|
Home
Our Purpose
Central Themes
Scriptural References
Bob's Testimony
Volunteers
Photo Gallery 1 2
Future Projects
Guestbook
Contact Us
Donations
|
|
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is 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 2:8-10).
I wanted to begin with this because I believe that each of our testimonies begins there.
My personal testimony may sound familiar to many in this fast paced world. As a child I was brought up
knowing God, instilled with good morals, my mother taught me much of my Christian faith. As a youth I saw God in everything,
but slowly the world took hold of me, soon my relationship with Him faded, and
self will took over. My sole purpose became success and fortune. I became so engrossed in my studies
that I had lost touch with most of my friends. After college, I threw myself into the workplace, which drew
me still farther away from my friends, and alienated me from my family.
Through it all I continued to feel God's pull and I knew none of my pursuits meant a thing without Him. I began to go back to church,
and one of my close friends saw that I was reaching out to God. He began to share with me what Christ had done in his life. I knew I
couldn't stay on the path that I was on. In all this turmoil, I knew my way was not working. And finally giving up my pride, I fell to my
knees, and asked Jesus to come into my life, and I said in my spirit, "Lord, please forgive my sins, please teach me your will." So in
1989 I was born again, and I began to get back into His Word, and Jesus began to reveal Himself to me through His Word. I thank
God that he never gave up on me! "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me."
After growing in the Lord for several years He was still convicting me in my spirit of things in my life that
had to be changed. I had to go through several losses, and I underwent several shocks to my body and
the world around me. After making some very major decisions in my life, changes that desperately needed
to be made, I began to see the Lord moving in my life and in my circumstances.
In 1995 I began a journey home from a long business trip. And found myself wanting to go anywhere but back to my
hometown and my house. Thoughts of my last trip home a year earlier had my head spinning. The previous year, I was
driving the same road home to see my mother who was dying of cancer, and I found my wife had just left me, and had
taken my two children. I realized I had become successful in all the wrong areas of my life.
I was driving home once again, but this time I had nothing to come home to. Instead of taking the main highway out of the city I
began taking back roads, not wanting to go directly home. I stopped into a gift shop and found among other items, a table covered in
carved stones. I picked up a small pocket stone, engraved with a cross. I purchased it, and I told the owner it wasn't
necessary to wrap it, I wanted to keep it in my pocket. She handed me a small business card that read "Living Stone". I put the card
and the stone into my pocket, and headed home.
When I got home, I sat down in my dark, empty house, and I realized how important it was to have Christ in my life. Until then I never knew that the Lord
was all I needed, because at that moment the Lord was all I had. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the stone I had just bought, and I thanked
Jesus for dying on the cross for me. I opened up the card that came with the stone and read the scripture inside, 1 Peter 2:4 "Draw near to Him a Living
Stone rejected indeed by men but chosen and honored by God."
When I turned the card over, and it said, "designed by Robert Tellier". Wow! God is so
awesome! Could this be the same man that I had as a teacher 15 years ago? I called Bob that same week and made plans to meet with him. When I got to his
home, Bob welcomed me and he showed me the project
God had blessed him with. As I looked at all the stones that he had carved with God's Word, I was in awe. The stones seemed alive, proclaiming
God's Word, more than any of the pages of the scriptures I had ever read. I didn't know how, but I wanted to help him. I believed that God had led me here,
and that He had placed us on the same path once again.
Over the months that followed I kept finding myself returning to the hill in prayer, and helping in any way that I could. In 1996 I began coming on
Saturdays, first learning to mix cement, then learning to cut and dress stones. Then, Bob showed me the process of carving God's Word in stone. I
learned that Bob painstakingly hand cut every letter of every word, on stencil prior to actually cutting the stones. Immediately I realized I could help him
cut the stencil for the writings, or at least cut down the time it took to do so. Finally I found my purpose at the project, for God had given me the gift and
the knowledge to design a way to allow us to cut scriptures in a fraction of the time it would normally take to cut just a few by hand. By utilizing my
computer draftings skills, we are now able to cut stencils in fifteen minutes, what would have taken Bob more than 24 hours to do by hand.
As I continue to work on the Ecce Homo Project I can see God leading others to share their individual gifts. It is such a privilege just to be a part of this
project. All my past designs and engineering accomplishments pale in comparison to the work I'm doing now at Living Stone Foundation. I can think of
nothing more important than cutting Gods word in stone. These scriptures in stone are going to be here long after I'm gone. As this place is already
drawing souls to Christ, I believe it will also speak to countless others not yet born.
I thank God for all of his blessings in my life, and I pray that I may continue to be a blessing to this project and to His Kingdom.
There are many roads to Christ. I hope yours won't be too difficult. God does not promise that our lives will be easy. In this
life nothing is easy, except to quit. Have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, that he will finish the work in us. I pray that we
never quit seeking God's face and learning of his truth.
-- Ed Riley, 2001
|
|
|
Soli Deo Gloria - To God alone be the Glory
|
|
|
Back to Top
|
|
|
