This article appears in the Fall 2024 issue of the FCA Donor Publication. The FCA publication is a gift from our FCA staff to all donors giving $50 or more annually. For more information about giving, visit here.

It’s a simple word with the potential for extensive amplification. 

Yes.

A nudge to act. A call to respond. A step of faith. This is the adventure and uncertainty of yes.

You don’t know what will happen when you give your time, your words and your resources to the Kingdom of God. You may never see the fruit of the seeds you sow. But life change can happen later, and the reverberation of impact can extend far beyond what could ever be imagined.

For Marion (Joiner) Yarber, a young mother and English teacher with a heart for Jesus in Lawrence County, Tenn., her availability to be used by God started in 1980 when she learned about a ministry that met young athletes with the good news of Jesus. When Steve Robinson, then the FCA Tennessee Director, brought FCA to her town of Lawrenceburg, Marion became the FCA faculty sponsor at Lawrence Country High School.

She and other volunteers raised money for FCA Camp scholarships through breakfasts, bake sales and direct donations. That summer, Marion and a few other volunteers packed students and suitcases into vehicles and drove miles through the mountains to the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly nestled in Black Mountain, N.C. They weren’t sure what was waiting for them on the mountain, but they were ready.

***

One of those campers was Shari O’Rear, an outgoing and kind multi-sport athlete who was getting ready to enter high school. On the outside, all looked good. Inside, however, was a lost young girl who was longing for acceptance and a father's love. Her father left the family before she was born, and Shari was desperately searching for a life of significance that would fill the gap in her heart.  

When she crossed the threshold into Heaton Hall and entered an auditorium full of girls standing on wooden chairs while chanting, cheering and singing songs about Jesus, she was blown away.

“I was so overwhelmed, but in the best possible way,” she remembered. “I never experienced the presence of God before.”

The love-starved girl let her guard down on the second night of camp. The speaker’s message penetrated her heart, and she answered the invitation to dedicate her life to Christ.

“When he gave that invitation,” she recalled, “I said yes, I want to make Jesus the Lord of my life. It was the best yes.” 

Shari marked the moment on the inside cover of her camp booklet: July 9th, 1980, Born again. I asked Jesus to be with me for eternity. 

“I didn’t know what ‘born again’ meant, but I wrote it down,” she said, laughing. “I just didn’t know then what that was going to mean for the rest of my life.”

***

When Shari returned home, she stayed serious about her new life in the Lord. She found rides to church, searched out Christian friends and mentors, and learned how to have a daily devotion, read the Bible and pray.

She also introduced her family to the Lord, sharing with her mom what God had done on the mountain. Her mom listened quietly but didn’t understand. Shari, with a pure heart abandoned to Jesus, asked her some pointed questions.

“I asked her, ‘Are you good with God? Are you happy?’” Shari said. Her mom said she was, but those questions sent a woman who had become a single mom as a teenager on a 10-year journey to answer truthfully.

“She told me later that she wasn’t good, and those questions were like a gong going off in her,” Shari said. “God started something in her then, and it was 10 years before she came to know the Lord. But God was using those questions and my experience at camp to impact her life.”

As her mom began her own spiritual journey, Shari kept blazing a trail toward Jesus. She said yes to pursuing deeper relationships and ministry opportunities by diving into FCA at Lawrence County High School, where she became president of the Huddle her senior year and started helping with a coffee house ministry in town.

One of the visiting musicians at the coffee house was Charley Cain, a fun and enthusiastic young man who was also pursuing the Lord. He and Shari connected as their individual yeses to God seemed to lock them together. They married shortly afterward and ministered together in Hartselle, Ala. They started a drama team, worked with middle school students and traveled to lead worship. Soon, they began having kids—two girls and a boy (Madison, Taylor and Logan)—and music ministry became a family affair.

In the middle of family life, Shari received an unexpected invitation from her mom.

“She came to me and said, ‘I feel like I’m supposed to go and forgive your dad. And I think you’re supposed to come with me,’” Shari recalled.

Shari, her sister and her mom met with her father, who had started another family by then. Through her mother’s act of forgiveness, her father came to know the Lord and their family was reconciled. Today, Shari’s family and her sister’s family take an annual vacation with their father and his family.

***

Some yeses continue to ripple into something bigger than you can imagine.

Shari and Charley poured into their family, raising their kids in church and instilling seeds of faith that rooted deeply in each of their lives. The kids inherited Charley and Shari’s love of music as they began to write songs, perform and lead worship together.

When Taylor, Madison and Logan won a music competition, they began a long and winding journey into the professional music industry. After they experienced a season of discomfort, God redirected the siblings toward worship music, and their catchy, heartfelt, upbeat songs soared up the charts. The band, known as CAIN, soon began performing all over the world.

“I think about all that God has done from that little 13-year-old girl to now,” Shari said. “My kids are serving the Lord, and their music is going up everywhere, and I think back to all those yeses that began with one woman’s yes to give. I didn’t even know who she was, but she said, ‘Yes, I want to pay somebody’s way,’ and I got to come and experience Jesus like I never had before.”

***

Shari’s life continued to cascade into more than she could have imagined last April, when she met Marion for the first time after her graduation. They hadn’t met since Shari left high school.

In March, when FCA Southwest Middle Tennessee Director Ben Gooch heard Shari speak at the ministry’s Realtime all-staff conference in Florida, he realized they shared the same hometown of Lawrenceburg and began some sleuth work. Ben connected the dots to Marion, who had been active in the local FCA in her retirement as a volunteer, board member and donor. But she continued to pray for the ministry and helped with the annual FCA banquets. After he realized Marion’s connection to Shari, Ben brought them together at a Southwest Middle Tennessee staff meeting last April. When they saw each other after all the decades, memories rushed in and it was 1980 all over again.

“I got to hug her, and we cried and I just expressed to her how much her generosity meant to me,” Shari said. “There are so many students out there whose lives have been impacted by God, and they haven’t been able to tell all that’s been done for them. Many times, donors sow the seeds and don’t get much feedback. It was 44 years before I found her and could say thank you and tell her the trajectory of my life has changed.”

Marion is now 82 years old and still living out a legacy of faith. Her children got involved in FCA when they were younger, and her grandchildren today are also involved.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Marion said, “and He has worked many mysteries in my life. That was one, but that wasn’t a coincidence.”

***

Shari made her way back to FCA Camp at Black Mountain this summer, the first time in 44 years. Once again, she crossed the threshold into Heaton Hall and heard similar chants, cheers and sweet songs of praise to Jesus. Then she took the stage and reminded the girls in the audience how one yes can change everything.

“That little broken girl who was searching for meaning 44 years ago can now look at all that God has done,” she said. “The legacy that I’m passing on to my children and that they’ll pass to their children, it’s all because of one woman’s yes to give.” 

The story of Shari Cain and Marion Yarber is a reminder to all of us: Whatever God has called us to, whatever big or small step it will take, be obedient. “What we’re doing has eternity stamped on it,” Ben said.

It’s one word, but it can mean everything. 

Just say yes.