Our Beginning
Since youth my husband, Joe Knoernschild, had a passion to see homeless people restored to successful life. He didn’t see how the homeless could ever get jobs without an address and how could they get an address without a job? A vicious cycle. We were married in June of 2003. The first nine months of marriage was a valuable learning experience especially in the areas of financing and trusting God completely with the plan for our lives. At the end of the nine months we moved to St. Louis for Joe’s dream job. For the first four months we carried a rent payment from our old apartment in Wisconsin as well as our current rent in St. Louis. This was a valuable faith lesson for later. Four years later, with God’s leading, we built our second home. Deep inside our hearts we knew, but were unwilling to accept, we would be carrying two mortgages after the new house was complete. After the house was finished, we realized the double rent lesson we had learned four years ago was an introductory lesson in what God had planned for the future. Four months later after much prayer, God’s leading to use our first home to help people was clear. Much of the how came in the next couple months and we began the process of starting a non profit organization. The name for our organization came separately and identically to both of our hearts. Thirteen months after we moved into our new house, December 2009, A Second Chance was born.