Capstone Homes

[00:00:00] One of the first steps to building a house, and probably the most crucial, is to pour a strong foundation. Everything will rest upon this foundation, so it requires you to dig deep so that it can support everything that is going to sit on it.

We got married young, 22 and 21, and a year or so into that, we wanted to buy a house. We bought a lot from a builder that we did work for and built this house, this first house for ourselves. After that, we sold it, built another one, built a few for friends and family members and and realized, hey, you know, maybe we can do a few more of these things.

And Mink’s Custom Homes was the name of the company at that time. Early on, [00:01:00] this home building business started doing well. We were growing, we were making a little bit of money at it. With that success, I think I was growing in pride, and we were starting to have some cracks, I think, in our marriage. I think honestly at that time I kind of resented it a little bit, because at the time I felt like it seemed like all he cared about.

There was a lot of anger, and I’m not one to just be quiet, so we fought a lot. I had these big dreams, and these dreams were not submitted to God. These were Ben Minx’s dream. It kind of all came to a head in 2009. One day I was sitting in my office and we were hit with a legal problem. Looking back at this thing, I’d say God engineered the perfect thing to get right to Ben Minx’s heart at that time, it shook the money [00:02:00] that I held so dear and the reputation and business that I held so dear.

When he shook those things, I had really nothing else to stand on. Because I hadn’t been living for anything else but those things. I just finally got to the point of frustration and just said, God, what am I missing here? What’s, what’s the problem? What’s the problem? And I just felt like I heard a little nudge inside my heart that said, You better read some of those red lettered words in that Bible sitting over there.

And I picked it up, I read the story about a farmer scattering seeds on soil that had weeds and thorns. Jesus said, that’s like somebody who’s heard the gospel, but the lure of going after wealth and riches and the things of this world, choke out that gospel seed and no fruit is produced. I probably read that passage before, but this time it was very, very clear to me.

This was my problem. And it was [00:03:00] like Jesus was standing there going, Come this way and really follow me. Within a few hours, he had called me, and he was broke down and he was crying. And he just said, I’m so sorry, I’ve been so angry. And I had never heard him like that before. My circumstances hadn’t changed, but God was changing my heart, and I was changing.

Little by little, little decisions have brought us in a whole different direction than we had at that time. So crazily, amidst all that we had going on, we started an adoption journey. I got an email from our adoption agency saying, we’re bringing these kids for a hosting program in a month. And I knew we were supposed to host them.

It culminated with three trips to Ukraine. We actually had to fly back and [00:04:00] forth and go to the courts and apply in person. And the day finally came where I was going to walk out of the orphanage with the kids with legal custody for the final time. Within a half an hour of leaving this orphanage with these kids, I got an email from our attorneys saying that I had been absolved from the whole lawsuit, totally exonerated from the whole thing.

At that moment, I really, really. God’s love for me, our family, these children, and I just felt so grateful to the Lord for bringing us this freedom. I think what we really understood through this whole thing was that God really values trust in Him when the outcome’s uncertain. I had been living totally for myself.

I had been running this business as something that was totally about me. Then, somewhere we [00:05:00] really knew that it couldn’t be this way anymore, and we had to put down a marker to say, no, it’s going to be different now. One of the things that we did is we changed the name of the company to Capstone Homes.

Capstone represents Jesus as the stone the builders rejected. And that’s the stone that we need to build our lives upon, and we need to build our business upon. While he’s still driven, we still strive for excellence. We’re doing it with a different posture, and you can feel it. And people are by far first.

And realizing that when people are healthy, they perform at a high level. When I first got here, I guess I didn’t really realize what a relationship with Christ really looked like. I went to church, I grew up Catholic, but the relationship wasn’t there. It was going through motions. Oh, just knowing what that relationship means is such a [00:06:00] huge game changer in my life and

direction in my life and direction for my family and just being a changed person and knowing what his love for me looks like and enables me to love others.

It’s just been an incredible impact. As we make decisions and as we move forward, we’re praying about everything. And we do it pretty openly. That’s become a part of the culture here. Don’t wait till you have the 10 point plan. God uses broken people. God uses messed up people. It gives us reason to keep going to Him and reminds us of our dependence on Him.

This isn’t our business. This is the Lord’s business. We are managers of His assets. His purposes have to prevail over our purposes. This [00:07:00] is.