Episode 26: Jeanne Champagne: Birth Of The Living Waters

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The Truth in Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Well, I have here today with me, my childhood heroine. Is that the way you say it, heroine?

Jeanne Champagne: I think so.

Kimberly Faith: Jeanie Champagne. Welcome to the podcast. 

Jeanne Champagne: Thank you, Kim. 

Kimberly Faith: I’m so honored. I can’t even really find the words to say how honored I am that I get to have you as a guest on this podcast, it’s God’s podcast, so I just let him guide the way.

And, just by way of introduction, I mentioned you were my child heroine because I would, almost every Sunday in church, you and the Living Waters would sing songs right from the scriptures that you had written inspired by God and your soul was just so transparent. I could just see Jesus in you and the words and the songs. I don’t even know that mesmerized is a good enough word. But not all and not only that, you also were a mentor, an amazing mentor for me in, just when I had trouble in college and in high school, I knew I could always come, and you would just give me the truth in love, which is the name of this podcast. So you may have inspired that too. You never know. 

So, in today’s podcast, I’d really like for you to tell the story about how you came to know Jesus and how that inspired the group Living Waters and the music. For those who’ve never heard your music, they’re going to hear some of it today. We’re going to introduce your music, but it’s my understanding that, starting on March 15th. Is that right? March 15th is the date that the first album is going to debut digitally. And, this is music that you wrote how many years ago?

Jeanne Champagne: It was, 1983 maybe, something like that. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  Give or take five years. 

Kimberly Faith: Sure. No. I get it. It’s been a while. But this is music that I grew up with and has influenced thousands, probably tens of thousands of people, and now it’s going to be available to tens and thousands and who knows how many other people. I want everyone to hear the story about the backstory, or maybe it’s the front story, about how that came to be. So the floor is yours.

Jeanne Champagne: Okay. I appreciate that, Kim. Thank you. There’s no greater honor than to be able to share with others the story that changed our life. So for me, in 1977, Dennis, my husband, and I were living in Rhode Island, and I was beginning to experience an emptiness in my heart. And I didn’t know how to describe it, and I didn’t know how to remedy it. But I was very aware that something was missing. And I would talk to Dennis about it. He wasn’t experiencing the same thing, but it’s something that we talked about really daily. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne: Where I just say, I don’t know what’s missing. Maybe we got married too young. Maybe we started a family too young. Maybe we’ve never seen the world. Maybe we just need to step outside our Mill City life. 

Kimberly Faith: Were you raised in a Christian home?

Jeanne Champagne:  As a child, I was raised in a Catholic home. 

Kimberly Faith: Okay. 

Jeanne Champagne: But my parents stopped going to the Catholic church when I was, like, maybe 12.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Jeanne Champagne: So, you know, I never had any type of a personal relationship with God.

Kimberly Faith:  I understand. 

Jeanne Champagne: It was more of a 

Kimberly Faith: Go to church. 

Jeanne Champagne: Sit, kneel, stand sort of and sometimes the sermons or the church service was in Latin. 

Kimberly Faith:  My mom said the same thing. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Didn’t get much out of it. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: But, now here I was in my early twenties. I had two kids. I’ve been married several years. I was married at a young age, 17. I’m still married to the same man fifty four years later. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh, amazing. Amazing. Congratulations. 

Jeanne Champagne: So, this emptiness kept growing. And about that same time, my brother Raymond was teaching me how to play guitar. I really wanted to play the guitar. Like, my fingers were itching to play. And he just showed me chords where I could actually just make up as I went along, and so that’s what I did. 

So during this empty period, Dennis and I began to talk about selling what we had and moving to where we didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. It was the seventies. You could just

Kimberly Faith:  Anything was possible. 

Jeanne Champagne: Sell everything and go. And, basically, that’s what we did. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: My mother had died several years before. That might have kept me there.

I’m thinking it probably would have kept me there because I wouldn’t have left my mother. I loved her. And, anyway, we just sold everything we had literally and packed up our baby boys and bought a travel trailer, a 22 foot camper, and got in our car. It was July Fourth of seventy seven when my brother Emile helped us pack those last few things that could fit in the car, and we said goodbye. We didn’t know where we were going. We just got in the car and drove. 

Kimberly Faith: Sounds like Abraham, except  without God. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. And we really, I mean, we weren’t even aiming at anything.

We just got on the road and drove. This was the days before, you know, maps you could pull up digitally. This was like the days of paper atlases that were as big as your lap. And so on our journey, there’s a song that I wrote. It was the first song I ever wrote. I wrote it while I was in Rhode Island, and it’s a song that Dennis and I played together, and I sang it literally every day. And it was called Calling. And, I’ll share the words in a minute, what they were because this song was representative of where our heads were at the time, especially mine. And Dennis was doing his best to wrap his brain around where I was because I talked about that emptiness daily.

It’s what made us sell everything. It’s what made us get in the car and drive off. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  And we kept saying even to each other, it’s like, I don’t know what we’re looking for, but I’ll know when I find it. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne: And there were times when I said to Dennis, I feel like if I don’t find why I’m empty, then I’m going to die. I feel like I’m going to die. So as we travel, when we bed down, we followed kind of campgrounds at the time. And when we would bed down and hook up our camper and kind of settle in for the night and our babies were asleep, we would take out our guitars and play this song.

And the words to it are “Calling. I feel it calling me. Time, time to go. Life, a new life out there for me. Frightened is how I sometimes feel. But when I think of what’s in store for me here and now, I know what’s ahead is where I should be. Calling, I feel it calling me, pulling me into a path someone has made. No. I don’t want to fight it. Something inside tells me that’s how it should be. So I’m trading my old life in for one I don’t know, one that was planned by someone much higher than me. And why? Why I really don’t know? It’s not for me to question, only to go. Calling, I feel it calling me. Time, time to go.”

Kimberly Faith: Remarkable. That’s remarkable. I mean, I think about the way that God made us know our need for him.

Jeanne Champagne: And I didn’t know it was him I needed.

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  But I was aware that I needed something.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne: And I could only describe it as an emptiness. And it was an emptiness that we were trying to fill in any way we knew. Maybe traveling will help. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: Maybe having children will help.

Kimberly Faith: Isn’t that the universal experience of life without God, though 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: For everybody?

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. And, you know, there’s many things I won’t get into the details of, but let me just say this. It was the seventies. And I don’t know if you saw the movie, The Jesus Revolution. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne:  Dennis and I probably watched that movie five times, and we cry every time we see it because they are telling our story.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. My favorite story too.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, really 

Jeanne Champagne:  I’m aware

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne: And, also, even, like, when that band was playing and they the pastor accepted them and even encouraged them

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: You know, we were in an atmosphere where that was the same for us. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: So backing up a little bit in our travel days when I was searching, Dennis and I decided after we traveled from here to the other end of the country, the west side of the country, we were writing all these letters back home. Man, this is great. This world is so big.

And, you know, we would write these fake happy letters because we were trying to convince ourselves. Well, if this doesn’t work, what is there?

Kimberly Faith: It’s like the seventies Facebook life. Right?

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. Yes. Exactly. And we really felt like if this doesn’t work, we’ve already given up the job. We’ve already sold our home. We’ve already moved away. What’s next?

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: And so, one day, we were in Tucson, Arizona or somewhere on Mount Lemmon, And, we were saying, what next? Like, what are we going to do? So we decided because we’re vegetarians, of course. You can’t be a hippie and not be a vegetarian. And we started following this book that was all the health group, health food stores across the country, so we doubled back. When we started it looked like everything we went to at  the library and researched kept saying Arkansas. Arkansas. I’m like, where is Arkansas on the map? I failed geography in school. So we had to look for a map and find it and go, oh, alright.

Well, it’s kind of in the middle of the country, and it talked about the weather being so, you know, even keel.

Kimberly Faith: Little lie. 

Jeanne Champagne: Well, I didn’t realize that Northwest Arkansas had its own mind. So we decided, you know, we made some money when we sold the house. Let’s buy some property out there. So we found a 40 acre plot. It was actually even more than that. We split it with another hippie couple that we met in the realtor’s room. And, so we moved on to that piece of property, and we met a bunch of hippies that lived on communes, and one of them was selling their teepee. And we thought, you know what? Perfect. Let’s buy it , let’s get a teepee, and we’ll keep our, you know, travel trailer for now until we build a house. 

Well, one day in particular that I will never forget, there was a lot of pressure between the two of us, between Dennis and me because I was so unsettled and so empty, and that’s all I could think about, was that there has to be more to life than this. There has to be more. I was, like, 22.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne: And I was just like, this can’t be all there is. And one day and maybe I was PMSing. Who knows? But I was peaking in emotion, and I ran off into the woods, that 40 acres. I ran it off into the woods, and I was shaking my fist up to heaven

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne: And saying, what do you want from me?

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne: What do you want? I felt like I was this, like, little experiment, like this little puppet upon, and that this being was moving me. Let’s see how she acts if we move her from Rhode Island to Arizona. Okay. Well, let’s see now what happens if this and that. So I didn’t understand a loving God at all, but I knew there was something bigger than me that was pulling. I felt this pull. 

Kimberly Faith: Romans chapter one. Right? 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. Exactly. And I did that day that I went out in the woods, and I was yelling and just shaking my hands up to God, and I ended up, it sounds so dramatic, but I promise I was by myself and not on stage. But I fell to the ground, and I was weeping uncontrollably because I knew that there was going to have to be a next step.

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  But I didn’t know what was going to happen. Like, what’s going to befall me? So I went back, and Dennis and I talked about, you know, maybe I should go off on my own for a little while. And so we drove to Fayetteville. We found me a little studio apartment just off Dixon Street, which at the time was

Kimberly Faith: Hippieville.

Jeanne Champagne: Hippieville. I didn’t know that though, but somehow I felt at home there. 

Kimberly Faith: Wonder why. 

Jeanne Champagne: And I was in that little apartment, and I got a job, and the next day, God brought a Christian into my life that talked very much Christian terminology using words like propitiation for my sins.

Kimberly Faith:  Who was it? 

Jeanne Champagne: And it was a gentleman that actually had a good influence on me.

Kimberly Faith: Good.

Jeanne Champagne: But he could tell he wasn’t reaching me. And  the first thing he asked me, because I had a very strong New England accent at the time. First thing he said to me on our job together because we were both working at a new antique shop. 

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Jeanne Champagne:  And he could hear my accent. He said, what? You’re not from around here, are you? I said, no.  I’m from Rhode Island. He goes, well, what brings you here? That’s a loaded question. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: And I said to him, I don’t know. I’m looking for something. There’s an emptiness in me.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: And I’ll know when I find it. It’s just surprising I even said that.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: He said, well, I know what you’re looking for. And I’m rolling my eyes up in my mind, like, who the heck do you think you are? And he says, you need a relationship with God. God designed you to have a relationship with him. And if you don’t have one, you’re going to feel that emptiness. Well, how dare he?

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: I didn’t know anything about this, and I thought it was a little, you know 

Kimberly Faith: Presumptuous. 

Jeanne Champagne: You walking around like you know my issue. And after a week or so, he said, you know, I’m going to introduce you to a friend of mine. His name is Frank Kenney. And, I think he’s going to be able to relate to you a little better. And Frank would talk to me every day about Jesus, and all I did was argue. Well, if this is that, then why is this? Well, if God is a God of love, then this whole hell thing, I don’t buy it. And, you know, what about people who’ve already died that were good people? And I had all the standard questions that people have when they first hear the plan of salvation and the simplicity of turning your life over to Christ, but you’re hanging on to it. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: And so, one day after probably a month of talking to me, he left me his Bible. And just the day before that, some of my friends off the commune had come to visit me to pat me on the back and tell me how proud they were that, you know, I dared to go off on my own and do my own thing. And they brought me some books, Seth Speaks, Ramda, some I’d already read, some that were new to read, eastern religions and this  and that. And they were all brand new and shiny and they were sitting on my coffee table and, you know, and I didn’t feel like reading them. They just looked shiny on my table. And I just don’t know.I just didn’t feel like it was there. I’d already been down that road. 

Then Frank comes over and he’s got this old Bible in his hands. It’s all beat up. Didn’t even have a cover on it. Like, the leather cover was gone. There are pages sticking out. It’s all marked with, you know, yellow and green markers and little, you know, stickies and I mean, it was just

Kimberly Faith: His personal Bible?

Jeanne Champagne:  Yes. It was his Bible and he said, I want to give this to you. And I said, I don’t want your Bible. That looks like it’s, you know, important to you. And he just looked at me, like, with this deep look, and he said, I want you to have it. Wow. And so I said, okay. And he left it, and that night, I saw this pile of brand new books, and I saw that old beat up Bible. And I don’t know why, but I just started weeping. I picked up that old book, and I was holding it up against myself, and I was just weeping. I didn’t even know why except that I thought, wouldn’t it be something else if this is where the answer is?

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: But, I mean, Jesus is for grannies. Jesus is for narrow minded people. That can’t be where it is. That cannot be the answer. No way. And all my friends on the communes and everybody in my circle, what a joke I’d be. And I didn’t want that to be the answer. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want Jesus to be the answer. I didn’t think of him as personal yet, and Al Carter invited me to church. Church? What? I don’t even own a dress or shoes, and so Al came to pick me up, and I did not want to go. I didn’t answer the door, and he kept knocking, and my door had a big window on it, So I got down on all fours, and I crawled under the window to the other side of the room so he wouldn’t see me, and he just kept knocking. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne: And he just kept knocking. We’ve  got to share it with the people walking down the road with no one there to tell them, how will they know? Another second by us now, how many men just died.  And I thought, dang, this guy’s not going to go away. So I got up to flush the toilet, and I opened the door. Oh, Al. Didn’t know you were here. And he goes, well, you’re ready to go to church? I’m like, well, you know, not really. And he goes, well, my wife is really looking forward to meeting you. And he said, you might not know this, but there are a lot of people praying for you.

Kimberly Faith:  Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: Well, it kind of creeped me out.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: Right? I’m like, wow. So I went to church and I went to their house for dinner. And then, Darnesia, his wife, their little baby Sequel was in her high chair. And she asked me, what do you think about Jesus? Like, where are you with it? Because I know that Al and Frank and yeah. I know that different people have been talking to you about him. And I said, I don’t know what I think. And she said, well, do you believe that he is God? And you know what? I did. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: Like being asked it now.

Kimberly Faith: You had that innate knowledge.

Jeanne Champagne: For some reason, I just did. 

Kimberly Faith: Again, Romans Chapter one. 

Jeanne Champagne: And she said, well, why aren’t you saved? And I said, I don’t know. I don’t have what you have, but I don’t know why because now I’m beginning to think, you know, this whole Jesus thing might be real.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: And in spite of the fact that I didn’t want it to be real because maybe that would mean that, you know, my quarter acre of pot would have to be pulled up. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. Isn’t it crazy what we think is so worth hanging on to?

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. It is.

Kimberly Faith:  And then whether it’s money or pot or

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Or a man or a woman or lifestyle or career.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: And it’s just so fleeting.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Very fleeting. So on 07/12/1978, on July 12, I went to church with Darnisia, and we were standing in the back of the church and everybody was going in. This was my first time going to church. And she said, tears were streaming down her face, and she said, I just want you to know the Lord. And I started crying like, well, I want to know the Lord but I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do. And as the tears were streaming down her face, God showed me that those were his tears going down her face. Like, I knew it. And I felt the Lord’s arms around me and she asked me. She said, it’s a prayer away. He’s a prayer away.

She explained how our, you know, it is our sins that separate us from him because he’s a holy God, and she went over how, you know, in the separation that God made a way to get us back right with him and that it was through Jesus and everything she was saying made sense. And she said, it’s a prayer away. Before I ever opened my mouth in prayer, there was a huge battle going on in my head. Huge. I felt this. It’s like on the right side was a gentle pull where Jesus was saying, I’m what you’ve been looking for. I’m the answer. I will fill that gap. And on the other side, there was this other voice. Oh, yeah. You’re going to look like an idiot to all your hippie friends. And what if your husband doesn’t accept? You’re going to live in two different worlds. And they’ll pull this way and they’ll pull that way and to the right and to the left and all of a sudden, boom. Nothing. No pull. No pull. Just me with a decision to make. And in that moment, I let go. Before I ever prayed the prayer, I was born again.

Kimberly Faith: I just have to pause here. I have never heard this from you before. This reminds me so much of my own testimony. I remember, you know, being in church and being so tired of fighting God. And finally just saying, I give up in my head. Just I give up. It’s got to be you.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: And I knew before I prayed the prayer that I surrendered.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. 

Kimberly Faith: So what did you do next?

Jeanne Champagne: So next, I went into church. And wouldn’t you know that the service that day, it’s the first time I ever heard it. It was on the crucifixion of Christ and what he bore on himself in my place. And the whole time  I was weeping. I kept trying to keep it in, but I couldn’t. And by then, I just accepted Christ. And after church, I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to just cry it out and and figure out, you know

Kimberly Faith: Sort it.

Jeanne Champagne: Everything that just happened. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: Well, Billy Ray, I don’t remember his last name right off the top of my head, but Billy Ray came over to me and said, we’re going to  be going out for some ice cream. Do you want to join us? And I didn’t. And I said, well, no. I kind of want to get home. But he said, Come on. Come on.

Kimberly Faith:  He’s kind of hard to resist.

Jeanne Champagne: So we went out, and when he got his ice cream cone, I didn’t get one. I was sitting in the back seat. He was sitting in the front. He turned around, and he had that ice cream cone in his hand, and he was licking it. And I could see the ice cream on his tongue, and he’s just looking at me and licking that cone. And he said, you see this ice cream cone right here, Miss Jeannie? I said, yeah. He goes, sure as I’m licking this ice cream cone, Jesus Christ is coming back. So all of these were like some major realizations that impacted my brand new Christian self.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. This story is mind blowing to me. The way that the Lord, it just reminds me of number one, the power of the presence of God that he plants in us as children. And  I keep bringing up Romans Chapter one because it’s so clear that God,  you know, when they knew God, they failed to be thankful and they failed to acknowledge him as God and their foolish heart was darkened.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And that’s where you were, in that darkness

Jeanne Champagne:  Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: You were just desperate. 

Jeanne Champagne: Absolutely. 

Kimberly Faith: And I think about, you know, when I talk to people who say, well,  what about the people in Western Africa that never heard it?

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  And the fact is that the Lord says that he roams the earth looking for the person who’s seeking him, and he’s going to make it happen. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: He heard the cry of your heart.

Jeanne Champagne:  Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: In the woods.

Jeanne Champagne: He put the cry in my heart.

Kimberly Faith: So true.

Jeanne Champagne: He made me aware that I was missing something. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  Because if I would have just been going about my life all satisfied, then I never would have looked for him because no man seeks after God.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: It’s really kind of a selfish, self fulfilling thing that we do. But I absolutely know that, you know, if anyone’s listening out there and you feel an emptiness, you know, you ought to feel honored because it’s probably God shaking you up. If you’re one of his children, maybe he’s waking you up because he definitely has something better for us. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne:  Or if we’re lost. He’s wanting us to feel that.

Kimberly Faith:  Yes.

Jeanne Champagne: Because that separation from God is pretty profound. It’s the whole reason why we’re here

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: Is to meet him

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: And have everlasting life when we leave this planet. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. Bring glory to him. That’s the whole point of our lives. 

Jeanne Champagne: Absolutely.

Kimberly Faith: Well, so after you got saved, then what happened with you and Dennis and the family?

Jeanne Champagne: Well, not long later, not long later at all. Okay. So that night, I got saved, and maybe, like, a few nights later, maybe the next church service, I needed to go back. I couldn’t get to Dennis fast enough. Now this was the days before mobile phones, and we lived in the woods so we didn’t even have a landline. There was no way to reach Dennis except through snail mail. We didn’t even have Internet. It didn’t exist. 

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: Everything was just, you know, raw and rustic, but I knew I couldn’t wait to tell Dennis that I just met God.

Kimberly Faith: That’s so great. 

Jeanne Champagne: I couldn’t get to him fast enough, and I was going to hitchhike because it was the seventies and people hitchhiked. And somebody at church said, I’ll give you a ride. And so I said, okay. Cool. And so I got a ride, and it was a long walk down a, you know, almost pathy road. So I was dropped off before that long pathy road and I walked it. And Dennis says to this day, as soon as he saw me, as soon as he saw me coming down the path, he said to himself, she found it. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: She found it.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: And he says, you look different. And I was just like, I don’t even know where to begin to tell you, but, Dennis, he’s real. This whole Jesus thing, he’s real. And I met him, and I was just weeping. I couldn’t, I just, I was so excited. I didn’t know a Bible verse, but I shared with him that I just met God. And not long later, I’m going to say a month later. I’m not even sure, but not long later, my brother Emile was on his way to Arkansas. He and his girlfriend were splitting up on friendly terms, and they were passing through. He was going to drop her off in Arizona and then come back.

And at the time, the thought was to help us harvest the moneymaker pot. So, before he left, so okay. So that night that he arrived, we were sitting around the campfire and joints were being passed around. And when it reached me, God said very, very clearly in my mind, in my heart, tell him about me. I didn’t know a verse. I didn’t know how to, but I just said I started crying and I said, Emile, this is going to sound nuts. This is going to sound like a crazy story. But, you know, all our life we heard about Jesus, this character, And he goes, yeah. I’m like I started crying. I’m like, Emile, he’s real. Like, he’s real. I met him, and I know this sounds crazy, and I don’t know how to tell you without sounding crazy, but he touched my life and my heart, and I met him. So he goes, woah. You’re blowing my mind here. This is freaky because just before I left Rhode Island, I went to visit Ellen, one of my other sisters. There’s seven siblings. And he said, I went by to say goodbye and she just told me the same thing. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Jeanne Champagne: So my sister, Ellen, I accepted Christ on July 12. She accepted him less than a week before. And we didn’t have phones. We didn’t have a way, but Ellen was praying that the Lord would show her how to reach me. So Emile was, like, blown away, like, okay. This is freaky. So, he ended up leaving a couple of days later. So Dennis started going to church and not long, just like within a few weeks, he accepted Christ as well. Because I said, you go and talk to this person and that person and, you know, and he was, like, bop bebopping down the street, like, with his shoeless feet and

Kimberly Faith: Pink Panther style?

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Probably. And, the pastor of the church stopped and picked him up, and I think he said something like, are you a humanist? And Dennis didn’t know what it was, and he’s like, well, I’m a vegetarian. And, not long later, Emiel came back from Arizona, and he came to church.

And Dennis and I were praying with all our hearts. Dear God, reveal yourself to him. Please show yourself to him. And at the end of services, my brother went forward and accepted Christ. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh my goodness.

Jeanne Champagne: So that night, I’m pretty sure that these facts are exact, but they might be a little off. But we that night, we all went back out to the property, that 40 acres in Kingston. And, we just wanted to have a time to worship God, and we didn’t know how. We never prayed really or anything like that, but, you know, we pulled some of the pot plants out and put them on a big flame, and we were, like, given it as an offering. 

Kimberly Faith: Hilarious.

Jeanne Champagne: Stayed out of the wind. And we started, there’s a song that I had written, like, a few days after I accepted Christ. It was called Righteous, Just, and Loving God. And we started singing that song together.

And the words are: Righteous, just, and loving God, innocent giving lamb. Praise to you, oh, perfect one, a servant of yours I am. If you’re looking for the truth or you’re searching for a friend, if you’re feeling like your life is coming to an end, if your days are hollow and your nights are all alone, if you’re looking for a purpose or fulfillment in your home, then, friend, your search has ended if you’re wise enough to see that the answer is in Jesus who died on Calvary.

Kimberly Faith: Was that a song you recorded? Because I don’t remember singing it?

Jeanne Champagne: I never recorded it, but we sang it a lot. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  We sang it outside around that campfire over and over. And we were weeping, the Lord made his presence so strong, like he filled the woods. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. Wow.

Jeanne Champagne:  So the three of us, brand new Christians, we don’t know anything. You know what? The Lord’s good with that.

Kimberly Faith: He is good with that.

Jeanne Champagne: I do believe he loves the purity of someone who doesn’t feel like they have to fit in a box to worship him.

Kimberly Faith: You know, the beatitude, blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God and combined with Jesus said, come to me as a child. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: One of the beatitudes in our other book that we’re putting together, we were talking about what it means to see God. And I think it’s to know him for who he is, not who we’ve made him. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: And that’s what you were experiencing. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: With the innocence of the living child. You know?

Jeanne Champagne: I do feel like in that moment, though I didn’t know it at the time, if I look back at it, I always attribute that moment to when, like, Living Waters began.

Kimberly Faith: Really?

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh, man. 

Jeanne Champagne: Because it was this pure singing to God with thankfulness and appreciation and acknowledging who he was and God allowing us the honor and the privilege of sensing his presence there. He was pleased, and we talked about this that night. All we wanted to do was let God have our lives. We didn’t know what it meant, but we knew it was going to  mean we’re going to be living differently.

Kimberly Faith: You’re describing true Christianity. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: I mean, you really are. 

Jeanne Champagne:  Yes

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s full surrender.

Jeanne Champagne: Full surrender. Because there was not anything, what’s the alternative?

Kimberly Faith:  Right. Right.  It’s kind of like when you get married, you know, you fully surrender yourself to that person, and they’re not going to be okay with you going out cheating once a week or once a year or whatever. It’s either all or nothing with God. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: He is Lord or he’s not.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Exactly. 

Kimberly Faith: And that’s, you know, in your music, one of the things that I remember as a young teenage girl and then also just even reminiscing, listening to  some of the, I got a preview of the digital, which I listened to it yesterday, and tears just streamed in my face because that’s what I remember about your music. It’s God’s word combined with your experience of surrender.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.  And combined with the listeners wanting to also surrender.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne: Because those that are touched are because their heart has an open side.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: Otherwise

Kimberly Faith:  It’s a good point.

Jeanne Champagne:  It’s just a symbol.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  A sounding clang like they talk about in First Corinthians 13. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne: Otherwise, that’s all it is. It has no meaning.

Kimberly Faith: You know, that reminds me of, actually we’ve got a podcast coming up about, what is cultural Christianity and does it last. And, you know, Elon Musk made the statement that he’s a cultural Christian because it is good for the population, and it’s good for, you know, refurbishing the earth of people. And there are some other reasons too, but, man, what is Christianity without Christ? 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: That relationship is like a marriage without love.

Jeanne Champagne: You know, that tells us, those of us who know the Lord, that some people, they’re not there yet. Their understanding is not there yet. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.

Jeanne Champagne: And, I  mean, I don’t know that others didn’t try to tell me about Jesus before. I don’t know. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: But I always felt like the Lord had to, like, uproot me  And go, I need to take these people somewhere where someone’s going to tell them about me

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: Because it’s not happening here.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne: But I will tell you this is kind of backtracking a little, but while we were traveling, one thing that blew Dennis’  and my  mind was we kept meeting people just like us. We thought we were the only ones. We were isolated. I mean, you know, you didn’t have the Jesus Revolution movie out yet.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: But we met these hippies along the way, and we would find out we were heading west and they were heading east. And when we would sit around the campfire and chat, because they were camping too, so it was like the natural thing to do, they were searching for something too. Like, people were talking about their emptiness with one another. There was a movement. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: There was a holy spirit shaking of lost lives.

Kimberly Faith: I think there’s one right now.

Jeanne Champagne: I agree with you completely.

Kimberly Faith:  I’m going to tell you

Jeanne Champagne: Look. I got goosebumps just talking about it.

Kimberly Faith:  And this is why I’m so excited to be here with you, listening to your story so that people can hear it because I think we have come to a place in our country where there’s so much emptiness in the world. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: The world is afraid, and it doesn’t matter what your politics are.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: We live in a scary place. We are one second away from a nuke. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yep. 

Kimberly Faith: We are one second away from destruction on a scale we can’t even understand. Misinformation, disinformation, lies. People want the truth. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: And the best proof that the Bible is God’s word is the testimony, that somebody’s been changed. Like, when Dennis saw you walking down the path.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  Down the path and said, she’s found it.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. I love that.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: And my biggest fear, so to speak, something that held me back from letting go that day that I accepted Christ, was my fear that Dennis wasn’t going to be a Christian, which I knew instinctively it was going to mean we would live in two different worlds.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Mom and Dad had the same experience. If you listen to the very first podcast, it’s about that. 

Jeanne Champagne: Oh. 

Kimberly Faith: And there’s mom thinking, but she immediately started praying for dad, and he was saved the same day.

Jeanne Champagne: Oh, that’s yes.

Kimberly Faith: It was her first answered prayer.

Jeanne Champagne: Love it.

Kimberly Faith: That was his salvation.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: You know? And, so yeah. And so I want to ask where did you guys go from living in the woods, where was it? Kingston? 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Living in the woods in Kingston to developing this group called the Living Waters. Can you tell us how that happened?

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. So once we began to understand a little bit more about the work of God in our lives, we knew it would change things. We didn’t know anything. We felt that God was leading us to move closer to where all these Christians were that were talking about him like he was real, that we should be around them. And so we moved to Fayetteville, and we started attending church. And early on in fact, Kim, it was your parents, John and Lynn, that were the first ones to reach out to us, brand new Christians. It was Emile, my brother, Dennis and I. And one of them, I think it was your dad, John, came to us and said, hey. Do you guys want to be in a Bible study? We’re like, what’s that?

Kimberly Faith:  I love that. I love that. 

Jeanne Champagne: You know, probably. I don’t know. What is it? And, so we attended the whole, it was a series, and it was like, you know, a series of educational 

Kimberly Faith: The Basic

Jeanne Champagne:  Bible Concepts 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: That helps you understand the Christian faith.

Kimberly Faith: Right.  I call it the phonics and spelling to learning to write 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: Or the multiplication division 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: To learning physics. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: And it helps you to learn you. Yeah. I went to school. 

Jeanne Champagne: I’m following you.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. How to understand the basics so you can explain the more complex.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  Absolutely. And it also helped us to be able to share with family and friends in a way that they could understand. It wasn’t just the way we understood it, but in the way that others can process it. It gave us the scriptures and the information that we needed to be effective as we shared the Lord with other people. So, that was huge and to this day, I still teach that study.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Me too.

Jeanne Champagne: Like, it’s like something that someone once said to me, well, don’t you think you should move on and, like, teach Revelations or something? I’m like, no. Because this is what God called me to. Like, I love to share these concepts with others that either don’t know the Lord or they never heard them because everything within your spirit shows you it’s dead on.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  I should say live on.

Kimberly Faith: Live on. Live on. Right? Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: So yeah. So, after that, Dennis and I sang this song, I believe, in church, this Righteous, Just, and Loving God. We both, you know, we sat, probably barefoot, from the front of the church on the little stagey thing. We just, because back then, I didn’t know how to play the guitar unless I was sitting cross legged. I’m not kidding. Like, I had to sit cross legged with my shoes off. And so later when I started standing to play, I always had to kick one shoe off.

Kimberly Faith: I never noticed that.

Jeanne Champagne: I had to make myself wear both shoes because my tapping foot liked to be barefoot. If I’m not out in public, I still want my foot tapping.

Kimberly Faith: That’s hilarious. Well, you know, I recently recorded with Emile. He played the fiddle on a couple of our lullabies. And the one thing I remember from watching you all play live in church was his tapping foot.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Because he tapped with the heel.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. He taps with his heel, and his knee is very exaggerated when he’s sitting down.

Jeanne Champagne: I love it.

Kimberly Faith: And he’s in the studio recording sitting down, and I can’t stop watching his tapping foot because it’s such a great memory.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: That’s so silly. But yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: It’s not. So it wasn’t long, later when Dennis and I and Emile were playing music. We were invited to play more. This book that I’m holding in my hand has some of the first songs we played, they were the early songs that I wrote. They all just had to do with, like, the learning experience. One of one of the songs called You Changed Me

Kimberly Faith: Right..

Jeanne Champagne: And Gifts from my Lord. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. These are songs I haven’t heard.

Jeanne Champagne: He’s coming back for me. As I was learning, as I was sitting in these bible studies, I would be  inspired to, you know, just I’ve always even to this day, I always when something happens, like, I’m a journalist or, you know, in the days when I could do it, I would write songs. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: Now I have other ways that I deal with it because I’m physically not able to do those other things. 

Kimberly Faith: So your first album was written years ago, decades ago. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  But your nephew, Jacob

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: Who has Inside Out Studios 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: Has digitized 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: All of your 30, I’ve got here a list of 31 songs 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  On three albums, three vinyls 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: That you all made. And the first album is He’s Been Calling You, and that has eight songs on it. And it’s going to be released in March, I think, March 15th. And so at some point, you became a group, and tell us who all the people in the group were.

Jeanne Champagne:  OK. So not long later, maybe a year later, Wayne and Sally Gustafson, met the Lord and started coming to church, and they had been playing in, like, a country type band for years. And so they brought a lot of experience  and, of course, Sally, she can sing with anybody and blend incredibly.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne: Wayne’s musical talents are multifaceted. And we hit it off with them right away. Like, to this day, all these years later, because that might have been, like, nineteen in 1979. We’re still best friends. They are our best friends. We are their best friends. 

Kimberly Faith:  You’ve got some good friends.

Jeanne Champagne: We still hang out. You know? We still hang out. Now we’re, you know, white cotton tops and, you know, it never goes away. And it never goes away because Jesus is in the center of that relationship.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. When Jesus connects and is the foundation, 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: You have something in common no matter what storms come.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: What disagreements arise, you can always go back to the truth and the principles 

Jeanne Champagne: Right. 

Kimberly Faith: of love him with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love others as yourself. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Right? 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: I like to say love others like he loves you. You know? Big standard there.

Jeanne Champagne: It  sure is. Yeah. Not long later, Emile married Connie, and Connie was a part of the group. She always had a beautiful higher voice, and she was really, really she was the one that would say to us. She would say it every time. We need to articulate when we sing. I always remember that. And you know what? We needed it.

Kimberly Faith:  Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  Because we just had our old, you know, East Coast, you know. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: Putting vowels where they don’t belong and you turn up the speaker. And, you know, we were still a mess.  Listen, I’ll tell this little shortcut story that doesn’t have to do with much, but it’ll bring a laugh. I taught first grade for many years and we were teaching phonics. I was still new to the area. I still had a very strong New England accent and I’m teaching phonics and we’re in, you know, I’m saying here in here and then h e r e, here in here and everything ends in ea because that’s how we talk.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: And so I’m teaching the kids and they’re going home practicing their phonics and they’re saying it like their teacher. And, you know, and they’re saying, you know, the beer across the street and, hey, have a beer and look, you’re naked, so your beer and everything is here. And somebody came to me one day in love, couldn’t have said it more kindly and more. It was really necessary. And she said, we’ve got to talk to you about how you say some of the words because you are teaching phonics. I’m like, yeah. Like, what’s the deal? And she’s telling me I’m still not getting it. Sounded right to me. And then she explained how hair and here. It’s like, you know, the rat, the tortoise, and the hair. Everything was ere. So, see, it’s been a great lawn, learning process.

Kimberly Faith: That’s funny. So Connie came and Emile obviously,  they were part of the group.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. So there were six of us.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: And that was the six of us for years. And, we were invited to sing at a discipleship conference in Texas, maybe like that first year that Connie and all of us were a group. And, you know, we’re looking like, we’re looking like six hippies. I’m telling you right now, and we’re going to a suit church, a suit and tie church.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: And we didn’t know better. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: We were just going over there to sing about the Lord. And I remember our pastor who was always very supportive of the music and stood behind us when we did go to suited churches and they were, like, a little bit thrown off by these baggy jean frayed, which is back in those days. 

Kimberly Faith: I know. Right? 

Jeanne Champagne: And, you know, they wanted us to wear something different. And I do remember the pastor saying, do you guys have any shoes? And we weren’t barefoot, but we were Birkenstocking maybe.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. Right. Right.

Jeanne Champagne: And so we’re like, no. What are those? And it turned out that in spite of how we looked, God went before us and allowed the music to still touch hearts.

Kimberly Faith:  So powerful.

Jeanne Champagne:  So we were thankful for that. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And, you know, the thing about your music that I remember, just is the complete, I could see your born again soul when you sang the words that God had given you. That’s what was so powerful. 

Jeanne Champagne: Thank you, Lord.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I mean, I you know, they say the eyes are the windows of the soul, and that just pertains directly to you. The thing I remember most about you and our interactions, I lived with you for a little while and you discipled me, and my parents discipled you. You discipled me. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And here we are. 

Jeanne Champagne: We discipled April. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s just like and it’s like, when you look in somebody’s eyes and you see Jesus, I don’t know that there’s anything more powerful than that because the holy spirit, like, comes out of you and they meet in the middle. Right? When you both share the spirit of the lord. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: And, man, it’s just so, that’s why I’m beyond excited about your music coming out digitally. And, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to highlight a couple of songs from your first album. The first one is probably my all time favorite, and every time I get my guitar out, I sing and play it badly, but I love it because it comes right from one of my favorite scriptures, and that’s John One.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: And it’s in the beginning. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: Tell us about that song. Tell us about what you were thinking and how that song came to be.

Jeanne Champagne: I do remember that.  Dennis and I were reading that book of the Bible together. And I went to bed that night, and I was thinking about that song. And when I woke up in the morning, I heard all the parts. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Jeanne Champagne:  I heard them. I couldn’t write them down fast enough, but I couldn’t. I don’t read music, and I don’t write music. I can just hear it. So, there wasn’t anything to write but scripture because it’s just scripture. 

Kimberly Faith: It is. 

Jeanne Champagne: It’s just scripture.

Kimberly Faith: One of the most powerful scriptures in the Bible in my mind.

Jeanne Champagne: But I heard the parts. I heard Connie. I heard Emile. I heard the parts, and I couldn’t share it fast enough.

Kimberly Faith: When you write music, do you feel like you’re giving birth almost? 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: That’s what I tell Jacob. I don’t read music. I don’t write music, but when I hear it, I have to write it down or sing it in my mouth.

Jeanne Champagne: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  So fast before I forget it. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. And sometimes I do forget it, and I think it’s gone forever. And out of nowhere, it comes back. 

Kimberly Faith: Because it’s 3:00 a.m.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith:  You’re like still too tired to give birth right now, Lord.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: You know what? I know why we’re kindred spirits. That is exactly the way I describe it. I’m like, Jacob, I don’t know how to write this song, but this is what it’s supposed to sound like. And then he’ll say, well, what does the music sound like? And I say, well, think about Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy. He’ll go, what? And I’m like, you know, let’s listen to it. He goes, how do you even know this? I said, because I have kids.

Jeanne Champagne:  Right. 

Kimberly Faith: And because I was an ungodly person, I listened to music. You know? So, anyway, I love it. So you wrote the song, and you heard all the parts.

Jeanne Champagne: I put music to that scripture. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  So to say I wrote the song, you know? Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You let the holy spirit use you as a vessel.

Jeanne Champagne: I guess I look at it like, in spite of me, the Lord used it anyway, and I’m really thankful that he doesn’t wait for us to reach or  jump so high. I want you to jump this high. When you reach this height, then I’ll use you. He says, I want to use you now. I want you in your imperfection because I can take that broken vessel that you are 

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

Jeanne Champagne: And I can breathe life into it. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  And, you know, I’ve always always felt, and I still do even more right now with, you know, the reemergence of this music that it has never been me or the group or you. It’s never been that.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: If we open our life and our heart to just say, Lord, you know, I don’t know how for me, I many times find myself saying, I don’t know how you can get anything out of me, Lord.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: But I’m just laying this broken self. I’m 70. I have multiple sclerosis. I deal with a blood issue. I’ve got all this stuff. And yet, I can look at all of that and say, you know what? I am not going to let the enemy tell me I’m useless until my final breath.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne: And then it still won’t be me, because we pray now. Lord, in my final breath, let me be a light.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You can glorify God in your final breath. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yep.

Kimberly Faith:  And no one can tell you you can’t.

Jeanne Champagne: So speaking of final breath, it reminds me sorry. I don’t mean to jump around, but I do want to acknowledge John Basler who faithfully did our sound anytime we played anywhere, including at church. 

Kimberly Faith: Jay?

Jeanne Champagne: Jay. Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: Was his name John?

Jeanne Champagne: John Jay.  We called him Jay. 

Kimberly Faith: Okay. Sorry. 

Jeanne Champagne: He was steadfast, worked quietly and just did his job well. 

Kimberly Faith: He was remarkable. 

Jeanne Champagne: So we love him. We miss him. He passed away just a little over a year ago, and we miss him a lot.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. But we know where he is.

Jeanne Champagne: We know where he is.

Kimberly Faith: We know where he is.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. And I also want to acknowledge Ron Jacobs who came in to play with Living Waters. Probably, I know he was on the last album, so whenever that was. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: And, you know, he brought a lot of depth and just his own really beautiful style of playing into the mix.

Kimberly Faith: I remember that. Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne: And he was, you know, he was the one probably more than anybody else that tuned in on the message of a song. Like, I used to, when I would present a song, and when you work with musicians that know what they’re doing, I was never that. I can play what I can play, and maybe I can fake it out that someone might think I can play, but I can, you know, I can 

Kimberly Faith: I love you.

Jeanne Champagne:  I can fake it, but they could play. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: And they could play well. I mean, look, Emile with the violin and the mandolin and, I mean he’s 

Kimberly Faith:  Like Jacob.

Jeanne Champagne:  Yes. Yeah. Mind blowing. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

Jeanne Champagne: And, but the thing about coming into a group of musicians is, you go, guys, I’m so excited. I’ve got a new song. And I wouldn’t even show a song because I probably played it a hundred times because I wanted the message to be right. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: And you know? And most of the time, it was just because I was a bit OCD. I wanted it

Kimberly Faith: Perfect. 

Jeanne Champagne: Right. 

Kimberly Faith: As much as you could make it perfect. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith:  Right. Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne: And then they would bring the beauty into it. But at first, when I would first present a song, I was like, okay. So I wanted them to listen to it first. Because I wanted them to get the feel of the message. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: Well, I’d start playing it, and everybody would  just jiving in there. But you know what? They really didn’t have the same need I had. They could do it. They just found their way as they played.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne: But it used to just be like, if they would just listen to the message first, it wouldn’t be you know, sometimes you’re singing or you’re playing a song that has a very deep, you know? 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  A message that might be very serious, and you’ve got all the,

Kimberly Faith: Big musicians.

Jeanne Champagne:  Like, it would always always become what it was supposed to be 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Jeanne Champagne:  Because they were in tune with the Lord.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

Jeanne Champagne: When Ron came, he tuned right in on it. That is the one thing I noticed about him as a musician is he felt the message immediately.  

Kimberly Faith:  Right. That’s one of the things I really appreciate about Jacob because he’s obviously a very strong Christian. And when you have that Holy Spirit connection, then you trust the character of the person 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: Who’s shaping what God has put in your heart. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: Because it’s the same character.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  It’s the character of Jesus.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. Absolutely.

Kimberly Faith: And that’s what I saw in Living Waters. You all had the same love for Christ.

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. 

Kimberly Faith: And then God took and wove this beautiful fabric of your music.

Jeanne Champagne: And we always got along really well. 

Kimberly Faith: You could see that. 

Jeanne Champagne: Like, we went on road trips many times. We did many, you know, Midwest. We played in many, many places for years. And so, I mean, we did crowded road trips, and we had a blast.

Kimberly Faith: I’m sure you did.

Jeanne Champagne: And, I mean, you know, Sally and I and Emile, we could whistle a tune. We would do the three part harmonies.

Kimberly Faith: That’s hilarious. I mean, when I listened to the digital version that I got to preview yesterday, as soon as I heard Sally singing and her picking up that bass. 

Jeanne Champagne: Oh. 

Kimberly Faith: I remember thinking, Sally is such a dainty feminine girl. And here she is just rocking the bass.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Jeanne Champagne: She still is. Yes.

Kimberly Faith: She still rocks that bass. I love that. I was like, that’s so

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh, that’s so good. That’s such a juxtaposition that God just says watch this.

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: You know? And I think it’s God’s sense of humor and his ability to weave the beauty, you know, of the sunset through the clouds 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Just blows my mind. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Well, okay. So I’m going to wrap this up. We’re going to do this again. Is that okay with you?

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: I really want in the next podcast that we kind of talk about the message behind a lot of the songs that you’ve written and that your group has done, and hopefully, we can convince maybe the others to join us on the podcast. I want to talk about the last song “He’s Been Calling You” which is the title track. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: And, in the context of you talking about that song, I like to leave our listeners with the one thing that you would want people to know from your testimony, from your life.

Jeanne Champagne: I think it’s the very first sentence in the song that he’s been calling us to come to him, that he awaits us. And he’s not waiting for us to be anything. He’ll take us now. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: As lost or as broken Christians, he stands there with his arms open wide saying, I’m ready. I’m ready. So, you know, I guess if anything else, if I want to leave anybody with any type of a message, whether you know Jesus or you don’t know Jesus or you’re not sure if you know Jesus, that he awaits you. He’s there right now, even in this moment as we speak, with his arms held out for all of us to come to him. He’s a great and loving God.

Kimberly Faith: And how would you tell somebody how to come to him? Like, when you share the gospel with somebody and somebody says, how do I,  like the question you asked, how do I know Jesus? 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  How do I come to know Jesus? What would you tell them?

Jeanne Champagne: I think the first thing that it would be comforting for people to know is it’s not anything you can do.There is nothing you can do to know Jesus. He did it all.

Kimberly Faith:  Right.

Jeanne Champagne: He saw a broken man and he never wanted separation. Separation from mankind is an outcome of his righteousness, of his purity.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: So when we’re separated, what can we possibly do to make ourselves righteous enough to be in his presence? Nothing.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: He did it all. We owed a consequence for that choice. The thing that separated us in the first place, which is sin. We have a consequence, and it’s eternal separation. And the Lord said, you know, the consequences of sin is death.

Kimberly Faith:  Eternal spiritual death. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yes. Eternal separation.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Jeanne Champagne:  And Jesus ,on the cross, paid that debt. He took upon himself my sins. 

Kimberly Faith: My sins. 

Jeanne Champagne: Your sins.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

Jeanne Champagne: He put them all. He took them on himself and he became sin for us who knew no sin. He became sin for us.

Kimberly Faith:  That we might be made the righteousness of God.

Jeanne Champagne: Hallelujah to that. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Jeanne Champagne: And he proved that that payment on the cross was received when he rose from the dead. And it’s not a magic prayer. It’s not certain words you say, though saying words might help us identify that we’re having a transaction with God. Look. This is it, basically. God is standing there with a huge gift in his hand. He’s holding it out to us. He goes, I have a gift right here. You open a little box of the gift and it says, forgiveness of sins, everlasting life, abundant Christian life. He says, I’m handing this to you and I am a God who cannot lie. If you take my gift, you will receive forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. Here it is. If praying helps you know you just accepted that gift, by all means, pray. But guess what? The moment that your heart receives his payment on the cross, in that moment, you are born again. And that is how people come to know Christ.

Kimberly Faith: I love that.

Jeanne Champagne:  He did it all. 

Kimberly Faith: That’s so clear. It’s so clear. And, you know, in your testimony, you described earlier the struggle between, you know, you’re pulling towards God gently, but you were afraid of what you were going to have to give up.

Jeanne Champagne: Yep. 

Kimberly Faith: But, man, what you give up is so small compared to what you receive.

Jeanne Champagne: What we give up is what was strangling us.

Kimberly Faith: That’s even better. 

Jeanne Champagne: Like, take the noose off my neck.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. Well, we’re going to end this podcast with, playing the song, He’s Been Calling You. And, if you’re listening to this podcast and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have just been told how to receive the gift of salvation. If you have the gift of salvation, but you’re living an empty Christian life, what’s the point? You can turn around, you can repent. Jesus said, I have come to give you life and to give you life more abundantly, more than you can ask for or imagine is waiting for you. But you have to be willing to do things God’s way, not your own. And, oh, man. And if you are living the abundant life, I’ll bet you, you want to share this with as many people as you can because it is a great testimony and a testament to the power of God to work far beyond what we can even understand. 

Jeanne Champagne: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith:  And it’s mind blowing. Jeanne, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity.

Jeanne Champagne:  Absolutely.

Kimberly Faith: We’ll do this again. Alright? 

Jeanne Champagne: Sounds great.

Kimberly Faith: Got to run record, ladies and gentlemen.

Jacob Paul: You’ve been listening to the Truth in Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.