A marriage mentoring couple uses their life experiences to support and strengthen other couple’s marriages by:
- Listening to you – as a “vent”, as a “sounding board” to help you get your thoughts and feelings into appropriate focus and be able to deal with them
- Encourage you – sharing how God has worked through their experiences and what His word says about individual and couple issues
- Praying with you – leading the individuals and the couple to pray for each other and the needs in their family
- Praying for you – intercede as needed for the individual/couple and their needs
- Holding you accountable – for any changes for which you desire accountability
A mentoring couple can help strengthen a marriage. However, they are not a substitute for professional counseling in marriages with major problems and issues.
Bob and Gwen Wendt would like to become a mentoring couple. They accepted Jesus in 1974 and have found Him to be the source of healing and restoration, as well as peace and happiness.
They have lived in Oak Ridge, TN since 1979 and have five grown children, and six grandchildren. They have been married for 44 years.
Gwen has been a homemaker, a home school teacher, and has tutored elementary children in reading at an Oak Ridge school. She is a member of a weekly Bible study and has been involved in various children’s ministries over the years at their churches.
Bob was a research architect at Oak Ridge National Lab (retired in 2008). After retirement he worked on developing a medical clinic that could be built in undeveloped nations, and has pursued an ongoing hobby of model trains as well as several major home improvement projects.
Both Bob and Gwen have been involved in an intercessory prayer group with a focus on praying for the nation, the church, and for transformational revival. They have also prayed for family and friends and have seen God move in the lives of other.
Their marriage is far from perfect and remains a work in progress. Differences of how to raise children, deal with finances and household improvements, pornography, and particularly communication styles and sharing feelings have been big challenges for them. Coupled with these are significant differences in personality, interests, spiritual gifting, and both having been raised in “dysfunctional homes”. In short, they have had most all of the ingredients needed to destroy their marriage. However, with time, counseling, prayer and a willingness to change their marriage has endured and improved. They have the desire to help strengthen other marriages and keep them “on track” to being successful.
