WRITTEN BY CHERYL WELLS
Another new start to a New Year. If you have been reading my articles over this last couple of years you may have picked up on my love for our little community. Mike and I have both been growing to love Le Mars over the past 30-plus years that we have lived here. In case you didn’t know, we were both born and raised in Sioux City, and we moved to Omaha for 2 years in our early married years, and then to Hinton for 8 years. One day Mike came home and told me that he knew God had shown him we were to move to Le Mars. We packed up and put our house on the market and we moved into a little rental house by the north ice cream plant in downtown Le Mars. We lived there for a little more than a year, as we were building a house for our family in the southeast corner of town.
We had no idea what was in store for us, but God did. He knew we needed to live in this beautiful community that would become home to us. He knew that one day down the road that I was supposed to open a ministry and later a coffeehouse. He knew what I needed to learn and the people that I would meet and how that would impact my heart and life for good. He knew that it would be best for Mike to live in the place that he would someday lead the family business as CEO. He knew what was best for us and He knew how it would all work together.
Well, now some 30 years later, we are still here in Le Mars and we love being here. We love that God’s will for us was to live here and to love this place. We love that we are living here and staying here, even after selling the business a year ago. As I write this today, it is one year today since the announcement was made that we had sold and Mike and Giovanni Ferrero were on the stage together with all the employees at the convention center telling them, and the world about the transition to another family-owned business, Ferrero, now owning Wells’ Enterprises into the future. It is a bright future and one year later things are going well.
For us, things are going well too. We are learning how to do what we do together. Our focus is now on loving God and loving others through serving in ways that He shows us. We must pull back sometimes and make sure it is not what we want, but what He wants. It can look like lots of things and yet it’s all for the same purpose. We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those around us.
It’s funny because people ask us all the time if we are moving somewhere warmer, somewhere nicer. Our answer is always the same. Why would we do that? We love it here and we know this is what we are called to do. We have really begun to focus on what we have called Destination Le Mars. Thirty years ago, our destination was Le Mars, and we believe that it is a great place to live and will be for many other people. Yes, we have a dream for Le Mars to grow and double its population in the next 20 years. The city has adopted a new plan for growth and is currently working towards that goal! It’s super exciting.
We have purchased several buildings in downtown Le Mars, and we are renovating them and preparing them for some new business owners. The goal is really to build a downtown entertainment district, and it has a great start with lots of great places that are already there – and don’t forget the Ice Cream Parlor is a great draw. Several new places are preparing to open now. It will be exciting to unveil those as the year goes on. We believe that Le Mars is a destination and every one of you needs to come spend some time in our community!
