Sue Reveile’s Testimony
Sue Reveile raised eleven children—four boys and seven girls—and now is a grandmother to forty grandchildren, with two great-grandchildren as well. She carries herself with quiet grace, her laugh quick and genuine. She was eager to share her testimony. She said that everything in her life had happened for the Lord's glory.
As a young child, Sue knew the pain of broken relationships when her parents divorced. She prayed that God would let her marry a good man who would bring his family to church. When she was eighteen, a classmate introduced her to Bud Reveile, on leave from Vietnam. They married and moved to California.
After Bud returned from the service in 1971, their first child, Raymond, was born. Friends introduced them to a Baptist church, where they began a lifelong friendship with the pastor and his wife. There Sue first began to recognize her need for God.
When the young family returned to Texas, they found another Baptist church, but Sue felt empty. She said, “A woman in my Sunday school class shared that she had received the Holy Spirit. I began to seek, and one day in our little bedroom in a mobile home in Austin, I received the Holy Spirit.”
One summer day in 1973, as they drove down a city street, Bud and Sue heard singing coming from a parking lot. They stopped and rolled down the windows to listen. A woman came over to the car and began to talk about the necessity of baptism in Jesus’ name for the remission of sin. She invited them to a Pentecostal church service.
Bud and Sue went to their first service in 1974. They were baptized in Jesus’ name and began to attend regularly. Brother Blair and Sister Regina Adams had come to God in that church. They had already started the church in New York, but they returned to Austin often and ministered there. Brother Howard and Sister Rhonda Wheeler were also members.
At that time, God’s presence was evident in the church. Sue said, “One time I was praying late at night with some brothers and sisters, and we began to smell smoke. The brothers started looking in closets and checking for fire, but there was none. Then the Lord spoke to us that we could smell the aroma of God accepting the sacrifice of our prayers. Another night I left the church after a late prayer meeting, still lost in the presence of God we had experienced. When I reached a familiar train crossing that had no protective shields, I wasn’t paying attention. But suddenly my foot was on the brake, and a train flashed past. God had protected me.”
In 1977, Brother Blair invited the Austin church to participate in Woodstock 7/7/77, an outreach festival that would be held near Woodstock, New York. The church took two buses, one of instruments and sound equipment and another for whoever wanted to go. Bud couldn’t go because of work, but Sue traveled on the bus from Austin, Texas, to New York.
On the bus traveling home, a group gathered to pray. The Lord spoke through prophecy, “I will give you a witness so that you may know who your brothers are.”
Sue said, “Our church was gradually losing our consecration and separation from the world and becoming focused on performance. When we came home, things became worse. Many people left the church. I told Bud, ‘I feel like the glory has departed.’”
Bud and Sue continued to attend church, but their lives began to unravel. In late 1980, the same friend who had introduced them to the Pentecostal church invited them to a home meeting.
Sue remembered, “She said that Brother Blair was living in San Antonio for a short time, and Brother Howard was visiting him there. We met in the Adamses’ living room with about thirty people who had all been friends from the same Pentecostal church. Brother Blair ministered from Ezekiel 16, ‘Can these dry bones live?’ I recognized that I was hearing the Word of the Lord. There wasn’t a question in my heart.
“After the meeting Brother Blair spontaneously invited us all to eat dinner together. We ladies went with Sister Regina into the kitchen and made enchiladas. Coming from the church background we had, it was amazing and refreshing that we would all eat together. I knew I was home.”
Bud called the pastor and told him that they had been dying spiritually, and that God was leading them to join the small church that was starting. They called themselves “Emmaus Christian Fellowship,” from the scriptural account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus who had almost lost hope, but then encountered the risen Lord. This same group grew to become Homestead Heritage.
Brother Blair returned to Colorado, and Brother Howard and Sister Rhonda moved down to Austin. The few people in the new community felt that they had begun a new walk in the Spirit.
Sue said, “We had pulled our school-aged children, Raymond and Kelli, out of public school. We were convicted to teach them at home in the context of our church community. Soon afterward we received a visit from a truant officer demanding their return. When we didn’t send them back, we received a subpoena. At that time there were no laws in Texas protecting home-schooling.
“The court case in 1982 represented the school board versus our children and a couple of other children who had been taken out of school. We read Who Owns the Children? by Blair Adams and prayed seriously. We went into court recognizing that because of our convictions, we could have our children taken from us.
“When we entered the court, before the trial had even begun, Judge Esparza leaned over, shook his finger at Brother Howard, and announced, ‘And you, you I’m going to find guilty!’
“Over the several days of the trial, through much prayer, we shared our convictions and our trajectory for our children. The judge completely changed his mind and granted full freedom for members of our church to homeschool their children.
“Judge Esparza remained a friend to our community for the rest of his life. God also used this case as a precedent for home-schooling freedom all over Texas.”
The community purchased five acres in the middle of Austin. They remodeled the run-down house on the property and were able to use it for meetings, classes, and community events. They purchased some chickens, planted a garden, and raised field crops together.
Brother Howard always said Bud had the gift of acquisition. He knew lots of people and loved to help and give to others. Through his business of buying and selling Harley Davidson motorcycles, Bud met Israelis who had come to sell ice cream in Austin. He met Brother Tsafrir and Sister Noa Yarden this way. Bud and Sue regularly hosted meetings and gatherings in their home.
The Reveile family bought a farm just outside Austin. They remodeled and gradually expanded the tiny farmhouse. A couple of other families moved mobile homes onto the property. Their kids grew up together, and they gardened and raised animals together. When the church moved to Waco, the Reveiles drove back and forth for meetings every week for twenty years.
Sue said, “Our kids grew up. Several married and lived on the property with us. God continued to work in our lives, to divest us of the expectations and mentality we had from the world, especially in regard to our teenagers. One son decided to leave the Lord, and this devastated us.
“Bud informed me that he was leaving the church. He assumed that I would also leave. But after much soul-searching, I told Bud that I would continue to remain part of our church, and I continued to bring the kids to meetings.
“Soon all the other families who had lived on our land moved away, even our married kids.
“After Bud left, our son Raymond and his wife decided to leave as well. Later they divorced, and Raymond was diagnosed with cancer. “
For sixteen years Sue drove back and forth to Waco with the kids to church each weekend.
Sue said, “For a year, I felt that God was leading me to move with the kids to Waco. After earnest prayer, I told Bud that I felt that I needed to leave the city of Austin for the sake of our children.”
He agreed that Sue and the kids should move, and though he stayed in Austin, he drove up to Waco weekly to visit Sue and his children and grandchildren, always bringing gifts and boxes of bananas. Sue regularly traveled to Austin be with him.
“For four years, I continued to pray and fast for Buddy. I dreamed of the day when he would come back to the church and we would live as a family and serve the Lord together, surrounded by our children and grandchildren.
“Instead, Buddy called to say that he had cancer. The doctor told him he had about six months to live. I went to Austin to help him with his treatments and care.”
But Buddy said something else: he had been longing to rejoin the church and to move to Waco. He joined his family in Waco for three weeks before gloriously finishing his race, surrounded by close friends and his whole family.
Bud’s funeral was attended by his family, his church, friends and hundreds of Harley bikers who rode to his funeral on bikes he had sold or fixed for them over the years.
Raymond’s cancer continued to progress. He was deeply touched by his father’s repentance and began to attend meetings and seek God himself. His nieces and nephews, who had never really known Raymond, loved playing with him and hearing his stories. After his last, unsuccessful, surgery, the doctors informed him that nothing else could be done. He immediately asked, “How’s my mom?”
Sue said, “Raymond moved in with me in Waco, and our whole family helped care for him. He was terribly ill and not even able to eat solid food. As his body literally wasted away, Raymond drew closer to our family and to the Lord.
“Brothers ministered the Word of God to him, laughed with him, took him for rides, and spent the long nights with him. Although his condition made it seem impossible, he insisted that he had to be baptized. I have a picture on my wall of him from that beautiful day. Just a few weeks later, Raymond died in victory.
“Now all my kids are grown, and I live alone. My sons-in-law have built me a lovely small house.
“I thought of a song while I was preparing to share my testimony. Some of the lyrics say: ‘If anyone would ever write my life story, for whatever reason there might be; you would find between the lines of pain and glory that Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to me.’ That is the story of my life.”
In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes a woman whom he sees walking through heaven, followed by a train of angels and people and animals. Lewis remarks that she must have been something special on earth, and his guide says, “Oh, aye, she was one of the great ones! She lived in a nondescript area of London. She loved God, and she loved people!”
Sister Sue Reveile loves God, her family, and all of God’s people. She continues to live a simple, quiet life of obedience and courage.
She’s one of the great ones.
