If you would have told Chris Kretzu a year ago that he would be living in Iowa, he would have laughed. Hard.

The sun-soaked Californian had never been to the Midwest. His wife, Es, was born and raised in SoCal. Close to friends and family, the newlyweds were happy on the West Coast. But after two and a half years as a college and worship pastor at a church in Corona, Chris felt God was pulling the young couple somewhere else. “We had just gotten to a point where we felt like the direction that the church was going wasn’t the direction God wanted us to go ministry wise,” Chris says, which prompted the two to leave in March of last year.

“We had places we wanted to end up.”

But the Kretzus still felt led into full-time ministry. “God was calling us to be on staff at church, so I started interviewing all over the place,” Chris says. Despite being open minded to where God would place them, Chris and Es were hoping for somewhere warm. “The Midwest never crossed either of our minds,” Chris says. “We were thinking San Diego, or maybe somewhere in Virginia.”

“If there was no position by that time, I was going to get a job at McDonalds.”

The couple began to have doubts. “Es and I set a deadline where if there was no position by that time, I was going to get a job at McDonalds or a coffee shop or something.” The deadline came and went, and after a few interviews at local coffee shops, Chris came across a blog that was advertising a worship pastor position at The Gateway Church in Des Moines.

Chris connected to Paul Stewart, the head Pastor of The Gateway Church, via Twitter, and the two began talking about the position and Paul’s vision for a missional church plant in downtown Des Moines. Not even in their own building yet, the church had been meeting in Paul’s house for a few months preparing for a public launch.

“This guy is crazy.”

“We had three or four phone interviews and extended conversations,” Chris remembers. “Then Paul said he wanted to fly us out. I talked with Es, prayed about it, and told him no. We didn’t have any family close to Des Moines.” After that conversation, Chris and Es didn’t hear from Paul for a week and had put the job behind them.

And then Chris’ phone started to buzz. “I thought, What is this guy calling about?” Chris says. Paul told Chris he’d been praying, and felt that God wanted him to ask them to come out. “He told Es and me that even if when we walked off the plane we felt like it wasn’t where we were supposed to be, that was fine with him,” Chris says. “Es looked at me and said ‘this guy is crazy.’”

“We said, ‘OK, let’s go check it out.’”

The couple flew to Des Moines in the second week of July. They went to a church barbeque at Gray’s Lake, explored the capitol city, and Chris even led worship at the group meeting. The two were surprised by what they found in Des Moines. “Es was expecting corn fields,” Chris says. As they were packing up to head back to California, Paul offered Chris the position. “He said I was the right fit—what he was looking for.”

“You’re still going to have those times where you say, ‘Did I hear that right?’”

The Kretzus considered the position, but were still feeling doubtful. Everything clicked a couple days later. Chris turned to his wife and began to say, “I just feel like—“   and Es interrupted, “Like it’d be wrong to say no?” At that moment, they knew that they were “100 percent confident” that God was calling them to serve in Des Moines. The next day, Chris called his patiently waiting pastor in Des Moines to accept the position. Fifteen days later, Chris moved to Des Moines. Es soon followed.

“Even when you feel like God is specifically telling you to do something,” Chris says, “you’re still going to have those times where you say ‘Did I hear that right?’” Chris has learned that following God’s will sometimes means taking a leap of faith into the unknown.

Jonny Craig is a law student at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He and his wife Kayla blog at http://amightystream.blogspot.com/