel to islands in the Andaman Sea.

The Moken Island Mission: A Church on Every Island

Just off the coast of Myanmar lies a stretch of sea dotted with over 800 islands, home to the Moken — a sea-faring people whose lives revolve around the ocean. Many of these islands have never once had access to the gospel. Not a church. Not a missionary. Not a single witness. The Moken Initiative exists to change that reality.

Through Glory Project’s ministry school, local believers are being trained and sent to their own islands. Today, two elders/missionaries are already serving on the main island. And this month, three more will graduate and return home — ready to begin planting the first churches their islands have ever known.

But reaching these islands requires boats — strong, reliable transport that can carry missionaries, resources, and the message of Jesus across unpredictable waters.

Thanks to small gifts, the frame of our first missionary boat is already being built.

And now, because of Carlene’s gift, a missions boat bearing her name will carry them there.

Carlene never saw these islands in person. 

She never met the Moken people. 

But because of her quiet generosity, the gospel will soon be proclaimed where it has never been heard. Island by Island.

A woman who had no family near her at the end of life is now part of a spiritual family that will multiply across 800 islands. Her legacy will travel with every wave, every crossing, every village reached.

If you want to continue to fund and support this initiative, you can find it under “Sponsor a Campaign,” or click here.

This is what God does with a surrendered legacy.

 He takes a simple act of generosity and turns it into eternity.