Regan and Mellie Martin on The Call to Cape Town, Togetherness, and the Gospel of God’s Grace

Regan and Mellie Martin have been married for 17 years. I was given the privilege to meet and record with this couple whose warm welcome and hospitality and how they live and worship in every day life with their six children was so refreshing to my soul. I hope it’s just as refreshing to yours and inspires something for your home life or sparks the call God’s been prompting in your own heart.

One of my favorite parts of this episode may be that you can hear 4 of their 6 children practicing their violin in the background toward the end. And another favorite moment, at the very end the Martin’s sing for us a gospel hymn, His Mercy is More.

This American family who moved from Wisconsin/Illinois to follow God’s call to South Africa. Regan said he prayed, “Here we are, send us. Where would you have us to be?”

The Call

Regan visited South Africa with Cape Missions International and after one of those trips, when Mellie picked him up from the airport he said, “I think the Lord is calling us to South Africa”.

Mellie shares she was overwhelmed at that, because she had been single handedly parenting as he was away and “was in survival mode. She was pregnant with their fifth child”. Mellie said she just simply listened and thought maybe it was just the jet lag talking, and that she wouldn’t bring it up because maybe it would just go away.

But it didn’t go away and she agreed to go back with Regan a year later and observed what he had experienced on his first trip to South Africa. She couldn’t deny that there was a fit, that Regan was in his element. “It hit me on the trip, this is right.” - Mellie

How They Met

Regan and Mellie share they met in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin at their family church.

It wasn’t until Regan had been in a really serious car accident that he grasped God in a whole new way.

“When He was at work at turning my heart after Him, it was in that context with new eyes I saw Mellie and there was an attraction there.”

“The work that the Lord was doing in my life was that my heart would be fully after Him, and trusting the Lord in how He might work everything out with Regan. I prayed for him a lot.” - Mellie

Regan says during the dating/engagement period, he had a lot of immaturities surface and saw how marriage was going to mature him and how he needed a better grasp of the gospel, and centering on Christ.

“Marriage and fatherhood is how God calls a young man forth in manhood” — Regan

“That faithfulness, responsibility, serving, leading, laying down your life…”

They share what they’ve learned of the Father’s heart through the role of husband and wife. Mellie said the idyllic idea she may have had about herself thinking she is patient, understanding really has been shifted especially with children and fostering children in the early years of their marriage, seeing that submission and respect is something she really was having a hard time with, in relation to Regan.

“I’d ask the kids to respect their father, but am I respecting him? I’m such a hypocrite.”

“You see yourself in this mirror of God’s Word…and it’s so humbling and distressing. I began to understand how much I need the gospel. So seeing the Father’s heart in that, I felt like, ‘Lord You’re telling me to love, and I am completely incapable of loving… how could You call me to do that?’

And I felt Him say, “That’s exactly where I want you to be, you need the gospel and that’s why Jesus died. Not only to save you from your sins but to empower you to live a righteous way.” - Mellie

“Mellie, will you submit to My leadership through your husband? And growing up in my family, which has a lot of strong women, that was so counter cultural, so against my natural way of operating.”

Family Life and Homeschooling

“From the beginning, God put it in my heart to lead my family in worshipping God. That burden, that desire, a happy burden, a joy.” - Regan . “To worship God as a family…what a blessing”

“There’s a great need for that, where reformation would meet the home” — Regan

“And where parents would have that biblical vision for shepherding their children’s hearts at home, worshipping the Lord together at home, and especially preaching the gospel. We come back again and again to the gospel in our home because we see our brokenness in close relationship you do, right?
In marriage and family, the closest relationships, how much damage can be done everyday. We want to come back to the gospel everyday.”

“It’s amazing and challenging, and a joy” - Mellie

“It’s wonderful to be together and there’s many opportunities to say ‘Mommy, needs Jesus too. Can you forgive me for that?’ When I’m being harsh, or impatient with them. It always goes back to the gospel”

On top of people already questioning or putting a stigma on “homeschool”, the challenges of doing it in South Africa have been encountering cultural challenges.

“We have to be intentional about getting our whole family out, but there’s actually been a stability and consistency which has been good. This is what we were doing in the States, this is what we’re doing here.”

“It gives flexibility and I can bring my sons with me on ministry days when we go into Lavender Hills”, and it’s these incredible opportunities for them to see the reality of life in South Africa.

Everyday Life + Family Worship

The heartbeat of their ministry is to serve local churches, by God’s grace, to serve the impact of the gospel within these communities. Regan and the boys will workout, Mellie’s day breakfast and start school.

Scripture memorization worked into after dinner, read books together.

“Family worship time is aimed for in the morning, we’ll do a Proverb (a nugget of truth), a short meditation on it, to pray according to God’s Word and then go into reading a more extended passage, reading around, we’re going through 1 Kings right now, then take time to talk through the passage (a big picture understanding of the passage) and then taking it to the gospel and how it’s connected to Christ. We’ll sing together hymns together and close in prayer”

“We’ll sing praise hymns at the beginning of meals, and then pray. Traditions, ways to Deuteronomy 6 when you lie down, rise up, when you walk beside the way, in the vehicle, seek to be intentional about that. This is the very fabric of our family, not just the religious thing on Sunday, we are a worshipping family because God is worthy and because Jesus is such a great Savior.”

South Africa and The Culture

“You want to be generous but you don’t even know who to trust or believe, or if it’s even wise to give.”

“I love to make eye contact with people, to me it says “I see you, I see you as a human being, your dignity, I acknowledge you. And in many situations, it seems the interpretation is you have a soft heart and I’m going to tell you or get you to do whatever to give me something” — Mellie

Ministry at Ocean View

“We are seeking to establish strategic training fellowships, walking through the Word, seeing the text in its context, bringing in sound doctrine, sound preaching and Christ centered gospel” - Regan. “You see the response to the truth and people taking costly steps to follow.”

STRENGTH FOR MARRIAGE

Walking together in the strength by the gospel of God’s grace.

PRAYERS FOR THIS FAMILY on the FIELD

Praying for God’s hand preserving, providing for marriage and family to be faithful to ministry at home.

Requests begin there. Trusting in God’s grace, and pray for their children to truly know the Lord and follow Him and the experience on the field and His Word and the people in their lives.

“Fresh start, new beginnings, every day.” - Regan. “Whatever the condition of your family, marriage is, beginning in your own heart.

“As a wife and mom, I look to Christ as my example as a servant. I’m not greater than my Lord” - Mellie

“Christ is my master, and that whatever I do I should do it with my whole heart.”

To close, the whole family sings
His Mercy is More — a modern gospel hymn.

Praise the Lord!
His mercy is more
Stronger than darkness, new every morn
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

What love could remember no wrongs we have done
Omniscient, all-knowing, He counts not their sum
Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

Praise the Lord!
His mercy is more
Stronger than darkness, new every morn
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

What patience would wait as we constantly roam
What Father, so tender, is calling us home
He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

Praise the Lord!
His mercy is more
Stronger than darkness, new every morn
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

What riches of kindness He lavished on us
His blood was the payment, His life was the cost
We stood 'neath a debt we could never afford
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

Praise the Lord!
His mercy is more
Stronger than darkness, new every morn
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

Praise the Lord!
His mercy is more
Stronger than darkness, new every morn
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more