It has been quite a journey since 1993, as Margaret and I have sought to pursue God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. Having been reunited at a Vanderbilt reunion after a twenty-one year hiatus perhaps set the tone, as two hurting souls (Margaret a recent widow, and Mark in the concluding days of a painful, unwanted divorce) found comfort in one another’s love and compassion for life centered upon our Savior. In order to see an overview of some of the details that led to our involvement in full time ministry, please refer to our history at the Outreach Israel Ministries website.

If you took the time to read the history of Outreach Israel, then you might recognize that our trek with the Lord is based upon a walk of faith, as epitomized and demonstrated by Abraham. Of course today, in modern-day America, with all of our respective abilities and talents and given the nature of opportunities to pursue for material gain, it has been a constant challenge to keep our focus on what God has called us to do with OIM. The temptation to “get back into business” so that we can live beyond the basic necessities of life has been excruciating at times. Nevertheless, despite some mental flirtations with what it would be like to have a car that has been built in the Twenty-First Century, or perhaps some extra money to travel on vacation or even use to support our children in college, we have somehow persevered along the path the Lord has set for us. We praise Him daily for His provision, protection, and confidence in us to keep our focus on Him and the work He has assigned to us!

Operating a faith based ministry is difficult, especially if you are not into hype and self-promotion. Our fervent position has been that because we have freely received, we should freely give, has limited our ability to generate revenues and support. I have continued to marvel, though, at how our Heavenly Father has used various people and situations to provide for our needs.

With Outreach Israel Ministries completing its fifth year of operation last summer (2007), we were directed to broaden our ministerial approach to also include ministering to the health and nutrition needs of the people who we serve. We discerned a distinct opportunity to add ministry beyond simply the spirit and soul, to include the body of the Believers (1 Thessalonians 5:23) and their physical well being. We have had the privilege of observing a number of people who have had significant improvement in their health. Today, we are encouraging a health and wellness community through various monthly updates. It is steadily growing as people are finally realizing their needs for: (1) proper hydration, (2) an exercise regimen that includes cardio, strength, and flexibility, (3) proper diet (beyond simply kosher eating) to including what are known as “superfoods” (high in nutritional value and organic if available and affordable), and (4) the consistent use of supplements, vitamins, and minerals.

Since June 2007, we have been consistently sharing about proper health and nutrition, and even many of our extended family members have indicated significant positive changes as they have taken various products that we have recommended. Our initial goal has been to use the existing distribution method provided by our choice of products from our supplier (Mannatech), to help pay for the monthly supplements. By helping others to at least get to the place where their products are paid for, then it is our confident belief that they will continue to take the products at effectively no cost. To date, we are largely achieving our goals. It has been a joy to know that many are ingesting some of the best nutritional products on the market. People are having a strong immune system restored to them by taking the right vitamins, minerals, and nutrients not obtainable in the standard Western diet!

Recently, after having some wonderful success getting people started on a new and improved health regimen, we were able to not only have our family’s supplements paid for, but we also got to the point where we realized that we also had an opportunity to generate an additional stream of income for our household. That, in and of itself, became very intriguing. The revenues generated by OIM and some of the additional part time work I am able to do at the Orange County Convention Center, while meeting our basic needs, have nonetheless limited our ability to serve God in the long term ministry focuses that He has set before us.

While the Lord has been allowing me to work for the past four years in an environment at the convention center with people from a wide variety of backgrounds that I was not necessarily exposed to from my earlier life, I find myself essentially trading valuable hours of my time for dollars. When I think back in time to twenty years ago, when I was performing real estate consulting work for the Resolution Trust Corporation and making fifty dollars ($50) per hour in 1988/89 dollars, the fact that I am making only twenty dollars ($20) per hour in 2008 dollars just does not make sense. Realizing that consultants to the real estate industry are today making anywhere between $100 to $200 per hour, creates quite a temptation. On the other hand, if I were so led, I could enter back into the commercial real estate brokerage business and generate large sums of money similar to what I received back in the 1980s.

But the Lord has not allowed me to do that. Rather, He has been using my grip/stagehand work to teach me skills with my hands, while allowing me to learn how to serve people in ways I never before imagined. In February of this year, while trying to minister to a talented, hard working young man in the union at a trade show at the convention center, I found myself trying to encourage him to look beyond his circumstances five, ten, and even fifteen years into the future. I heard myself utter this comment to him without even considering where it came from: “At the end of our lives, we are all going to be the sum total of our choices and decisions, given the circumstances of our lives.” At the time, I thought I was ministering and encouraging him, but  I reflected upon what I had said, even repeating it to some others. Soon I realized that perhaps I should take some of my own advice. Within a few weeks of contemplating and praying about these circumstances, the Lord confirmed in my heart that I was now released to share some of my Mannatech DVDs with this young man, as well as others, in an environment of those who are not only ailing physically, but are often caught in the unhealthy trap of not having a hope or a vision for the future.

With a little bit of research I was able to conclude that the contracts that this union had negotiated with the principal contractors did not even keep up with inflation. No matter how hard these people worked, they were never going to get ahead because there are only 168 hours in a week, and the possibility of earning a living wage was rapidly slipping away from their attainment. Was it possible, I thought, to help some of these people with not only their health, but also give them an opportunity to be set free from the shackles of hourly wages and benefits that were never going to keep up with inflation? So in March of this year, I began to cast some seed in the form of DVDs and CDs upon some of the various souls (soil) whom I had met and had a rapport with during my tenure in this industry.

Additionally, as Margaret and I prayed about it, we decided that we would attend the Mannafest meetings (Mannatech’s annual gathering in Dallas) in late March. There we were also able to encourage one of our friends we had helped get into supplements back in September 2007, who was actually taking up the opportunity to develop a business. Needless to say, we were very encouraged by what we heard and saw at these meetings. We were also able to spend some time with the gentleman and his wife who had put us in the business back in 2004. We were exposed once again to Sam Castor, the founder of Mannatech, and some of the executives that I had actually known from my days in Dallas’ real estate circles. We also ran into a number of people we had known from the twenty-one years I had lived in Dallas as well. During the course of these meetings, we realized that there was an extremely good argument for us to begin spending a little more time developing our own business. After all, if I were going to spend all of my extra time working at the convention center, why not instead develop a business that allows Margaret and me to minister to the health needs and perhaps financial needs of others?

Upon our return to Orlando, we decided that it was time to finally take our Mannatech business seriously and begin investing time in sharing more than just an opportunity to get your supplements paid for by having a few people in your downline. Instead, since many of the people we minister to have serious financial challenges, we thought it only appropriate that we at least share with them the opportunity to generate an income with the business side of Mannatech. At this same time, our upline sponsor also discovered a business tool that he is employing to expand his business. We decided for $20 a month, we could not afford not to be a part of this system because it provides the business tools and systematic model for allowing others to achieve financial freedom.

So with the Lord’s blessing, we have launched hueyhouse.com, conceiving our Mannatech Independent Distributor business named Huey House International. At the Huey House website, there is a link under business tools to the www.creatingourfutures.net/10315 website that will be our principle method for helping people work through the process of developing another stream of income.

(At this point, I want to offer more of this historical account to include part of a letter about diversification, which I wrote to encourage a friend who is conflicted over some of the challenges associated with developing a direct-selling business. The connecting thread is the consideration of having diverse streams of income. Please read my piece on “Diversify, Diversify, Diversify.”)

Finally, we are reminded that the Lord uses various things in our lives to bring us to where we are today, and ultimately where He is going to take us down through time. Years ago when I was brokering commercial real estate, the axiom for understanding and best working the business was location, location, location. As I traveled around North Texas and then other parts of the country while consulting with various firms, I gained an ability to size up real estate parcels by simply understanding their location, while analyzing market trends of growth coupled with state, county, and municipal master plans. With experience it was not too difficult to come to conclusions about what parcels to research and work on as I juggled the stated needs of developers, investors, speculators, and others across the real estate spectrum. From raw land, to mini warehouses, to golf courses and resorts, my ability to analyze real estate was a by product of growing up in major areas of growth from Long Island, New York in the 1950s, to Northern California in the early 1960s, to the Washington, D.C. area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Needless to say during my real estate career, my head was in a constant process of assessing values on different properties, noting signs of opportunity, computing the impact of roads, other developments, and governmental actions. The bottom line is that no matter where I looked, whether in my local milieu or in time, traveling the world, I was constantly comparing historical trends and was amazed how mankind developed road systems in conjunction with geography, topography, and access to things like oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, mountains, etc.

Eventually, the Lord decided that He wanted me to focus my mind and energies on other things that have more eternal value. The journey has been very rewarding, as I have sought with all my heart to listen and hear what it is He wants to do with and through me in the process of serving Him. While I am convinced I have not heard His voice clearly at times, I am confident that He has been able to overcome my dullness of hearing by using even my poor choices to get me where I am today.

Margaret and I have been released to focus on more than just the ministry that the Father has wanted our family to establish and build. He knew that I personally needed to put blinders on during our first five years, so that the temptation to get back into real estate or make money in any number of ways, would not take me away from His purposes. However, now that we are nearly six years since our inception, after over six years of preparation work before initiating our launch in 2002, the Lord is allowing us to take up another mantra while maintaining the ongoing ministerial efforts of Outreach Israel Ministries. Location, location, location has been replaced with the unoriginal diversify, diversify, diversify, which I believe is more than an adage for those of us seeking to serve Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

We know that this opportunity applies to us and a few selected others, who will capture the vision to be all that the Father has created them to be. It is our prayer that it includes many of those who read these words.

Until the restoration of all things…
Mark and Margaret Huey