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Greenhorn Valley Baptist Church Pastor Paul Okins, with wife Ashleigh and family. Coutesy Photo
Paul and Ashleigh Okins left Minnesota for the sunny plains of Pueblo seeking a climate that had less snowfall and less cold weather. They arrived in their new home in 2003, and have encountered changes ever since.
One of the reasons they chose Pueblo is because it had a college. Paul planned on becoming a teacher. Well, that never happened, instead he became a nurse at the mental hospital. It was Ashleigh who went to CSU-Pueblo and got a degree in elementary education. She followed that up with a Master’s in Teacher Leadership from Greenville Christian College in Greenville, Illinois.
For the last seven years she has worked in the foster care field.
When Paul and Ashleigh met, he was Roman Catholic and she was a liberal Lutheran, according to her husband. And perhaps, of all the changes they have made, changes in their spiritual life have put them on another new path.
Beginning in mid-October, after filling in the pulpit one time, Paul became the pastor of the Greenhorn Valley Baptist Church in Rye. Paul attended New Geneva Seminary in Colorado Springs in 2011, but never finished. The three biological children and six foster children they had at home made it impossible to complete his studies.
“When a child needs a home, we just can’t say no,” shared Paul.
And, therein, is the heart of the family: the unchanging, unmoving heart of this now avowed Baptist couple in love with Jesus and determined to show that love to, not only their children, but the children of God. Children of all ages.
The official child count of the Okins’ family is, currently, eight.
Six are biological and two are foster children who are adopted and have become their own.
Chloe, 18, attends CSU-Pueblo where she is majoring in music.
She also leads the singing at the Greenhorn Baptist Church.
Chaya is 17 and also helps with the music. Cainan is in the fifth grade at Rye Elementary, and plays guitar at the church and runs the slides.
Charleigh (eight-years-old) is in the second grade at Rye Elementary, one year ahead of her sixyear- old sister, Corin, and two years ahead of five-year-old sister Christiana, who is in kindergarten. Cylas hangs around the house at the ripe old age of three, and six-month-old Calvary is the baby of the family.
“ The church is really filled with a nice bunch of people,” shared Paul, embarking on his first pastorate.
He rejected the notion that the size of their family on the total role of the church had anything to do with it.
Paul has done a lot of teaching and fill in preaching in several Baptist churches in the Pueblo and Pueblo West communities.
He and Ashleigh have both completed their Acts 13 training in Steel City Church, in the Belmont area of Pueblo.
While Ashleigh works in foster care, Paul holds down a job as a para-professional at Rye High School in addition to his ministerial duties.
“Our first order of business at the church is to build relationships,” shared Paul. “We are relatively new to the community ourselves and with growing kids we get a chance to meet other people with kids and we want to become a part of the community.”
Ashleigh wants to minister to children and families in trouble.
“Having had foster children, we have seen so many families in so much pain. They need something. It’s not drugs or alcohol that they need to deal with life.
It’s Christ. Nothing can heal a family like Jesus.”
“Church should be like family,” adds Paul. “People in a church should do life together. Recently, Ashleigh had to spend a week in the hospital with our six-monthold. Our church family took care of the other kids, cooked for us, provided rides and whatever we needed. That’s what a family does.”
“We want our church to be a welcoming place,” Ashleigh stated. “In our old church I had started a foster closet filled with things like clothing and baby things for anyone who needed them. We want to duplicate that here in Rye.”
Both got quiet. “We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” Ashleigh said. Paul concurred.
