Gary’s Testimony

Gary Siarkowski
May 19, 2020

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 New International Version (NIV)

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 46:10 New International Version (NIV)

10 I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’

Jeremiah 29:11-12 New International Version (NIV)

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

I try my best to pray about everything. I want God to micromanage my life! Many times in life, you cannot fully understand all the ways God has been working in your life until the final piece of the puzzle is in place! That is why I urge you to trust God and be diligent in your prayer life, because sometimes pieces of the puzzle will fall into place that you have NOT prayed about. God knows your heart and if you are diligent in your prayer life, He will fill in the blanks and make the puzzle complete even if you have not prayed about them!

I started working for a Mega-plant printer on July 9, 1990. A few months later in October 1990, a man from China began working there. His name was Ding Tiejun. His American name is Daly. We became really good friends. After awhile, he began to call me Uncle. Later on, I was to understand the significance of this. It is a Chinese culture thing.

After a number of years, he left and moved to Sparks Nevada to open his own business. We still kept in touch. January 2009, I got a phone call. It was Daly. He asked me if I wanted to go to China with him. He was going to go to China to get married and he wanted me to go with him. I told him no. What do I want to go to China for? I had no reason. I never considered going to a foreign country. Later on, I got thinking about it. What better opportunity would I have to go to another country. He spoke better English than I did, he was my friend, he knew the Chinese culture, and how much would it cost me to have a personal tour guide take me around China? I called Daly back and told him, yes I wanted to go to China with him.

We flew out of Los Angeles airport on March 14, 2009. We flew on Asiana Airlines because Daly said they had the best food. He was right! The food was wonderful.

We arrived at Harbin International Airport on March 15. We were there for two weeks and I instantly fell in love with China. I loved it there. The culture, the people, everything about it. It really is a wonderful place to be.

The Monkey King is a famous Chinese fable. Because I like to have fun and cause trouble, our Chinese friends started to call me the Monkey King. Plus, the monkey is my Chinese Zodiac Animal.

Much to my surprise, we went to a Christian church. Daly’s new wife, wanted me to marry Daly and her. She felt the marriage would mean more if Daly was married in a Christian church. I did the best I could to remember and recite the marriage vows for both of them.

It was on that trip that I decided I too wanted to marry a Chinese woman. I asked Daly where he met his wife. He told me he found her online at a website called Asia Friend Finder’s. As soon as I got back to America, I logged on to Asia Friend Finder’s and joined. I’ve been married twice before and both marriages ended in divorce. Both times, I did it my way. I lived with both women, we have premarital sex, and I tested the waters first. This time I prayed to God, and I told Him I would do it His way this time. No living together, no premarital sex, and I wouldn’t even kiss the woman this time. Every time I went on Asia Friend Finder’s, I would pray first. I asked God to find the perfect woman for me. I was looking at five or so women when I came across a woman going by the name of Karissa. Everyday I prayed for God to find me the right woman. As soon as I found this woman Karissa. All the other women disappeared, and Karissa was left. Karissa was the woman’s English name. Her Chinese name is Lixia. She is God’s gift to me. She is the perfect woman for me. She is proof that God answers prayers. I couldn’t ask for a better wife!

We were married at the Chengdu marriage office on August 26, 2009. Lixia wanted to get married on August 26th because that was Valentine’s Day in China that year.

Lixia had a 14 year old son and now we are very happy family! Their travel visas were finally approved and I traveled back to China in February 2011 to bring them to America. Our family arrived in America on February 22, 2011. They are now both American citizens!

A couple of years ago I started to look for places to retire. I prayed for God’s guidance. I asked Him where would be the best place or state to retire. I met a couple at church, Emily and Andrew Berlin. They were farmers from Tennessee. They would come up and rent some land in New York to farm because it was cheaper than farming in Tennessee. Tennessee was one of states that I decided I liked the best. They said the Chattanooga area was the best area in Tennessee. Another friend of ours from church, Nancy and Scott Kennedy said there was a good realtor in Ooltewah. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but I made notes anyways for future reference. I also did not realize at the time that this was divine intervention, because that was the last summer that the Emily and Andrew from Tennessee came to our church!

I worked in the plateroom at the Mega-plant printer. That plant is the largest printer of weekly magazines in the world. My work schedule revolved around the weekly magazines. Four years ago, all of the work our prepress department did slowly moved to Poland. 30 people lost their jobs. That got me thinking, maybe I would lose my job eventually.

The woman who handled the digital files for our largest weekly magazine company was close to the people in New York City where the digital files came from. In the fall of 2017, they told her that were worried about losing their job because of some internal talk they had heard.

Now I really became worried. I spoke to my wife, and we decided to take a vacation to visit Tennessee. In June 2018, we spent two weeks at the Holiday Inn Express in Ooltewah, Tennessee. We both liked the area and we visited the realtor that our church friends had suggested. The realtor took us to three houses, but we were very disappointed. The houses were in our price range, but they were dumps. We were very discouraged.

Our church friends had also suggested a couple of churches to attend. I prayed about it and decided that we would go to the South Bay church. The next Sabbath we attended the South Bay church. When we first entered the church, a woman came out of the kitchen. She told us her name was Gwen. She was very friendly and we talked with her for about 10 minutes. We went to the Sabbath school and the divine service was very good. I told my wife to make sure we didn’t tell anybody that we were looking for houses while we were down here. After the potluck, we met the same woman, Gwen, on the way out of the building. The first thing my wife said was, “We are looking for houses while we are down here.” Gwen said, “Oh my husband is a realtor.” Then she proceeded to introduce us to her husband, Mike Doucoumes. This was Divine intervention as you will soon see! We told him about going to see three houses with the other realtor but that we were very disappointed and why. He said, “Tomorrow is Sunday. I’ll take you around a little bit and show you some other houses.”

The next day, Sunday, Mike took us around to many different developments and showed us a lot of different houses he had sold. The houses were beautiful. He told us he couldn’t understand why the other realtor showed us those lousy houses, when there are so many beautiful houses to see! We were very encouraged and went back to New York very happy. The other realtor had placed us on a distribution list and during the next year we had looked at around 500 different houses that fit the specifications we had given them. None of them were very interesting.

In October 2018, the woman who handles the digital files from New York City was told that she had until December 31 to teach the people in Poland how to do her job. I told my wife about this and how I felt that this would eventually mean that I would definitely lose my job now! She said I should quit, we should move to Tennessee, and I should get a job in Tennessee. I prayed about it and God impressed me that I should wait until I lost my job before we moved. I didn’t know why, but I trust Him! God know best!

The nice thing about working one place for over 29 years is having a month of vacation. Our son Michael was already in China, and Lixia and I took a vacation to China. We were there from July 27th to August 24th, 2019. It was a huge blessing!

Thirteen of our family took a three day trip to a Tibetan area in the Sichuan Provence. 56 different people groups live in that area.

We visited the epicenter of the Great Wenchuan Earthquake that happened on May 12th, 2008 at 2:28 p.m. as shown on this memorial. 69,181 people died, 18,398 missing, 374,171 injured, and 4.8 million were left homeless!

Eight days later, on Monday night, there was a torrential rain! The city of Wenchuan was flooded! Roads and bridges we has traveled on days before were totally gone now! The West River in our hometown, Qionglai rose 12 feet and flooded this bridge.

While we were in Qionglai, we also visited an area where they had a display of new apartments that were going to be built in this new development complex. The apartments were 140 square and they were beautiful. The river in this picture is the West River that flooded. My wife and I were considering living in China during the Winter and America during the Summer. Our Gege asked us if we were serious about living in China and we said yes. That night, we prayed about it and left it in God’s hands. Let God’s will be done. The next day, Gege went back to the development company and said that all of the 140 square apartments were now spoken for and none were available. God had closed that door.

We returned to America and 11 days later on September 4th, I was escorted to Employee Services and my employment was terminated. I was given a six month separation package and the company graciously set me up with a professional job search agency that would help me with job search strategies and create a professional looking resume free of charge!

We kept praying for guidance and time to complete all of the things we needed to do to move to Tennessee and find work. We had to clean our 100 plus year old house and all the stuff I had accumulated in the 27 years since I bought the house, before we could put it on the market to sell. Meanwhile, we were still getting email messages with homes to look over in the Ooltewah/Collegedale area. Nothing looked very promising. Finally, we saw a house that we both liked. It was perfect! Just what we were looking for! We contacted Mike Doucoumes and he set up a house showing on Sunday, October 13th. We reserved a room at the Holiday Inn Express in Ooltewah and anxiously waited for the weekend to roll around.

Bad news! The day before we were supposed to leave, Mike told us the house we were supposed to look at was under contract and the house showing was cancelled by the seller, even though we could still have looked at it. My wife and I were devastated! God had slammed another door in our faces! I was exhausted. I called the Holiday Inn and cancelled the room. I called Mike and told him I cancelled the room. He said that if we were serious about moving to Tennessee, we should come down anyway and leave it in God’s hands. I spoke to my wife and she agreed. We prayed about it that night before we went to bed and left it in God’s hands. I called the Holiday Inn the next day to see if there was a room available because it was a very busy weekend. Bad news again! All of the rooms were filled. They did have a suite that was open, but that was more expensive. I was put on hold. After a few minutes, the desk came back on the phone and said that we could have the suite at the same price as the original room we had cancelled! I guess God wanted us to go to Tennessee. I called Mike and told him we were on the way and to start looking at homes for us to look at.

When we got into the suite that God had provided, we looked at the homes that Mike found us on Lixia’s iPad. Two looked promising, so Mike took us to show them. When we went to look at them, all three of us were very disappointed. Even Mike made a comment that they were overpriced for what we saw. Once again, we were both very disappointed. We told Mike we would be leaving the next day. He told us he would keep looking. That night, he sent us 15 more houses to look over. We looked at a few of them, but to be honest, I was so tired of looking at houses, I just wanted to go home. My wife kept on looking. Finally she said, “Look at this one, it looks really nice!” It was the 15th one and yes it was nice. We contacted Mike to see if we could look at the house because we really liked it.

Sunday night and early Monday, Mike worked very hard for us! Monday the 14th was a very busy for all of us. Mike scheduled a house showing AND a house inspection! We both really liked the house, Mike liked the house, and even Terry Rankin, the house inspector, said it was a nice house. We made an offer. That night we were laying in bed and God spoke to me. He told me to be prepared to spend more money because the owner may want more money for the home. I rolled over and told my wife what God has impressed me with.

Sure enough, the next day the owner made a counter offer wanting more money. We made another offer which was accepted and we signed a contract for the home. God kept impressing me that He wanted us in Tennessee and here was yet another example of God’s perfect timing. The house went on the market on Friday and we signed the contract to buy the house on Tuesday, four days later!

We went back to Gloversville and got busy. We finished cleaning the house, packing our belongings in boxes, and put our house up for sale. I told you before that I pray about everything! We needed to hire a trailer company to bring the bulk of our belongings to Tennessee. There are many self packing trailer companies. PODS, Pack Rats, U-Pack, U-Haul, and SmartBox to name a few. I kept praying about it the whole time I was looking at the companies and He led me to hire Pack Rats. This turned out to be a blessing because the way the door opened, it gave us a lot more room than the other companies trailers! Plus, we did not go over weight with all of our stuff! That would have been expensive!

With the help of our family we packed most of our belongings on Sunday, November 10th. We finished packing the rest of our stuff in the trailer and Pack Rats picked the trailer up on Wednesday the 13th. We packed our essential belongings in our two cars and left Gloversville on November 14th and headed for Tennessee! Friday the 15th, we had our final walk through the house, signed the final papers, closed on the house, and moved into our new home!

It would take us over a month to get fully settled into our new home. Mike Doucoumes was a huge blessing. I do not know what we would’ve done without his help! God really knew what we were going to need way back in June of 2018! God is able and He always provides! Mike has become a really good friend since we moved here. God is amazing!

The next piece of he puzzle that we needed to make all of this work was a job for me! Time was running out. I had less than three months left on my separation package. Day after day, I visited printers. I even visited sign makers, t-shirt shops, almost 40 places in all!

Mike had changed churches since June of 2018. Gwen and him were now going to the Ooltewah SDA Church. We started going there as well. It is a really nice church! They are very big! Over 300 people and they are a very musical congregation. All three of us enjoyed being there. I was going to move my membership there, but God told me to wait a couple of weeks. I had no idea why, but I alway obey when He speaks to me even if I do not know the reason why!

A couple of weeks later, Gwen told us about a new Chinese church that met on Camp Road. We were very interested in hearing that. I get lost very easily, so I planned a road trip to make sure I could find it. Friday, January 14th, I arrived at a brick church and there sure was a lot of activity. It looked like they were rebuilding the whole church! I went in and started asking questions, when someone directed me to a guy named Dennis. I told him who I was and why I was looking for a Chinese church. We spoke for quite a while and I instantly liked him! Dennis gave me a tour and he introduced me to a lot of people while we were walking around. Dennis’s wife Lulu, Sharon and Daniel Zhang, Bryan Bissel, and Carlyle Verne just to name a few. The next day, Sabbath was the first Sabbath we attended the High Point Chinese SDA Church and we have been going there ever since! Now I know why God said to wait a couple of weeks before joining the Ooltewah Church. It was because He wanted me to transfer my membership to the High Point Chinese SDA Church! God knows everything. He knows the end from the beginning!

The next day, Sunday, our church celebrated the Chinese New Year with festival at the church.

Not only is it important for you to pray for yourself, but intercessory prayer is important too! You need to ask others to pray for you too! The Ooltewah Church has a group of prayer warriors and I asked them to pray for me to find a job. I have an email distribution list with over 50 people on it who I asked to pray for me. Our church family was praying for me as well, but the final piece to make the whole move to Tennessee was just not falling into place. I was trying very hard to be positive. God has performed many miracles in my life, some of which were way more difficult than finding a job for me here in Tennessee. Although, there was one important factor that was different this time. I was 63 2/3 years old and who in their right mind is going to hire someone that old, even if there are age discrimination laws in place. They cannot ask, but when the job application shows that my first job was in 1974, it is not too hard to do the math!

Well, there was always unemployment. After my separation package ran out, I was eligible for six months of unemployment from the State of New York. Provided they would allow a Tennessee resident to draw it!

Then on Monday, February 24th, I was sitting at my computer when an email popped into my inbox. It was from the Plant Manager at Starkey Printing Company in Chattanooga, Bruce Higginbotham! He wanted me to come in for a job interview that afternoon if I could make it. I about had s heart attack! I immediately wrote him back and asked him what would be a good time and we agreed that 2:00 p.m. would work for both of us. I told Lixia and we immediately got on our knees and started praying! We thanked God for the opportunity and if it was His will to make this job work out. I ate lunch, dressed in a suit and tie, and drove down to the interview. I arrived right on time and the interview went very well! He was impressed with my experience and liked the fact that I had worked with film and knew what to look for from that perspective in looking for problems. I met the other person, Kim Kennedy, who worked in Prepress. She interviewed me as well. The person I would be replacing surprisingly gave her two weeks notice that day and Bruce found the resume I sent him on January 13th, after knocking on Starkey’s door looking for employment. Bruce gave me a tour of the whole plant and I got the impression that he would have wanted me to start the next day if he had his way. I also got to meet the owner, John Shadden. He also, was very nice.
Working there would also answer yet another prayer! We have been praying for me not to be around chemicals anymore. The plating process normally involves being exposed to a lot of harmful chemicals in the developing process. The printing plates used by Starkey Printing Company are NOT developed in a plate processor like normal. The plates are mounted on the press and the water solution on the press cleans the unexposed emulsion off of the plate. Meaning that I would NOT be exposed to chemicals any longer! God answers another prayer!

When I got home, I immediately sent Bruce a thank you email and told him I looked forward to hearing from him. He told me he would be talking to John later on and he would get back to me.

Tuesday rolled around and I still had not heard back from Bruce. I emailed Bruce at 1:25 p.m. to see if he had a chance to talk to John yet. His reply really disappointed me. He said that John wanted him to try and interview someone else “if he could find someone”. I could tell Bruce was discouraged, but I wrote back and told him I understood completely. I told him that John did not want to put all of his eggs in one basket. Then at 4:38, Bruce wrote back asking me to send him a list of my work references. I picked four of my references and sent them to him.

That night, I went to prayer meeting and told them the story about what had happened with my employment situation. I also old them that I totally trusted God and that if He wanted me to have the job, I would get it and if He didn’t, I wouldn’t. Dennis was my prayer partner that night and we prayed about my employment and many other things as well. The other people there were praying for me as well. Remember the importance of intercessory prayer. We all need prayer warriors in our lives.

The next day, I got a call from Starkey Printing Company asking me if I could come down and meet with Bruce because I was going to be hired. I needed to bring my driver license and social security card. I needed to fill out new hire paperwork. Apparently, Bruce had called my references and was so impressed with what they said about me that he decided to hire me. I am not sure how he convinced John, but he must have. I started working there on March 2nd.

This was the FINAL piece of the puzzle to make the move to Tennessee work. God said He wanted us here and this was proof. All of the pieces fit into place. We had a city to move to, we had a house to move into, all of our belongings were here safe and sound, we sold our house in Gloversville at the absolute worst time of year to sell a house, we had a new Church, we had a new Church Family, and I had a new job. Oh, did I tell you yet another example of God’s perfect timing? When I started working at Starkey Printing Company, I had ONE week left on my separation package! I had one week of double pay and that was it! God performed yet another miracle in my life and in His perfect time! No matter how hard you think your circumstances are God is able! You can ALWAYS trust God! AMEN!

Gary’s Testimony

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