Tag Archives: Romance-Marriage

In a Mentor — Look for Fruit!

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KEY: Look at the fruit in a person’s life before you choose them to be your mentor.

When looking for a mentor, I have personally always chosen mentors who were AT LEAST a season ahead of me. While I do believe you can learn from your friends and even those who are younger than you, scripturally the Lord has purposefully laid out his design for us to have productive teaching and mentoring from those who are older and wiser. However, just because they are older doesn’t make them qualified! Look at the fruit in their life. Everyone has fruit, good or bad. Be wise! Don’t take advice, counsel, mentoring, or coaching from someone who doesn’t have good fruit or if you can’t see the fruit in their life.

Choosing a mentor as a wife: Again, you need to look at the fruit in their lives. For example, I am a wife. If I am looking for a mentor in marriage, I am going to choose a mentor who’s marriage I respect. If the woman doesn’t seem to respect her husband biblically, or if there seems to be anything obviously “off” or that I wouldn’t want to imitate, then they are a wrong choice. This method requires getting to know people. Really, truly knowing them. But seriously, if you are going to be going to them for counsel and advice, you kind of need to know it is going to be biblical and sound.

Isaac & Angie Tolpin

In marriage mentoring, don’t take advice from someone who has only been married a couple of years. Most divorces happen between 5-9 years of marriage. The longer a person has been married and not just married but really seems to enjoy their marriage, the better. A standard I personally hold on this level is finding a mentor who can encourage me to be the best helper I can to a husband who is an entrepreneur, since I am married to one. Another standard I have is that they both (husband/wife) seem to approach marriage from a team philosophy, they are thriving, not just surviving marriage. I want a great marriage, not a mediocre one.

Choosing a mentor as a mother: As a mother, I look for women who have children a whole season ahead of me. I look at their children. If I think to myself, “Wow. I really like her children . . . I hope my kids turn out like that . . . ” then I believe she has “earned” the right to be heard. Just as the Bible says we need to be wise who we choose as friends, we also need to be wise who we choose as mentors. So do they have strong relationships with their kids? Are their kids following the Lord purposefully? I look for traits I desire in my own children, such as a servant heart towards all people, missions, God’s work on earth. Who are more concerned with God’s plan for their lives than what the next trend is.

So if you are a young mom, find a mom who has gone through the young years successfully, not just survived through them, but thrived through them.

The Tolpin Family – Fall, 2011

While there are some cases where young women have wisdom beyond their years (usually because they themselves have been mentored by their mother or other older women), I have always chosen not to take advice from people who have not experienced it themselves successfully. For example, I would never take parenting advice from someone who only had one or two children who were still very young or someone who never has had children, regardless of education. You can not see the end product of their parenting philosophy. Besides all parenting techniques are easy to talk about, but doing it is another thing. While so many people hold firm to their “philosophies,” the justice/practical side of me wants to see the “proof in the pudding.”

I believe it to be foolish to pursue someone as a mentor if they are going to give you unbiblical or unwise advice. In addition to choosing people to glean “wisdom” from, you need to seek God’s wisdom above all else. You need to have His standard for what “Good Fruit” is and looks like. If you go with our cultures standards, you may be receiving poor advice/counsel. If you have children almost hitting their teen years, find older women who’s children have gone through it successfully and joyfully. If you have children about to marry, find women who have already got grandchildren on the way and so on.

I have personally benefited most, spiritually from the older generations (60’s and up), but I have found more practical advice and wisdom from women who are just a few years ahead (10-15yrs) of me in parenting, as they tend to remember more because they were just in it. However, there is still so much wisdom to be found in those older generations on parenting, a lot of what they grew up with was much more biblical than what is modeled regularly in today’s culture. Since there were no TV’s when they were kids, their parents engaged their children through work, which is something Isaac and I try to do as often as possible. My point is that, there is much to be gleaned from any generation. Don’t be closed-minded!

Use wisdom in choosing mentors by looking at the fruit in their life. Is she a wife, mother, and woman of God I want to be like? Is she following Christ? Is she in the Word? Does she have a good understanding of what God’s idea of a biblical man/woman, husband/wife, and mother/father is to look like, so you can exercise wisdom? You can’t choose wisely if you have no wisdom and God is the one who bestows it.

Blessings on the Journey,
Angie

Did I always want to be a missionary?

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danette-2It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 15 years! I’ve been a missionary in the West African country of Niger since since July, 1998. There are two questions I am often asked: Did I always know I wanted to be a missionary? Did I always know God wanted me to be a missionary?

No, and no. But God knew. Here’s my story.



The Seed is in You

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5

The seed was in me – as a 7 year old.

I was saved at the age of seven and was raised in a Christian home by wonderful Christian parents. I’ve walked closely with the Lord ever since, but it wasn’t until adulthood that I became acutely aware of God’s grace.

I used to think that I didn’t really have a ‘story’. But a revelation while singing ‘Amazing Grace’ changed my mind. I did have an amazing story. It was the grace of God that saved me. He not only saved me from my sins, but He saved me from the powers of darkness of this world and kept me walking in His light all these years. It wasn’t my personality or my own determination or discipline that spared me from all the world had to ‘offer.’ Simply put, it was God’s amazing grace. Now, the older I get, the more I see… and the more I see, the more thankful I am for that grace that saved me.

But I wasn’t just saved to be saved, I was called. So are you. My calling was to be a missionary, reaching the unreached. But fulfillment of that calling wasn’t going to just drop in my lap. I had some responsibility.

The Bible is full of instruction for our lives. There are a multitude of passages that talk about the blessings that follow us and our children when we walk in the way of the Lord.
We see in 1 Kings 2 where King David is at the end of his life and is giving instructions to his son Solomon. Solomon was called to succeed David on the throne.

“Now the days of David drew near that he should die, and he charged Solomon his son, saying: 2 “I go the way of all the earth; be strong, therefore, and prove yourself a man. 3 And keep the charge of the Lord your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn; 4 that the Lord may fulfill His word which He spoke concerning me…”

Solomon’s calling came with requirements:

Keep the charge of the Lord, walk in His ways, keep his commandments… Then you will prosper and the Lord will fulfill His word concerning you. For God’s will and plan to be fulfilled in our lives, we must walk in His ways.

After high school, I attended ORU, a Christian university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My sophomore year I met Neal. I was a chaplain and he was a freshman on my brother wing. He came straight from Nigeria, where he was raised as a missionary kid. He intrigued me. He was, as I like to describe him, ‘bush’. He spoke with a Nigerian accent and he thought downtown Tulsa was a huge metropolis. As the girls’ chaplain I had the responsibility of pairing the brother and sister wings with prayer partners. I did this by drawing names from a hat, but not before first pairing myself with Neal. Sneaky, I know.

A friendship began to develop into something more and on our second official date Neal informed me that he was going to be a missionary. My thought? “Whatever. He’s a business major. Once he gets going in his field, he’ll get over the missions thing.” It’s not that I was opposed to full-time missions, I just wasn’t awakened yet to my calling. I had a natural trust in God and a desire to do exactly what He had planned for me.

The seed was there, but it remained dormant.

Our relationship progressed as did Neal’s intensity for missions. I continued to trust God and prayed that if this was the man for me, that an actual desire to do missions would surface. As an upperclassman I would get frustrated when I would hear my friends talking specifically about their careers, how many children they would have, the type of home they would live in – all the way down to paint color! I didn’t have specifics on any of those things – and I didn’t really care about a white picket fence. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to do what God wanted me to do.

I later realized that if I had predetermined my exact job and house color, it would not have lined up with Neal, and I may have assumed he wasn’t the one.

Here we are at ORU, the seed in both of us. Any guesses to the year? (Hint: Big hair.)

Our love grew and in 1989 we married. I graduated with a degree in Social Work and Neal in Management Information Systems. We both got jobs in our fields, while still pursuing ministry. We found a church home and were asked to be youth pastors. It wasn’t missions, but it was something that our hands found to do and we were determined to do it with all our might. It was preparation time. During our 5 years as youth leaders we sent kids on more than 30 summer mission trips, while patiently (sometimes) waiting our turn.


Our family in 1998, just before moving to the 10/40 nation of Niger, Africa
Trae, Danette, Tanika, Neal

God continued to lead us and 8 years of marriage and 2 great kids later, the Lord directed us to attend Bible School to officially prepare for the field. During Bible School we received confirmation that the country of Niger would be our field. We spent 10 months raising our support and during that time an amazing thing happened. I was sharing in my mom and dad’s church about how I had recently come across some of my elementary school papers and discovered that I had written a report on the country of Nigeria the same year Neal moved there. Coincidence? I think not. It was a germinating seed.

I was told also of a report I had written in junior high titled ‘Understanding Africa’ where I wrote that I wanted to be a missionary in Africa. I don’t even remember writing it, but my name was on it. The seed was there. Later that evening my mom questioned me, “Don’t you remember the prophecy spoken to you when you were 12? That you would be a rose, blooming in the desert?” It wasn’t until she said that that the memory came back. Mom continued, “What about the time I found you crying because you couldn’t understand why everyone couldn’t know Jesus?” I was 7. The seed.


Our family in 2001 with Tobi, our new addition.

The amazing thing about a spiritual seed is that it won’t die. It’s in you. Even if you haven’t been pursuing God as you should or are new in your walk with Him, it’s not too late! God’s seed, His plan for you – it’s in you. Even if it’s dormant. Wake it up! Begin germinating it by pursuing hard after Jesus and by walking in His ways.

In Jeremiah 2:21 God said to the Israelite’s, “Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality.”

You are full of high quality seed!


It was my privilege to be a part of discipling these Gourmantche ladies.


One of our greatest joys (and responsibilities) are the children