Doing Your Best with What You've Got: Anita Neuman Shares Her Story

In this episode, I talk to Anita Neuman about the life-changing decision she and her husband Pat made to leave their life in Southern Ontario and move to Ethiopia as missionaries for two years. They took advantage of God's resources to serve Him and His people and adopted two young boys from Ethiopia. Anita shares how they had to adjust to a new language, culture, and climate while facing the tough reality of their son Teddy's trauma and violence. We also discuss how Anita and Pat have developed a unique marriage retreat that includes challenges, puzzles, and games that teach couples strategies to build a stronger marriage. Lastly, Anita shares the importance of using the unique gifts God has given each of us to bring Him glory and serve others.

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0:00:00
We have this theme in our family that this saying that it gets repeated an awful lot and it has come into play. And many of our life's decisions. And that is, we say, do your best with what you've got. And really, that's a simplification of collections three twenty three that says whatever you do work at it with all your heart as though working for the lord and not for men. Hi. I'm Ruth Hovsepian. Welcome to the Out of The Darkness podcast. Where we help you navigate life's trials based on faith and difficult truths.

0:00:45
My guest today is Anita Neuman, whom I met in nineteen eighty seven when she was a young girl. I've been fortunate to see her grow up and mature into this beautiful woman with the heart of a servant and missionary. She and her husband, Pat, have been married for twenty six years and her our parents to four children. Anita was born and raised in Southern Ontario and led most of her married life there until she and her family decided to leave for Ethiopia as missionaries for two years. While there they decided to adopt two young boys from Ethiopia. Fast forward, many years later, when Anita and her husband decided to buy and run a retreat center in New Brunswick. They have always been eager and intentional about using the resources that God has given them to serve him and his people whether that's skills, time, or possessions. Welcome, Anita. I am thrilled to have you join me today on out of the darkness.

0:01:54
And before we start on the interview and talking, I just wanna tell you I was looking at some pictures this week. And I started to do the counting on the fingers of the not the years, but the decades. We've known each other, and I realized we've known each other since nineteen eighty seven. That pains me that pains me to say that nineteen eighty seven, nineteen eighty eight, and you were so old. Isn't it, though? I mean, honestly, I I did the calculation and I thought, wow. We were so young when we met. I was, like, twenty two years older, you know, and you are, of course, much younger than I am. But you guys were so young.

0:02:43
And for those that don't know, you and I are related through marriage. But I always refer I always refer to your family as cousins. Yeah. And, you know, it's the same. We're relatives we we're related by marriage, which is a blessing, you know -- Absolutely. -- family. And I have I have to say that I have loved watching you and Pat over the years, making these amazing decisions. And I'm I am always so Wow. You know, that's the only way I can explain it, you know.

0:03:17
So with that, let's know us a little bit about that very first big decision that you guys made to leave your your life in Ontario and go to Ethiopia as missionaries. What got you guys going on that? Yeah. So this is going back into the early two thousands. It was two thousand six that we moved to Ethiopia. We had two daughters at the time. They were five and six years old when we moved.

0:03:50
And we really wanted to give them a sense of just that the world is bigger than our tiny little bubble that we were living in in Southern Ontario. Pat and I had both gone on short term missions trips and our eyes are beginning to be opened to a global perspective. And we wanted to give that experience to our daughters. But it wasn't it didn't make any sense to take little kids on a, like, a two week mission strip. Right? So we knew we had to go for a little bit longer than that. And it just made more sense at the time to take them to go long enough that they would be in school and and that Pat and I could work just longer than, like, a two week kind of, drop in and see the -- Mhmm. -- local area and then zip out again. We really wanted to immerse ourselves in in somewhere in the world.

0:04:58
We have this theme in our family that this saying that it gets repeated an awful lot and it has come into play in many of our life's decisions. And that is, we say, do your best with what you've got. And, really, that's a simplification of colossians three twenty three. That says whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though working for the lord and not for men. And we just say whatever or we say do your best with what you've got. And so as we were trying to make this decision and looking at our options, we We said, how do we how do we do our best with the resources that we have? What is this gonna look like? Like, we weren't we weren't pastors or teachers or doctors or any of these things or we didn't have the qualifications occasions that people often think missionaries are supposed to have. So how do we go serve somewhere else in the world?

0:06:03
I was an at home mom still at that point, but I was heavily involved in some HIV AIDS volunteer work. So I had my hands in that kind of ministry a little bit, and my my heart was very much moved in that direction. Of course, in in that time, twenty years ago, HIV AIDS was a huge, huge thing going on in our world. And and Pat was running an IT business at the time. And so that was his profession and his talents and skill set. So we just started looking around for what kind of mission field was there that could use the resources that we did have. And we ended up finding an HIV AIDS in Ethiopian that needed an IT professional. So it was a really beautiful way that God worked all of that out to bring our family there. But we ended up, yeah, doing IT work for for an HIV AIDS ministry. And it just allowed us to use the resources that we had to to serve him in that way.

0:07:24
I think that when we allow God to use us or we we let go of our own ideas of what we need to do. I think God will open up those doors. You know, I don't I don't think it's perchance that this organization needed someone with IT a background. I believe God put that there because I truly believe god sees the bigger picture of everything. Right? And if you follow his calling, he will use your gifts to to do it.

0:08:02
What kind of a what kind of a adjustment was there for you, of course, and the kids? You know, the girls must have had some adjustment to do. Right? Oh, yeah. It was it was incredible. It was a new language. It was a new Like, we were living at this huge city -- Right. -- you know, in Canada. I'm in Ontario. Yep. Florida is different. Yeah. Yeah. They What was language? Was the what did you end up speaking there? I mean, obviously, you spoke English, but Yeah. The the one of the national languages is called Amharic, and so we did a three month language course once we arrived there, and the girls learned some of it in school. Yeah. So it was just everything about Life was just different. Yeah. So you you you ended up staying for the two years, I believe. Right? And you you ended up coming back But while you were there, I think the Lord put something else on your home as well.

0:09:07
Something very life changing. What was it? Yeah. So very quickly after we arrived there, the Lord planted the idea of adoption in our minds. We kind of resisted for a little while. We weren't really interested in expanding our family. Things were good as a family of four, and we we thought we would just keep it that way for a little while. But God had other plans. He just kept bringing it to mind. And again, as we talked about it, between Pat and me. Again, this theme of do your best with what you've got kept coming up. And, you know, we loved living at Ethiopia. It wasn't it wasn't this huge sacrifice that we thought it was gonna be because we really loved it. We loved the food. We loved the climate. We loved the people.

0:10:10
And and so it wasn't a hardship being a missionary. And for us, an ways. I know it is for a lot of people. Well, I think it also it it probably also goes down to the fact that you have the heart of a servant. And you went there with that in mind. You know, it wasn't drudgery for you to to go there. You were doing it because you have that servants heart. So Yeah. And we were up for the adventure. So even when things were hard and, you know, there was culture shock and and culture fatigue and all of this. It was all an adventure. So it was exciting. Mhmm. But again, it just it wasn't a hardship. It wasn't this big sacrifice.

0:10:54
And so we thought, well, okay. Well, what else can we give that? Maybe we need to sacrifice more. What does the lord need from us? What more can we do to serve him? What other resources do we have? That we could use to serve him and serve the world. And and so this idea came that Well, we have a healthy family. We have a really great marriage. We have a safe home. We have financial resources. So let's share that. Let's use these resources. To do our best for the lord.

0:11:34
And and so we decided that we had room for two kids and we decided to start the adoption process and we prayed constantly that God would continue to open the next door that we needed to walk through in order for that adoption process to happen. And if the door closed, then then that was that was fine. We were willing to obey either way. But he kept opening the next door, the next door until we brought these two boys home into our family. And so we adopted a nine year old and a newborn, which was kind of crazy in itself because the vision we had in mind was that you were gonna get to preschoolers. And just that the boys that God chose for us were older and younger than what we had in mind.

0:12:33
What a change to the family dynamics. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously, the adoptions went through. And you guys were back living in, I believe, the Cambridge area. Right? Yep. And you I I know you. So tell us a little bit about how that looked like coming back from Ethiopia and those years until today where now you also in the last few years made another huge change to your life. And you know, going into a different type of ministry. So walk us through that a little bit, but that looks like.

0:13:15
So, yeah, the adoption went through. We got the boys paperwork to come to Canada the night before our flights. Wow. So that was kind of stressful. But god pulled it all together and we came home. Levi was six months old when we came home, so he was just still a baby. We we moved back into our house that we had owned before. We had just rented it out for those two years. The girls went back to school. Teddy, our older son, started school. He didn't know any English. When he came to our family. And, yeah, so we had these three older kids and then there's a seven year gap between them and Levi. So interesting dynamics.

0:14:11
It was hard it was not easy years, adopting an older child. We knew would be difficult, and we absolutely knew that he was the son that God chose for us and that we were the family that God chose for him. But it was a mess and it was, you know, many years of trauma in our family. He didn't wanna be part of our family. There was a lot of violence with him. There was a lot of anger, and still there's a lot of anger. He is in jail now and has been for three years now and he's got a long way to go. So things did not go well.

0:15:03
But my what I would like your listeners to understand about that is that we still have to do our best with what we've got. And that doesn't guarantee that it's gonna be pretty. Our best isn't perfect. God is perfect, but he just calls us to use what we've got, and he gives us different different passions and skills and personalities and life experiences, and we do our best with that. And And so life with Teddy certainly hasn't been perfect. It hasn't been.

0:15:45
Trala, God's, you know, I'm glad that you're able to share that because I think people sometimes have this conception -- Mhmm. -- of what adoption looks like, especially from other countries. There's there's so much, especially with the nine year old. Right? Who has already developed and has memories of the past and trauma that he's bringing in and you know, I know the history of the family and yet my prayer has always been that maybe in this season, this is where Teddy is. Mhmm. And, yes, you and Pat and the girls and Levi have gone through very difficult times, but we don't know where the hand of God is leading. Mhmm. Teddy too. You know, maybe this is we don't know. I don't even want a hazard a guess. Right? Because I don't know what there is, but I always believe that there's a reason. And he can take the most difficult of situations and turn it out to his glory. So, you know, generational prayers. You know, we pray for him and, you know, hope and pray that he will one day do something with his life that will, you know, benefit maybe others and help others But, yeah, definitely, it it was, you know, a very difficult time for you as a family. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we still see God's hand -- Mhmm. -- in all of it and his goodness in our lives -- Yeah. -- and we absolutely see that he is so good at using difficulty in our lives and to bringing beauty. Mhmm. And allowing us to use our difficult circumstances and experiences for his glory. And that, of course, is part of what has brought us to where we are now.

0:17:56
So two years ago, as three years ago, even as the pandemic was starting, and people were not allowed to work in their offices and all of that. Pat had to work from home for a little while. The work that I was doing at the time was shut down for a long time. And so in his boredom, working from home. Pat started looking at properties online, and he would send me links to these huge like, just ridiculously huge ocean side estate with dozens of bedrooms and and acres and acres and acres and just, oh, well, if we have to be stuck inside, why don't we go be stuck inside in some place like this? And Dream big. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. It was it was silly. Like, we were just joking around.

0:18:52
But, of course, that idea was, like, oh, we could move. I wonder, you know, if we were to move, obviously, we'd have to have some sort of purpose. It's not just gonna be us looking for a fancy new grade. Like, that's not how we make our decisions. But but what kind of purpose would therapy? What what could we do if we bought a place that was bigger than we need? How could we share that space? What what could this look like? What sort of things could we how could we serve people? How could we administer? How could what needs are there that are out there that we could meet? What could we do with our talents and passions and life stories and experiences. How could we how could we make this happen? What would it look like? And we just brainstormed so much that it started to come together as an actual possibility, like, oh, maybe we should move. Maybe we should try some new ministry. And and so this idea of a retreat center came together just out of the out of the idea of us being able to share our difficult experiences and how god has comforted us so that we can comfort other people. And that rest and restoration and recovery were so vital to us after difficult years we're now in a position where we could provide that for someone else that's come through trauma. And so all of these ideas started to come together and we started seriously looking at properties. Once that were actually workable, not these huge states. So we ended up finding this place.

0:20:50
Here, we're on the Bay of Bundy. We over we It is ocean side, but it's we're on the on Sheafferty Bay, which is a kind of a branch of the Bay of Bundy. And we have this property that's eight acres, so it's big enough, but not huge. And we have three houses that we have here. We live in one, and then we have these other two houses that we rent out as retreat space. And we We love it here. We love it so much. And it has been such a blessing to us to be able to invite people here to rest. It is so quiet. It is so secluded. It is so beautiful. We have you know, we're right on the beach. We have hiking. Well, right now, we have snowshoeing or cross country skiing. And and the houses are gorgeous that, you know, the rental spaces. And so people can just come here and be close to god and rest and heal. And Yeah. So coming coming here, we've we've been here for two years now and been running ballast lodge for two years.

0:22:14
And we've constantly been reevaluating and brainstorming. It's an ongoing process. What more can we do? What do we need to change? What what other resources could we add? What sort of things do we need to learn more about? So Pat was doing some biblical counseling courses and then narrowed his focus to addictions counseling. And our parenting experience has led him to have, you know, some real life experience in that regard. So he He's been doing that and ended up getting a job at team challenge here in Atlanta, Canada. So now he's the spiritual formation coach for the men's center and still taking his addictions counseling courses.

0:23:05
And just having that expertise and and experience to offer people who may be in recovery or who are family members of people in recovery. We've been able to host a few different families and couple who are who are at different stages of recovery journey -- Mhmm. -- to just have them here and be able to rest and reconnect as a couple or as a family has been really meaningful to us. I've been taking marriage counseling courses, which has been really exciting as well. And we've partnered with Family Life Canada and you've been using some of their marriage resources.

0:23:44
And then we've also developed a marriage retreat that is different from any other kind of an art retreat out there. It's been really fun for us to develop this, but it's It's kind of like an escape room that you do over the course of your three day stay. So there's puzzles and games that you have to do together as a couple. And along the way, there's principles for building a stronger marriage that are attached to each of the different games and puzzles. And so as you complete all of the challenges you're learning, these strategies for how to build a stronger marriage. And so that's been really fun for us to to develop and we've had really great feedback from all the couples that have participated in that. So it's just again, it's comes back to this theme of doing your best with what you've got. Like, we have this beautiful property now, and we have these skills that we're building. But God is allowing us to use those to serve people, not just here in Atlanta, Canada, but we've had people from all across Canada, from the states. We've had people from Thailand and Australia, and a few different countries in Europe. Like, It's it's been really cool to be meeting people all over the world and and serving them in this space. I I bet it's really encouraging to to see that kind response to what you are doing.

0:25:17
What is one of the most important lessons that you have learned through this journey that you have had over the years? I think it's really important to remember that we are each uniquely gifted. Especially in this day and age of TikTok and Instagram where it's so easy to look in on someone else's life and think oh, I wish I was doing that or that looks so exciting. I wish it could be more like that or no. We don't we don't need another one of those people. We need another one. We need we need you. Yeah.

0:25:57
And and the exact qualities that God has given you and your personality and your passions and your skills and your life experiences. We need you to just be the best you and to use those things. And god didn't screw up when he put you together as a person. He wants to use your life experience, those even the hard ones. To bring him glory and to serve other people. Like, it's all to be used for his glory. Yeah. That that that is so true because, you know, I think we look in the reflection at a real at our reflection in the mirror. Mhmm.

0:26:38
And sometimes we don't like what we see or we don't like what kind looks back at us. And I always say that, you know, during my dark years, I hate it looking in the mirror. Literally haven't looking in the mirror because of who was looking back at me. And, you know, over the last few years, I've I've prayed and said, Lord, how do I use? Exactly what you were saying. How do I use what I went through? To honor you -- Mhmm. -- and to show your love and your grace and the greatest sacrifice of all time. How do I do that? And, you know, I I I'm just taking it a day at a time. Right? We that's all we can do. Right? We're we're doing what the Lord is leading us to do today. I don't know what tomorrow holds. Right? I don't. You know, end of story. I don't. I don't know what the Lord is gonna put in front of me and say, Ruth, this is the step that you need to take. I'm telling you the steps are scary sometimes. Right? And I'm sure even for you and Pat, you know, moving from Ontario to New Brunswick, it's not an easy decision. Yes, you're ex you you know, you are excited to do it and for the adventure, but there's a lot of unknowns that are involved in that. So I I agree with you. Mhmm. You know, we are very unique and we need to we need to show that to others. Mhmm. Yeah.

0:28:12
What what is the thing that excites you the most right now with the ministry that you are in. I feel like I get to be me. Here. Like, I've really gotten to know me. You know, I'm I'm forty seven years old and it's taken me this many years to figure out who I am and to understand my personality and even to know Pat's personality better.

0:28:50
Like, we've done some enneagram work. I don't know if she's familiar with enneagram, but that's been instrumental in us just getting to know who we are. And and so I just feel like I'm I get to use the fullness of me in a way that I never have before. And and help other people unpack that in themselves too. So that's been really cool to get to know our guests We don't really do counseling with them, but we kind of do more, like, coaching or debriefing kind of sessions with our guests if they want that. And so it's it's been exciting to to walk that road just even for a few days with people that are staying here and help them get to know themselves and and see themselves as worthy of healing and as a child of god beloved by him. And yeah. It's I I love just walking through people that You got you you both have you both have such an amazing ministry there and -- Mhmm. -- the the concept of what you have is amazing and I know that God is going to use both of you to do some amazing things in people's lives. It's it's really a step and faith that you took.

0:30:15
Anita, I wanna thank you for joining me today and sharing your story with my out of the darkness listeners. And friends, check out the show notes to connect with Anita Newman and book a stay at a ballast lodge where you can nourish your body, mind, and spirit. Thank you. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you for joining me. To stay connected, follow me on Instagram and Facebook. If you like this podcast, can you help me find new listeners by leaving a rating and review? This small step takes only a moment. But really helps grow the listening audience. So let me thank you in advance. I hope you have a wonderful day and until next time. Let's continue on our journey as followers of Jesus Christ. I am Ruth Hovsepian.