The Muse family is in desperate need of a miracle. Before you read any further, please stop what you’re doing and say a prayer for God to help them get through what they’re going through. After you finish praying, please continue to read so you can learn their story.

___________________________________________________________________________

Thank-you for praying for them.

Ethan and Laura shocked the world by eloping on February 23, 2017. At the time, Ethan had been serving as a pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist Church for around sixteen years and was just three months away from both his seminary graduation and his ordination to the gospel ministry. Laura had just left her job as a hospital chaplain in Iowa a few weeks before they married. They believed then—and still believe to this day—that God brought them together for a reason and that that reason is to do ministry together as a team.

Soon after their marriage Ethan went to a doctor and was diagnosed with clinical depression. He’d been suffering from it for probably close to twenty years—always putting on a happy face and joking around to hide his internal pain from others—but this was the first time he’d gotten the courage to seek medical and professional help. For the next 3-4 months the doctor tried a few different prescriptions to help him but most of them just made his symptoms worse. It wasn’t until mid July of 2017 when the doctor was able to find a prescription that actually worked and was starting to help him feel better. But the conference leadership mistook his clinical depression for being unhappy in ministry due to being in an extremely difficult church and on August 1 they requested his resignation for his own sanity’s sake. For the next three months Ethan and Laura were unemployed as they searched for where God wanted to send them next. They moved at the end of October and began work in a new conference on November 1, 2017.

When they arrived at their new assignment they were excited about getting started and being able to serve God and His people in a district of five small churches. Laura quickly got a job as a hospice chaplain and bereavement coordinator and was back in her own full-time ministry. Unfortunately, both of them started getting sick soon after they arrived there. To this day they have no idea what made them sick in their first home but something was terribly wrong. Even two of their cats lost half of their fur after just a couple of weeks there and another two began exhibiting health-related behavioral issues that were not there before. By the summer of 2018 Ethan and Laura needed to move after learning that their landlord wanted to sell the home. Through the gracious help of some family members they moved to a different home in a different town where they could continue to serve in ministry in that district. Ethan was confident that God would help make his ministry more effective after the move and he anticipated many good years ahead.

Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan. While the two cats did regrow their fur following the move, Ethan and Laura’s health did not improve in the new surroundings. Instead, both very slowly and gradually grew worse. They couldn’t understand why. Ethan grew increasingly confused and made many stupid mistakes he wouldn’t normally make if he was feeling well while Laura was so sick that for four months they assumed she must be pregnant and couldn’t understand why all of the pregnancy tests kept coming back negative. After seven months in that home Ethan came home one day from doing a visit and was greeted by a stray neighborhood cat who’d been living under the house. When he went over to pet the cat Ethan smelled a natural gas leak and called the gas company. When they came out and investigated they not only found a gas leak under the house but their tests of the air inside the house revealed a carbon monoxide level that was 75 percent of what it would have taken to make them pass out and eventually die. Further investigation revealed that the exhaust pipe had been disconnected from the gas furnace for the entire time Ethan and Laura had been in that house. (When they first moved in they assumed the home was all electric. They didn’t know the house had gas at all until after they’d lived there for four months.) It was a miracle that they had survived as long as they did and they attribute it to God’s protection along with the fact that they just like it cold and had never turned the heat above 63 degrees.

The conference was sympathetic at first and tried to help. They sent Ethan and Laura to a self-supporting SDA lifestyle center for two weeks to try and speed up their recovery. Unfortunately, the experience was not as beneficial as both parties had hoped and ended up being quite detrimental. For one example, during their second full day there a staff member made a statement implying that by not protecting them God was therefore responsible for all the deaths of Laura’s Jewish family members in the Holocaust. Ethan and Laura returned to their district no better off than before they’d left and were facing a long and slow recovery process ahead of them. A few months later the conference president informed Ethan that they would be terminating his employment as a pastor. The president stated multiple times that this firing was non-disciplinary and that there were no moral, ethical, or doctrinal issues behind it. He stated that it was a simple case of the pastoral couple ultimately not being a good match for the assigned district and that he was fully confident that they could continue to faithfully serve somewhere else with much greater effectiveness. Ethan has endeavored to maintain a positive relationship with all of his former conference leaders.

Unfortunately, all of this happened in the middle of 2019. Ethan was in the process of getting picked up by another conference when the Covid-19 pandemic happened and conferences all across North America (and the rest of the world) were faced with hiring freezes and other financial problems. Ethan spent the next three years trying to get back into pastoral ministry with no success and almost no conferences willing to even talk to him. A few times he had what he thought were some very hopeful opportunities but they always fell through, sometimes with no logical explanation at all. One conference president admitted to Ethan that someone was spreading some very hurtful things about him to other conferences but that he couldn’t tell Ethan who it was because he didn’t even know who it was himself. To this day Ethan doesn’t know what was said about him or who was saying it, but whatever it is was so bad that nobody was willing to even talk to him to hear his side of things. That is why he has been unable to return to pastoral ministry for the past six years. It is still where his heart is and is still the only place where he will find peace and fulfillment in life.

In late 2022 Ethan and Laura agreed to try and move up north so Ethan could try and return to Andrews University to attend the seminary to get his MDiv. His current master’s degree is a Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Knox Theological Seminary, a reformed theology school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Laura was hired by a hospice in Elkhart, IN as their bereavement coordinator and moved up in late October 2022. She stayed with one of Ethan’s relatives until they could find a home of their own and the plan was for Ethan to move up and join her then. They purchased their first mobile home on January 1, 2023 and started moving in as fast as possible. Ethan took lunch to Laura at her office one day and was introduced to her boss. Their meeting was just in passing but the boss liked him enough to tell Laura that she was going to create a job opening for another chaplain in order to be able to offer him a job. Ethan interviewed and started working on February 16, 2023. A few days later he was offered the opportunity to do the exact same bereavement coordinator job in the Mishawaka office that Laura was doing in the Elkhart office. Ethan accepted that offer and worked there for over a year. Soon before his departure, state inspectors showed up to audit the books of the Mishawaka office and Ethan’s was one of only two departments to pass inspection with no expressed issues.

In 2024 Ethan and Laura both moved to different hospice organizations. Ethan became a chaplain while Laura continued to do bereavement work remotely for three different offices. Ethan thoroughly loved his work as a chaplain and for the first time in years felt the joy of being able to make a positive difference in the lives of people in need. And the pay was great as well. One conference president implied that Ethan was making slightly more than he was making, but Ethan has repeatedly said that he would gladly take a cut in pay to return to pastoral ministry because that’s where his heart still is.

Ethan and Laura’s lives took a turn for the worse in early March 2025. While they were out of town a corroded waterline connected to the toilet in their main bathroom burst and began to spray water at full force against the wall. It sprayed nonstop for a couple of days before they came back and found their home completely flooded and unlivable. The majority of their belongings had been ruined. They moved into a hotel and continued their working lives of hospice chaplaincy and bereavement care ministry. Unable to afford the cost of professional cleaners and repairers, Ethan found an old friend from Andrews who had some knowledge and experience and was willing to help them to restore their home to a livable condition. His help has been invaluable and indispensable but he’s only been able to work in his spare time and mostly without any help. Ethan and Laura have now been in the hotel for nearly four and a half months and have had to pay weekly hotel bills on top of their monthly house payments (mortgage and lot rent). They have also had to eat out for nearly every meal since their hotel room does not have a kitchen or a large enough refrigerator. This, coupled with money spent on supplies for restoring their home and paying their friend, has completely depleted their funds. They’ve been living paychecks to paychecks and not having enough.

Soon after they discovered the flood and its damage Ethan told his boss at the hospice about what had happened. His boss quickly offered to help in any way he could. One of Ethan’s coworkers told him about when she’d had some serious car trouble that the hospice owners helped her with the repairs from a benevolent fund for employees in crisis situations. Ethan applied for this help and believed he would get it since the hospice director had offered to help. But the hospice owner wanted to know why the repairs hadn’t been covered by insurance. Ethan had assumed that this damage wouldn’t have been covered by insurance but when they filed they were surprised that their claim was approved and the insurance company mailed them a check for just slightly less than $6000. This would have been great except that the check wasn’t actually made out to Ethan or Laura. It was made out to Laura (the mortgage is in her name) AND the mortgage company and she had to sign the check and then mail it to them. They then decided to hold on to it for a week and then send her only half of it. They said that they will not send the rest of the check until all repairs and restoration are completed and they are back living in the home again. Unfortunately, the damage was far more extensive than what that money will cover so they’ve been paying out of pocket for everything.

A couple of months ago Ethan was talking to a family member who suggested that he get a short-term payday loan to help them pay some bills and to get by until they could get moved back in. At first he tried and wasn’t able to get one but in May was able to get one. It helped. But he needed a second one. And if you know anything about them, they take a LOT of money back and charge a TON of interest. Many of them come out every week. And in order to get by Ethan (and occasionally Laura) had to take another one out every week until now they probably have somewhere between seven and ten of them. (They haven’t counted lately.) Last week Ethan looked up just one of them and found that he had already paid back around $400 to one of them but that only $3 of that had actually gone towards the principal. The rest was all just interest and finance charges. Ethan now realizes that taking those loans out was the biggest mistake he’s ever made in his life but he honestly had no other option available to keep from being homeless. But at least both Ethan and Laura had good paying jobs.

Until he didn’t. All of the stress of the past several months took a major toll on Ethan’s health. He couldn’t sleep. It made his diabetes much worse so that no amount of healthy eating, insulin, metformin, or exercise could get his blood sugar down below 200. It affected him mentally and made him forgetful. He would still visit his hospice patients to minister to them but he would forget to turn in his daily timesheets. He’d get caught up and then backed up again. His bosses were very patient with him and gave him repeated chances to catch up but the stress of the home situation was too much for him. Two weeks ago he was let go. The last thing his former boss said to him was, “You’re a great chaplain. The patients love you. I hope you can get these stressors taken care of so you can be effective again without the distractions that are keeping you back.”

Over the past couple of weeks Ethan has been sending out lots of job applications. He’s had several interviews and has another two or three coming up soon. But until he is working again it is physically impossible for him to be able to even make the minimum payments on those loans. Their home is not yet ready to move back in. Three of the rooms now have electrical problems since the flood so it isn’t even safe to move back in until the wiring is fixed. They don’t have a bed anymore. The air conditioner hasn’t worked properly since the flood. And the friend who is coming and helping with the repairs is maybe 85-90 percent done but he isn’t finished yet and is only able to come in his spare time. Ethan and Laura haven’t been able to pay their mortgage or lot rent yet for this month, and their hotel room is only paid up for two more nights. Unless God works a miracle to provide for them, they will be essentially homeless on Friday because they cannot pay for any more nights at the hotel ($480 per week after tax).

So please, pray for Ethan and Laura. Pray for God to provide for their needs during this time of extreme crisis. Pray for God to take care of them. And, if at all possible, please consider being an answer to this prayer by giving something to help them get through this crisis and out of it so they can survive and get back to normal life. They need money for the hotel ($480 per week), their mortgage ($500), lot rent (around $800 including water and trash), and around $1000 per week for the minimum payments on the payday loans. They do not know how much an electrician will cost. They also need to hire an exterminator because the flood caused odors which attracted flies. And they would love to hire a professional who can finish the home repairs so they can get them DONE so they don’t have to continue waiting for when their friend is available.

God bless you. Thank-you for taking the time to read this. Thank-you for taking the time to pray. And if you are able to give to help them, thank-you from the bottom of their hearts.