Kelvin Foley Answers Calling:
“Until I have no more breath in my lungs”
When the graphic design company he worked for shut down, Kelvin Foley believed in the Lord. As his job search lingered for months, his belief didn’t waver. And even as he went hungry for days, holding on to the last $5 in his wallet, he knew God wouldn’t desert him.
Kelvin had just recently found his way back…in dramatic fashion…so he wasn’t about to doubt.
At one time, he had doubted; at 13 he followed in his father’s footsteps and stopped going to church. For years, his mother had been begging him to return to church and to seek a relationship with Christ. With each conversation she encouraged him with her faith in Christ. In his mid-20s, after another conversation with his mom, Kelvin awoke the next morning with a terrible headache.
“I started praying, thinking about all the things my mom had said, and I asked Jesus to come into my life,” Kelvin said. “The prayer got so intense that I found myself on my knees for hours. I felt God saying, ‘Come, walk with me.’ I thought it meant I was going to die, so I asked God to forgive me of my sins and to take care of my mother.”
When he got up, Kelvin drove to the closest church he could find and prayed, “From this point on, Lord, I’m giving my life to you.”
So how could he doubt that God was in control of every detail after that experience? When he lost his job and kept coming up empty in his search for another, he was still praising his God and believing in Him—even down to those last dollars.
“Lord, I’m not hungry right now,” he prayed one evening, “but I know I will be in the morning.”
And the next day, a friend stood at his doorway, shook his hand, and in it was $200. “God just told me to sow into your life,” she said.
Days later, Kelvin received a call from Prestonwood and was offered a job as a graphic designer in the Communications Department. “Prestonwood took me from needing to eat, physically, to using me to help feed people the Word of God through this ministry,” he said.
The blessings didn’t stop there, Kelvin said.
Three years later, he married Brenda, the friend who’d gifted him with those $200. Though they were both from Lubbock and had lived on the same street as children and had attended Texas Tech University at the same time, it was a mutual friend in Dallas who introduced them.
Brenda knew Kelvin was called to the ministry, he said. It was obvious to her.
“I was so on fire for God that I couldn’t help but talk about Him to anyone and everyone,” he said.
Others noticed it, too. One morning, a Prestonwood member came up to him and said, “We see what God is doing in your life, have you ever thought about going to seminary?”
In fact, just hours earlier, he’d been researching various seminaries on the Internet. He prayed, about it, knowing that he couldn’t afford the cost of tuition. The woman said she and her husband believed in what God was doing in his life they wanted to help pay for the first two semesters.
Kelvin began attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and was preaching at a small church in Mesquite. By then, he’d also begun working as a graphic designer in the Prestonwood Bookstore.
In 2005, he was ordained by Pastor Jack Graham, and last year he left the church in Mesquite and came on staff at Prestonwood as Associate to Married Adult III.
After all God has done in his life, Kelvin said that preaching the Word is something he has to do.
“It kills me to know that there are people out there who won’t have a relationship with the Lord if someone doesn’t tell them,” he said. “I can’t imagine doing anything else. Nothing else seems important. I’ll be doing this until I have no more breath in my lungs.”
