It’s not my custom to visit elder care facilities on my workdays. I can’t think of a more depressing place to spend a beautiful summer morning. But this was an unusual facility with an unusual story behind it, and I wanted to bear witness. More than that, I needed to sit with my friend, Cindy, in person and get the details straight from the source. I don’t know how else I could’ve believed it.
I drove the 45 minutes to Corvallis, Montana on a Tuesday morning. It was 10am and already blazing hot. Dust wafted up into the dry, superheated air and enveloped my car as I turned off the main highway onto a narrow gravel road. Passing large plots of farmland, I slowed my pace as a man in a gray cut-off T-shirt and giant straw hat looked up from mending his front fence line. I half expected a long piece of straw to protrude from his jaw and wondered if he could tell I wasn’t from ‘round these parts.
Minutes later, I saw it. Off to my left, a long dirt driveway skirted a vast grassy slope. Perched at the top, like a beacon on a hill, stood The Majestic. I pulled around to the back gravel parking lot, the tiny pebbles under my tires popping a friendly hello. On the other side of the glass-paneled front door, a black and white Australian Shepherd eagerly waited to make my acquaintance. “This is Lily,” Cindy introduced us.
After a quick hello, we toured the facility - although, “facility” really isn’t the right word. Nothing about it felt sterile or commercial. Each room had all the light and warmth of a modern studio apartment. One I’d gladly live in, considering you also get three square meals a day and sweeping views of the Corvallis Valley basin. But the delicious grub and contemporary amenities are just icing on the cake that is The Majestic, offshoots of a movement rooted in something much deeper than economic gains or even personal passion.
“None of this would be here if it weren’t God’s design,” Cindy assured me. By now, it was high noon, and the sunlight poured unabashedly across the landscape. The verdant grass fields and arid dirt pastures reveled openly in the warmth, the distant blue-violet mountain range towering into the pure, cloudless sky. It was, in a word, majestic.
This is the view that residents get to enjoy every day. Cindy and I took it all in from the back patio, sharing a wicker couch beneath the wide portico roof where the temperature was tolerable. For the last hour, I had soaked up all the details of the journey that led to this place. After relocating back to Missoula from Oregon only a year previously, Cindy and her husband, Brandon, couldn’t find jobs in town. Twelve years earlier, God had told Brandon - an elder care facility director - that he would establish his own place. Was this the right time?
With every other door of opportunity closed, the couple began searching for properties. They looked at five possible options, none well-suited for the infrastructure of an elder care center, before finding a plot of land in Corvallis. They hadn’t intended to build. After all, four years post-COVID, new residential builds abounded, sending construction costs sky-high and making contractors all but impossible to find.
“God told me I needed to let go of the outcome - the way I thought things should look,” Cindy shared. So that’s what they did. Determined to walk in obedience and trusting that God could take care of the details, they approached the bank for a loan to purchase and build on the land. With only a modest amount of personal assets, they were expecting to be laughed out of the office. “We just kept praying that if God wanted this, He would make it happen.”
In a matter of weeks, Cindy and Brandon learned that they had been approved for a loan large enough to build a brand new facility. “It’s absolutely unheard of, and it couldn’t have happened without a move of God.” With the financial piece locked in place, the couple began a search for contractors. Everyone was booked out months, even years down the road, and the cost estimates were beyond what the couple could manage.
God had a plan for that, too, in the form of a formerly Amish, now Mennonite, man; a lifelong local and hard worker who knew his craft well and believed in what Cindy and Brandon were doing. Impacted by the evident power of God behind the build, he agreed to help - and at a third of the cost of the other bids the couple had received. Even better, he could start right away, and the construction itself took just seven months. “It was bizarre,” insisted Cindy, especially when most new builds at the time were taking years.
Ready to throw in the towel at any time, they held the outcome as loosely as possible. Still, they kept getting “yes and amens.” Not that it’s been a perfectly smooth ride. “We do have an enemy who wants us to fail. We know that.” Sometimes, the struggle feels personal. Just days before my arrival, the bottom third of their driveway was washed out by a neighbor’s irrigation activities. Worse still, Brandon discovered that the crankshaft in their car was kaput, leaving them without a second vehicle to manage supply runs and errands.
With every hurdle, God faithfully turns evil into good. That very morning, their bank approved another loan for a new vehicle - this time, a handicap-accessible van that could comfortably and safely shuttle residents to and from the premises. It was truly an answer to prayer, and yet Cindy will be the first to admit that when things work out for our good, it’s not always what we might want. “I had some frustrations about losing my car and having to drive a giant van,” she shrugged. “I’ll have to get used to it.”
The real, constant challenge behind each struggle is submission - to a God who knows more than you do, whose ways are much higher. “When the Bible says that God will give you the desires of your heart, He changes the desires of your heart to what He wills.” This - The Majestic - wasn’t where she saw herself at 52. Yet, in walking the path set before them, she has experienced a heart transformation. Somehow, this role makes complete sense for her, bringing together all the pieces of her past experience in a beautiful sacrifice of lived worship.
“I’ve been a fitness coach for years,” she shared, “So I am fit enough to physically lift and provide care for these residents in a way that makes them feel safe. And I love doing it.” Cindy is also just wrapping up a master’s degree in counseling that she began before elder care was even on the radar. “I always thought my practice would center on couples and individuals, but it’s actually a great help managing family and resident emotions as they make this huge life transition.”
Ultimately, Cindy and Brandon want that transition to be from surviving to thriving. “People think of these facilities as a place folks go to die. We want this to be a place where people come to finish living - there’s a big difference.” From the moment you step inside The Majestic, that difference is palpable. This is a place I’d enjoy coming to visit my loved ones; where I imagine they’d feel at home.
Later that afternoon, as I pulled out of the drive and back onto the dirt road bound for home, my mind circled back to a conversation from earlier that day about Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade. In the film, there’s a scene where Indie is forced to make a literal leap of faith as his father urges him to step out into thin air above a giant chasm. When he does, the bridge appears beneath his feet.
I thanked God for a first-hand example of two people willing to do just that and prayed for the faith to do the same. After all, He has adventure in store for each of us, promising to care for our every need if we dare to seek it out - the question is, do we believe Him?
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