Skip to main content

Quadrupling Their Income in Six Years!

Share This article

Even though both of them worked, David and Valerie Crow were having a hard time providing for their family of five.

“We were struggling financially,” Valerie said. “I was working part-time, had three kids that we were homeschooling and we'd just moved and so it was a new place.”

“I was working as a working foreman and superintendent,” Dave added. “We had flipped some properties. One of the investment properties we had went south and we were not bringing in an awful lot of money.”

“There were a lot of days that were really hard. I operated on $10 a day for meals for a family of five,” Valerie said. “It just seemed like one thing after another. I remember one day reaching my breaking point. I remembered what somebody else had said that they ‘just got on their knees and cried out to God.’ And that's exactly what I did. And with hands up in the air I was like, ‘I can't do this.’”

Then one day in 2015, Valerie came across “The 700 Club.”

“I was intrigued by the international news reporting,” Valerie said about CBN News. “The news wasn't just doom and gloom, it was just news. Then there were also so many stories of hope and encouragement.”

Valerie started watching the show regularly and heard about the law of reciprocity.

“The fact that God is just wanting us to trust Him really resonated for me and I was like, ‘Wow, that really makes sense.’ And it made me realize that yes, we should be contributing to our church,” Valerie said.

The Crows decided they would commit to giving.

“We said, ‘Okay, we're going to do three percent this year.’ Then we bumped it up to five percent. And we kept giving and put it into our budget and made it a regular habit,” Valerie said.

The Crows bumped their giving up again to ten percent.  They also decided to become CBN partners starting at $20 a month. Dave was working in road construction and Valerie ran a home-based business. The next year, even though Dave had a health crisis and could not work, they never stopped tithing.

“We really didn't think twice about cutting back or tithing. We just wanted to give more,” Valerie said.

Soon after, Valerie started a new career in real estate earning twice as much as she had before. By the following year, Dave was healthy again and had started a new job with better benefits.

“The next thing you know, Valerie has another sale of a new home or I wind up getting a wonderful review and get a raise. God always paves the way,” Dave said.

As they saw God bless them financially, the couple prayed about what more God would have them do. In 2018, Valerie’s income doubled again. That year, they decided to double their monthly giving to CBN.

“I prayed over it and what God said to me is ‘Water,’” Valerie said. “The basic necessity of people in life is water. CBN's teachings and Operation Blessing were an inspiration behind that. There are so many great things that Operation Blessing does. I love how they help women with small businesses that couldn’t feed their family, but now not only feed their family, but feed their community.”

The Crows used their increase in income to sponsor their first water well project in Guatemala. The next year, the blessings just kept coming, so they upped their giving again and funded the construction of two houses in Kenya that use a rainwater collection system to have access to water. They’ve also sponsored two other water projects in Guatemala; one large enough to supply fresh water to an entire community. 

“Operation Blessing is just exactly that. It's a blessing,” Dave said. “To be able to go in these disaster areas whether it's a storm related, flood related, fire related, and see Operation Blessing on site and to know that this what we're been contributing towards… It’s very satisfying.”

Today, the Crows’ annual income is four times what it was before they began tithing consistently just six years ago.

“Sign up,” Dave said. “If you trust in God and make a move to help others, it comes back to you many, many times over.”


 


Share Your Story

Share This article

About The Author

Amy Reid
Amy
Reid

Amy Reid has been a Features Producer with the Christian Broadcasting Network since 2003 and has a Master’s in Journalism from Regent University. When she’s not working on a story she’s passionate about, she loves to cook, garden, read and travel.