Hi there! I’m Tami and my husband Tim and our daughter Taylor live here at Red Heaven. In 2005 we took a huge leap of faith and bought a rental cabin in nearby Gatlinburg TN. We put a lot of blood, sweat and some tears into that cabin. We gutted it right away and began a basement to roof remodel. We had a few stumbling blocks along the way, one of which was our contractor quitting the job with only half the work done BUT most of his fee paid! My husband stepped in to complete the work (all the while working full-time at his regular job). For 2 months he would make the hour + drive to the cabin, arriving around 7pm and working until midnight or 1am, then drive back home and get up for work the next day. We put a red metal roof on it and Red Cedar shake siding. We were trying to find a name for the cabin and reminded ourselves that we both have red hair (including our daughter). We both felt the cabin was like a “piece of heaven” in the mountains, so armed with those facts we chose “Red Heaven” as the name. I shared this with my Mom and she loved it as she loved the Lord.
Around this time I received word that my Mom had been taken to the hospital and was likely to never return home. She was diagnosed with brain cancer at just 57 years old. I packed up our daughter and moved us both back to NY to care for my Mom while she was in Hospice care. My husband stayed home to work and to keep the progress moving on our cabin in the mountains.
Mom and I had some beautiful moments between her diagnosis and hospice period. We travelled some and during one magical stay at the Grove Park Inn, we enjoyed some of her best days at the exclusive spa there. When it came time to pay the bill (thousands of dollars), we were surprised to find that some fellow Christian lady’s we had met earlier had already paid our tab. Amazing. What a gift of love.
I lost my Mom in 2005 after her battle with her brain cancer. Though I was devastated , during her last days, my Mom was not worried or fearful in the least. She was going to see Jesus and in her mind nothing was better than that. Because of Jesus, she no longer had the fear of death that plagues most unbelievers.
Fast forward to 2016. The now “famous” Gatlinburg mountain forest fire consumed more than 2,000 homes and buildings, killing 14 people who were trapped by it. Although our Red Heaven cabin was on the outer edge of the burned area, it unfortunately burned completely to the ground. A neighbor (who thankfully escaped the blaze) heard a noise coming from our cabin and looked out to see the entire exterior deck ablaze. Within minutes the structure was engulfed as he and his family escaped down the mountain with their lives. Shocked and saddened by the loss of so much effort and beauty, we decided to keep the property but not rebuild the cabin. I heard the voice of the Lord plainly say – “Don’t worry, out of ashes I will create beauty”. I trusted he would do just that.
Our daughter Taylor was soon to graduate college and we were already paying board bills for her English Hunter Jumper horse at another barn. We decided to start looking for a starter home for her AND her horse. This would eliminate a large expense for us and give her a head start. That Christmas Taylor and my husband had bought me a miniature horse as a Christmas present. This just added to the pressure we felt to find a spot for both horses and Taylor. We are not a patient couple and we spent about a week looking before I was looking at real estate ads on Super Bowl Sunday and found the (soon to be called) Red Heaven Ranch! It was only 29 acres at the time (we later bought another 14) and it only had a pole barn and the ranch house – there was no fencing, no barns, no run-ins, no trails, no event center, no greenhouse, no bees and no where for “us” to live. You see … we bought the place the very next day and did so knowing that we would move there with Taylor.
The plan was to live in the smaller ranch house for as long as it took to build our new home on the property. We were on track to get all of that done. We built 3/4 of a mile of 4 board fencing for the horses, we built a big 7 stall barn and a smaller barn for the miniature horses. We constructed run-in sheds for the horses. We cut up downed trees. We bush hogged acres of abandoned pastures. We added water lines, power lines and storage sheds. During this time, my husband and I lived downstairs and Taylor lived upstairs in the ranch house
Progress came to an abrupt stop in July of 2017 when my husband was diagnosed with heart disease and underwent a quadruple bypass. God is good as he came out better than ever and 107 days after his surgery he ran a 30 minute 5K and was “back in action” on the ranch. By fall of 2018 we were underway in planning the design and build of our new home on the property. We moved in during August of 2019 and the home is everything we expected and more BUT (and this is where you come in) we now had half of an entire house just sitting empty (the basement of the original ranch house after we moved to our new home on the property).
We tried the AirBnB route for a while but we just couldn’t get comfortable with the unknown of who each new guest was. At the same time, I was being reminded by the Lord that we should use our gifts and assets to advance his Kingdom. It became more clear than ever that “Red Heaven Ranch” was going to begin to fulfil it’s true mission of Christian service. Today we are exclusively available to serve Christians, by reference and appointment only. We like the fact that folks coming here are already brothers and sisters in Christ – family we both love and trust.
– Yours in Christ
Tami