Love, laughter and ministry for the past 50 years

GREENOUGH – A hopeless romantic Don Johnson was inspired to surprise his wife Ruth with a dip kiss.

While she was doing dishes in the kitchen, he snuck up behind her, spun her around, grabbed her and as he went to dip her, he stepped in the dog dish and they both crashed to the floor.

"He grabbed me, turned me around and threw me on the floor," Ruth said laughing at her perception of the event. "I said, 'What on earth are you doing?'"

"I've never been able to live that down," Don said laughing and shaking his head.

The Johnsons have laughed a lot and embraced the daily joys with their family and friends in their 50 years of marriage. They attribute their absolute commitment to God and to each other as the reasons they have experienced emotional and physical healing and been able to share that process ministering side-by-side for 50 years with the Pentecostal Church of God. They always strive to make choices that foster love.

"Love is a choice. Live by healthy choices," Ruth said. "Don't let your feelings dictate your actions. Make your actions dictate your feelings."

* * * * *

In October 1969, Ruth was at a friend's house preparing for a dinner party. She saw Don's picture and a voice spoke to her and told her this was the man she was going to marry. Having never met him before and being in a serious relationship with someone else she did not share what she heard. But she told God if that was going to happen, He needed to deal with her boyfriend.

Two weeks later, Ruth met Don at the party. Don had just returned from serving with the US Army in Vietnam and was attending the University of Montana. Ruth was at the party with her boyfriend but noticed Don right away.

"She was beautiful," Don said. "I noticed her but because she was dating she was off limits to me. Whatever the Lord was doing with her, I was oblivious."

Ruth and her boyfriend split, and Ruth began running from God's plan for her life.

In the fall of 1970, Ruth moved to Dillon to attend college, where she struggled with alcohol and the party scene.

"I didn't like what I was doing but seemed helpless to stop myself," Ruth said. "I cried out to God for help."

That week Ruth was abducted by a man who offered her a ride to the dry cleaners. It was the 70's and not unusual to accept offers from strangers. They dropped the clothes off and he offered her a ride back to school.

Instead of taking her back, he started driving out in the country ignoring her pleas to turn around or let her out. He stopped on a deserted road and a brutal fight began. After violating her he forced her back in the car. Ruth was terrified for her life when a pickup truck pulled up behind them.

Ruth's abductor had a death grip on her arm and told her not to move. She told him he was crazy. Then a strange look came over her abductor's face. Ruth said it was like someone hit him on the back of the head and he let go of his grip.

Ruth got out of the car.

"God had heard my cries for help," Ruth said. "It was a turning point in my life."

Ruth and Don started dating and writing to each other after their first date in March 1971. In the fall of 1971, Ruth quit school in Dillon and moved to Missoula. She worked and roomed with Don's sister Mary Ann.

"Part of it was the residual effect of I couldn't make myself go back to Dillon, emotionally," Ruth said. "And I knew that I was suppose to marry him. He didn't know it but I did."

Don and Ruth discussed the future and what that could look like together.

"Our attitude towards the Lord was serious and everything seemed to fit well," Don said. "We really sensed a real comfortableness with each other."

Being the romantic, Don got a dozen red roses, took Ruth out to the nicest steakhouse in Missoula on the anniversary of their first date, March 17, 1972. Ruth knew he was going to propose but he kept her in suspense until after a moonlit drive overlooking Flathead Lake.

In a ceremony for immediate family, the Johnsons got married July 1, 1972 along Blanchard Creek on Ruth's grandfather's property. Don was 24 and Ruth was 20. Ruth told Don on their wedding night about the picture and God telling her she would marry him.

"So, I wasn't coerced or anything," Don said and laughed.

Two and half months after getting married the pastors resigned from the Garden City Chapel and the congregation asked the Johnsons to pastor. They accepted, trusting this was the Lord's call on their life.

"We jokingly say the advantage of that was we didn't know if we had marriage problems or church problems so we just blamed everything on the church," Don said. "Seriously, it helped bring a certain spiritual discipline and disciplined my inner life."

The Johnsons had a passion for children and youth. Ruth taught children's ministry on Sunday and they had a huge youth outreach for unchurched, broken youth in Missoula. They also lead camps in the summer.

In their adult ministry, the Johnsons tapped into the "hippie culture" in the early 1970s. Don said there was a lot of fatherlessness and young people were disillusioned with materialism but they were looking for something real and spiritual. They always had an open door welcoming people into their home and visiting others.

"It wasn't just churchy, it was gut-level real and help in our own personal lives and the lives of others," Don said. "Just that sense of engaging with them and praying with them and actually seeing God do some neat things."

One of their attitudes with their congregation as their pastor has always been doing life together.

"It is not a positional thing, it is a relational thing. We are learning together and growing together," Don said. "It freed us up to have a more honest, sincere interaction with people and be committed to stay humble."

Don met with several pastors in Missoula weekly for prayer. They had 20-30 churches that reached across denominational lines that came together, related to each other and did outreach.

"[The pastors] got closer than brothers," Don said. "They just loved Jesus."

Ruth said God brought a lot of people into their lives who helped and taught them about communication and emotional healing.

"Part of it was just our pursuit of wholeness and healing," Ruth said. "We were hungry to learn, we were seekers and pursuers for ourselves and for how we could help others."

Ruth kept a journal and documented her healing journey. She started compiling tools and sources that brought her healing. The biggest source was writing and trainings by John Sandford and Elijah House.

"He was the forefather of emotional healing," Ruth said. "Over the year, I have read and studied and gleaned from any pool and taken the tools and personally applied and adapted them and know they work."

The Johnsons both treasured family. They started their own in 1975 when they had Charity. Elisa followed in 1979. They also raised their niece and nephew David and Kristi and adopted Dorothy and Angie. Their family and ministry were intertwined.

"We don't consider ministry as much as a noun or position but as a verb and an activity of participation," Don said.

Don told the story of a time he was preaching at a camp. God opened the ears of a teenage girl and then began to heal her physically from multiple sclerosis.

"I was in the middle of preaching and the girl just began screaming," Don said. "She didn't know how to talk. She heard her mom's voice for the first time."

Ruth said Charity and Elisa were up with her all night teaching her to talk and running up and down the gravel road.

In the early 1980s, Ruth started sharing about her abduction. The first time she was at Camp Farthest Out (CFO), an interdenominational family prayer camp. A fourth of the adults spoke with her privately after she shared and only one had ever told anyone.

"It was the dark deep secret that they had kept down," Ruth said. "And then it started coming out how it affected their relationships and their marriage."

Soon Ruth was invited all over the nation to speak at women's conferences and family retreats.

"All these people just started to come out of the woodwork," Don said. "It was a big trauma suppression up to that time. For her to be verbal and then to articulate a process of healing with the Lord, that people, as they heard about it, responded."

The Johnsons pastored at Garden City Chapel until 1997 when Don resigned due to health reasons. While Don healed, they built their home on three-acres in Sperry Grade.

"The golden thing in it was the level of our commitment to each other and a love and appreciation for each other," said Don.

In 2001, after Don recovered, he was asked to serve as the Bishop for the Yellowstone District of the Pentecostal Church of God. He became the pastor for 11-12 pastors with congregations in the District across Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The Johnsons were also close friends with missionaries who oversaw work in Central America. The missionaries knew Ruth's story.

Ruth said 80% of boys and girls in Central America are sexually molested. Women were treated as property and men were exalted creating a cultural mindset of sexual abuse.

"It's a culture of violation," Ruth said.

In the mid-2000s, Ruth started sharing her story in Central America. The first time she shared her story, was the first time those in attendance had heard sexual abuse talked about openly. She started doing training in Bible schools, offering sessions and training leaders. Part of the training was that the leaders had to go through the process themselves. Out of that she found out how many men had been violated.

"Over the years Ruth has ministered to thousands of women," Don said. "The response has been incredible."

In Guatemala, the Johnsons worked with missionaries and the mother of a safe home for girls. The safe home started as a primitive facility. It had a tin roof, dirt floor and slat boards for the walls. They offered food and safety to pregnant girls. Ruth connected the need for a permanent structure to the National Women's Office of the Pentecostal Church of God. Now it is an 80-bed home in a concrete structure.

"The ravage is heart rendering," Don said. "Some of the kids are the sole survivors of family massacres and you look at the abuse. Amazingly they are open to receive and you can actually see more supernatural things take place than our culture. It is so rewarding you feel almost selfish to be a part of it."

In addition to serving as the Bishop, the Johnsons travel and speak together about emotional healing, sharing their own walk with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Vietnam and violation. Ruth said they have seen God do phenomenal miracles healing people both emotionally and physically.

"Our approach and giftings are different," Don said. "But it really has worked so well together. It has been a blast."

Don said a key for him in marriage is to walk in humility.

"Pride, selfism, can be such a destruction to relationship," Don said. "What I saw as her strengths and her weaknesses, and the correlation, it helped me to know how to come alongside her and we could laugh with each other in our shortcomings."

Ruth added to focus on strengths and be thankful for the positives with the person and in the situation. Her other advise is to let go of what is not important, learn how to communicate and be willing to be honest and vulnerable.

"Chose life. It is not just right and wrong. It is all about Jesus and His love," Don said. "Marriage is work. But just because there are things to work through doesn't make it incompatible."

When they are in the area, the Johnsons attend Faith Chapel in Seeley Lake. The community is invited to celebrate 50 years of service in ministry with the Johnsons at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23 at the Sanctuary Church in Missoula. Please RSVP via text to 406-544-5766.

 

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