It all began in 1983. Gene was a campus ministry intern with Campus Christian Fellowship at Western Washington University, in Bellingham, Washington. A missionary visited, recruiting a team to help him start a church and a campus ministry in Boston. Gene went to that meeting and God called him to Boston. But the timing wasn't right for Gene to go. That particular missionary went to Boston but didn't last very long.
Nine years later, in 1992, Nick Fatato, an experienced Chi Alpha campus pastor from Michigan, and a close friend of ours, put together a team of students called the '92 Crew, and came to Boston to start Chi Alpha. Gene made a point to spend a week with him that year, and almost every year after that. Gene loved Boston. There were some years he made up to five trips to Boston to do ministry with Chi Alpha.
Mike Olejarz, another close friend and veteran campus pastor, joined Nick and the Boston Chi Alpha team in 1996, and Nick, Mike and Boston Worship Center, the local church that supported Chi Alpha, began to pray that the Breitenbachs would move to Boston.
All this time, Gene and I were traveling across the country as the National Campus Evangelists for Chi Alpha. We were still living in Bellingham, Washington. In 1996, we made our first trip to Boston as a team. We spent two weeks there, and I couldn't wait to leave. I did not like Boston at all. But we came back the next year, I felt the same, but I brought a map of Boston home with me and I put it up on my kitchen wall. I knew that Gene wanted to move to Boston and I didn't want to, so I used that map to start praying for a heart for Boston and the ministry there.
The event that changed my mind about Boston was getting pregnant with Aaron in 2002. His appearance was a shock and God used it to open my eyes to see I was not happy in Bellingham, it was time for a change and by then he had put Boston on my heart strongly.
Just after Aaron was born, in the beginning of 2003, Mike Olejarz called us from Boston and officially invited Gene to join him on the Boston citywide ministry staff. Scott Miller, the Chi Alpha pastor at Boston University was leaving to go to Jordan as a missionary. Mike asked us to come and take his place on staff.
Boston Worship Center flew our whole family out to Boston for a week in April of 2004, and during that week we knew that we were supposed to move there. Even our kids wanted to come to Boston. We came home, put our house on the market, sold it in July, gave away everything, except the kid's beds and drove to Boston from Washington state.
We pulled into Boston on August 12, 2004 and we immediately knew we were home. Our transition to living on the East coast was quick and easy, and now we never want to leave. in fact, this move was the best thing we could have done for our kids, our marriage and our ministry.
We have a strong conviction that the first 20 years of our ministry were preparing us to be here. It took 21 years to get us ready for this stage in our ministry and we expect to be involved in ministry to the universities in Boston and to the church, as a whole, in the New England area, for the rest of our lives.
