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The Heath & Bernie Story: God-Given Destiny
The Origin of Family Bootcamp
God-Given Providence
I had absolutely no idea that I wouldventure down the path of devoting my life to enhancing the quality and stability ofmarriages and families. I said to myself as a young boy, “When I grow up I want to be a football player, police officer, CIA & FBI super-secret agent”. By high school, I thought I found my calling as a real estate mogul like Trump, a stock investment tycoon like Gorgon Gecko, owner of a super-club restaurant like Blues Alley, and the next top fashion designer like Giorgio Armani. After obtaining a B.S. in Business Management, I had attempted and failed at all of them by the age of 23 - or as I said to myself, “I found yet another career that I wasn’t going to do. That just means I’m getting closer to discovering the one I’m going to be really good at.”
God-Given Instruction
Now that all of my life’s plans were dashed, I was financially broke from failed business endeavors and emotionally dejected. I realized that my plans for my life hadn’t work. So I figured I would not plan my next move and give God a shot at it, since I had recently been introduced to church. To my surprise, God’s plan for my life was to do nothing for the next seven years. At least that’s what it felt like. Actually, God’s plan was for me to sit down, shut up, listen, and learn. Learn what? Learn about being a man, learn about women, learn how to get rid of my young foolish ways, learn about relationships, learn about love, learn about marriage, and learn about family. Through the tutelage of the pastor and his wife, Pastor TL and Mable Rogers, I learned the purpose of the male, the female, love, marriage, and the family. Most importantly, I learned how God used an example of love by dying on a cross as a model for how a husband and wife should love each other. His example was given to us so that we could see why and how to carry out His master plan for our family, and then raise our children to do the same.
God-Given Connection
During my learning period, I partook in youthful tomfoolery and hijinks as some young men oft do. But even in the middle of my tomfoolery and hijinks, I knew that if the woman of my dreams came along, I would not be ready. I knew I would probably do something to ruin it and miss out on an opportunity of a lifetime. So I embarked on a quest to purge myself of my tomfoolery ways. It began the summer of 1994. I set a date for when I figured I would likely be fully purged. That date was also to coincide with when I wanted to be married, October of 1997 - because I like the fall season. I wanted to be engaged for a year, so I that meant I had to pick my fiancée by September of 1996. I therefore simultaneously set out to find someone that shared the same values about family as I did. I mounted what turned out to be a 2-year process of observation, assessment, and evaluation to find the right one. But during those 2-years, unbeknownst to me, I was being observed by my closest friend and co-worker, BerNadette (Bernie). Although we were complete opposites, she met all my criteria.
God-Given Selection
While I was watching her, she was watching me purge the tomfoolery and hijinks from my life and replace them with a newly learned God-instructed lifestyle. By September of 1996, there was no doubt that my best friend and co-worker was in fact my opportunity of a lifetime. So I picked her up one Saturday afternoon, took her over to both my parent’s house so they could meet her, took her out to dinner, and in the course of dinner told her that I loved her and wanted to pursue a relationship that led towards marriage. After she picked her mouth up off the floor and stopped searching for the hidden ‘candid camera’, she realized that I had just changed the nature of our best-friend relationship. In the following week, we underwent daily rounds of intense negotiations about what we each wanted, expected, and required. Finally, on September 25, 1996, she agreed to marry me. Within the course of one week, we went from best friends and co-workers having never dated one another, to being engaged to be married. One year later, we were married on October 10, 1997.
God-Given Process
After marriage, I was still in the learning stage of God’s plan for my life. But now I had more to learn. However, since I was a student of God’s plan for marriage and the family, we set out to model that plan. That plan for our family was called the ‘Wiggins Household’. The Wiggins Household embodies biblical principles, core values, and strategies for dealing with any kind of problem. Individually, we still encountered all of the same problems a newlywed husband or wife goes through in the beginning of a marriage. The difference between us individually and the Wiggins Household was that the Wiggins Household had a plan for how to deal with and resolve those problems. Whenever we operated individually, we experienced problems; but when we operated as the Wiggins Household, we avoided problems – or resolved them more quickly. By the third month of our marriage, we developed processes for how to handle almost all of the issues we faced in our first several years of marriage. It took a lot of effort to stick to it, and we fell short quite often, but at least we found a process that worked for us.
God-Given Vision
And that’s when others began noticing something different about us as a married couple. So much so, that singles and veteran married couples alike would ask us how to handle certain issues and problems in their relationships. So I began to write down what I learned as a student and what Bernie and I learned as the Wiggins Household. I wrote down principles, theories, exercises, and activities that were successful for us and shared them with those who asked for our advice. Then over several nights, I kept having a reoccurring dream about a large parcel of wooded land on which there was a military bootcamp-like training facility for engaged couples. It was called Pre-Marital Bootcamp. It was designed to teach engaged couples how to make their marriages work. I shared my dream with Bernie. Months later, I began getting antsy about wanting to start a business again. Bernie and I were on the subway going home from work talking about what kind of business the Wiggins Household could start. All of a sudden Bernie exclaimed epiphanily, “What about the Pre-Marital Bootcamp?” Instantly, like when one’s life flashes before their eyes, my whole life made sense to me. It was the combination of my two passions – business entrepreneurism and marriage enhancement. I then knew what God wanted me to do. Several weeks later, we founded the Family Bootcamp, Inc. in 2000.
God-Given Provision
We started Family Bootcamp with no money and no larger parcel of wooded land, but we did had a vision from God. Every major event in the Wiggins Household was then motivated by how it could get us closer to attaining that vision. We started looking for a larger home in 2001 in order to start holding Bootcamp sessions in our house. God provided us with a bigger home in January of 2002, which is where we had our first Pre-Marital Bootcamp (we used our entire house as a big obstacle course). It was there where we expanded our services to include the first Marriage Bootcamp in 2005. As our business grew, we also knew that we needed to grow educationally. So we both went back to college for graduated degrees in our respective interests. I obtain an M.S. is Organizational Leadership in 2006 and Bernie has completed 2 years of her M.S. in Pastoral Counseling. However, the full extent of the vision was not yet realized. We still required a bootcamp-like obstacle course on a large parcel of wooded land. In December of 2006, God enabled us to purchase 14 acres of wooded land in Bowie, Md. We have since built several obstacle courses on it and are still building. We have also expanded our services to include workshops for Singles, Families, and Churches. It is through God’s master plan that he orchestrated the events of our lives to do what we love to do. It is our great joy to do that with you and your family. Would you allow us to serve God by serving you? |