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If you dial Jim and Carol Vander Horst, 67 and 68, and you get their answering machine, you'll hear Jim's greeting, "You've reached the Vander Horsts. God loves you and so do we!"

To Marty McClurg, 41, those aren't empty words. The Michigan couple has been proving it to her for more than 20 years.

Marty met them in January 1978 while stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, thanks to a blizzard. She had planned to rendezvous with her brother Mark at the airport and then travel to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the two were enrolled. But Mark was stranded in Denver.

Standing in line, Marty, young and from small-town Iowa, began to panic when she realized she wouldn't be getting to Kalamazoo anytime soon. The airport was closed and she was alone.

Returning from a ski trip out West, Carol overheard Marty's plight. She and her family were on their way to purchase train tickets to Kalamazoo, their hometown.

Carol felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to ask the frightened young woman to join them. "He said, 'This girl is lonely, and she needs to be one of your family for a time,' " Carol remembers.

The Christian family, owners of a fried chicken restaurant chain, bubbled with joy, and Marty decided to take them up on their offer. The Vander Horsts even paid for her ticket. Jim and Carol, their four children and two friends got to know Marty during the train trip. They touched on spiritual things, but never pressured Marty.

The Vander Horsts extended their hospitality to Marty by offering her a bed for the night. The next day Carol braved the weather and drove Marty to her dorm. When Marty asked how she could repay them, she was told, "Just pass it on."

"I couldn't get over that someone would do this for a total stranger," Marty says. "They had enough kids of their own; they didn't need another one."

The thank-you continues
After the visit, Marty, immersed in university life, lost contact with the Vander Horsts. Carol tried to contact her at Western Michigan about two years later, but Marty had dropped out of school without leaving a forwarding address.

Disappointed, Carol began praying daily, on her knees in her family room, for God to reconnect her with Marty. On the seventh day, a phone call from Marty came out of the blue!

"I've become a Christian," she explained. Talk about an answer! She thanked Carol and her family and said that their witness had been instrumental in her journey of faith.

Carol and Marty began a regular correspondence. In 1983, Marty married Fred McClurg, and when their children came along, the Vander Horsts remembered everyone with birthday and Christmas presents each year.

Labor Day weekend 1998, Marty, her husband, and four children—Jedidiah, 13, Josiah, 10, Moriah, 8, and Micah, 3—visited Jim and Carol in South Haven, Michigan. It was the first time they'd seen each other since 1978, but the reunion turned out to be a blast—the kids played along Lake Michigan's beaches, and there was a cook-out with the Vander Horsts' two daughters and their children. "We felt like we had been friends forever. We had a beautiful time," Carol says.

Marty knows her life could have taken a very different turn 20 years ago, so she thanks God for a loving couple who took a risk. "Their example spoke volumes," she says. "More than anything they could have said."

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