"Meet the host" Host Lou Lepore and his wife Kate

What does a hula hooping contest, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a gunpoint robbery, and a Bible verse on a tennis court all have in common?

They're all part of the incredible story of how Lou and Kate Lepore found each other — and found Jesus.

 In this special "Meet the Host" episode, Lou is joined by his wife Kate to share the journey God took them on before this podcast was ever a dream. From Kate's elite career in professional soccer and the halls of USA Soccer to Lou's harrowing near-death experience and the heartbreaking losses that followed, their paths couldn't have looked more different — yet God was writing one story all along.

If you've ever wondered whether God can use your mess for a message, this episode is for you.

Today's test is tomorrow's testimony.

Looking for Hope?

Transcript

Lou Lepore: Welcome back to another episode of the More Than Conquerors podcast, where today's test is tomorrow's testimony. I'm your host, Lou Lepore. I'm very excited about today. This show is going to be called Meet the Host. My special guest, my bride, my better half, will be with us, Mrs. Kate Lepore, and we're going to share how God really birthed this podcast in our hearts 13 years ago when we started dating and then eventually got married.

There's a big story about what God did in our life, even before coming to Christ as we were turning 30, and He used some hardship to get our attention, to lead us to Jesus, and that's really why this show is so important to us. We feel that God's hardships that He allows in our life aren't here to break us, but they are here to build us.

And every week, as we try to bring encouragement to the saints, we wanna live out what we feel that God has built in us first so that we can share with everyone else second. So allow me to welcome my bride, Kate Lepore, to the show.

Kate Lepore: I am super excited to be here.

Lou Lepore: The first time we met was in elementary school at a camp. You had just won a hula hooping contest. And I walked over to you after you won, and I said, "Move, the boys wanna play kickball." Then Kate and I went to middle school together and then high school. However, she was really smart, and I tried hard. Kate, why don't you tell everybody, you had a very successful soccer career.

Kate Lepore: I don't know if I would call it very successful, but, uh, back then we were in middle school, high school. They were just sort of starting girls sports, and I happened to be a freshman the first season that our high school offered a girls soccer team. So I was very fortunate to be part of that team and then for the four years through high school there.

I went on to play college soccer and just really enjoyed that time. You know, you think about college, it's the first thing I think of is my teammates and the experiences that we had together playing soccer.

Lou Lepore: And so life was off and running for you. While you were doing that, I was attending college in Pennsylvania as well. Slightly different, not directly related with college sports as dedicated as you were with the success you had. I know that you had earned your scholarship, and then you made the all-century team for your conference. After college, you had an opportunity to do a cool job. What did you get a chance to do?

Kate Lepore: Yeah, so between my junior and senior year of college, I had the opportunity through an alumni connection to intern at the U.S. Soccer Federation, which is the national governing body for soccer in the United States. You likely know the men's and women's soccer teams that play in the various World Cups and Olympic Games.

I worked with, mostly with the youth teams, the youth national teams, so starting at age 14. Youth national teams that I worked very closely with up and through events for what we call the senior team, so what you think of when you think of the national teams. The men are getting ready to play in the World Cup this year, and the women obviously have won several World Cups.

So it was a very exciting job that I had for the summer. And then once I graduated the following year, I had to wait a little bit, but then I was offered a chance to return to that role after interning. So I did have an opportunity to intern in communications at the Big Ten Conference as well.

Lou Lepore: As you were working for the Big Ten Conference and USA Soccer, you had sideline passes for Michigan, Ohio State football games. You had the opportunity to run the NCAA March Madness tournament as well, and you went to how many World Cups?

Kate Lepore: Well, I went to several Youth World Cups, um, so under 17, under 20, uh, world championships with both the boys and the girls teams. I happened to be part of the team that won the 2008 under 20 Women's World Championship down in Chile.

And again, as I look back on that time at USA Soccer, that's one of the fondest memories that I have, and just experienced excellence. I was also able to be a part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic team, so I was able to have the opportunity to travel to Beijing and experience the Olympic Village, and everything just surrounding an Olympic Games.

Lou Lepore: Yeah, and you shared a story, and close to those in the Philadelphia area, while in Beijing, you're standing there with a coach, and up walks Kobe Bryant.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, we were sitting at the edge of the Olympic Village. I was on my way to a press conference with one of our players and our coach, and we were waiting for a cab to take us over to the stadium ahead of the rest of the team, and Kobe Bryant was just sitting on the curb waiting for his cab.

He hopped right off that curb. He recognized the player that I was with right away, and the coach. He had known their whole record of the Olympic Games so far. He knew when their next game was, what they had to do to advance. But what a cool moment that was, just to be part of the Olympic Village, and that's just something that I'll never forget.

Lou Lepore: And Michael Phelps was at the height of his success and popularity, too.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, that was one of his games, for sure, and we had the opportunity to meet him at one of the pre-Olympic press events. And just seeing him in person was, again, just a very surreal experience, because you kind of forget that some of these people are just people, and they're not any more or less special and important than we are.

Lou Lepore: While you were at college and getting ready to work for the Big Ten Conference and USA Soccer, I was attending college, and one particular evening, I was getting ready to drop a friend off at school as we were getting ready to start our sophomore year. And I stopped at an ATM to get a little cash out because I had to get some gas and wanted to get a snack for the ride back.

So $10 out, $5 for gas, because that's when $5 in gas actually got you somewhere, and then a very healthy snack, I'm sure, of Snickers and probably a Coke or Mountain Dew, you know, breakfast of champions. And so I had that cash in my pocket, and after dropping my friend off, I go back into my car and out pops a guy with a gun.

He puts the gun directly over my left eye and he says, "You better have cash." And I looked down at my pocket and I said, "Here, you can have it," and gave it over to him. He took the money and he ran off. This is a near-death situation that I'm going through right now, and honestly, I should be dead. So my whole drive back to my college campus, I'm thinking how lucky I was to still be alive.

And I say lucky because I had no affiliation with the Lord at that point. Then to add to it, I got a phone call from another friend that a mutual friend of ours died in a very tragic accident. So here I am with this near-death experience and I'm still alive, and a friend that I love dearly did in fact pass away.

And at that time, I didn't necessarily believe in God, but I did look up and say, "If you're there, why would you allow him to die and me to still be alive?" He had a college scholarship. He was a wonderful dude. I loved him dearly, and I was just kind of a regular guy. I didn't have anything going for me as much as he did.

I was quite confused. So during this confusing time, I leaned into my mentors looking for wisdom and guidance. I had two mentors that I was close with through college. They really looked out for me, really cared for me. They were both struggling as well with things that they never shared, and within six months of losing my friend, both of them committed suicide.

I had just turned 20 years old, and I have already given three eulogies. Not exactly the start in life I thought I was going to have. I was absolutely crushed, confused, and figured out quickly that life was supplying more questions than answers. If you've ever experienced a loved one committing suicide, you know how difficult that is and how many questions you ask yourself.

"Was I there enough? Should I have talked to them more?" And you just beat yourself up if you're not cautious, and it's really unfair to do that, but that's the only way I knew how to deal with it. I finally came to the conclusion that I was living life the best I could and it just wasn't working out. And so I threw all the rules aside and I said, "I'm just gonna go to college and do whatever I feel like doing," and threw caution to the wind.

And what ended up happening, at 21 years old, I became a single father. To graduate on time, I was taking 21 credits a semester, commuting three hours a day, and working 40 hours a week over the weekend to support my daughter. My daily schedule with my daughter would be wake up at 5:00 in the morning. Get her over to daycare, commute an hour and a half to school, go to school all day, commute an hour and a half home, pick her up from daycare.

I would care for her until 10:00. She would take her last bottle of the day. I'd put her down. I would do my homework 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM. She would wake up for a middle-of-the-night bottle. I'd change her diaper, give her a bottle at 2:00 AM, and then I would sleep from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM until we started that schedule all over again, and we did that for two years.

It was hard. I was kind of looking around thinking, "How did everything go from being so strong to now this big struggle with the challenges that I was facing? And more importantly, how do I solve these problems?" So if you compare my story with Kate's story, God allowed Kate to see all the world has to offer, and he allowed me to see all that sin can do in someone's life.

At the same time, we both had questions. I was wondering, "Is there more to life than just suffering?" And Kate was saying, "There has got to be more than Olympics and Gatorade contracts and Nike ads on TV."

Kate Lepore: Yeah, I had the unique opportunity to kind of see what that type of success can do, uh, to some very young and successful people who you would think would have everything.

They were professional athletes. They were living, a lot of them, overseas in Europe. They had the world at their fingertips. It was easy to see how the things of the world could impact young adults who maybe didn't know how to handle it. I had the unique opportunity to see firsthand what money and a little bit of fame could do to young men and young women when they have been successful and everybody has told them how great they are for their whole lives.

I didn't have that necessarily personally, but I got to witness it from a front-row seat. And as you travel through the world experiencing these tournaments and being around these young professional athletes, once that goes away and once you really get to know them as people, you can kind of see that everything they've ever wanted, they are starting to have.

Everything they'd always kind of dreamed of was coming true, and then there was this underlying aspect of, "Okay, now what?" And there was always something that they were chasing, you know, a big contract, um, a new team, a new spouse. In the back of my mind, I always kind of thought, "There's got to be more for these kids than this. There's got to be more to life than just traveling the world and taking charter buses through a foreign country and signing shoe deals."

Lou Lepore: And at that time, God was really getting my attention as well because I was a first-year teacher teaching health and phys ed and had the opportunity to begin coaching tennis.

So that summer I'm able to get a part-time job coaching. And on one particular day, I pulled up to the courts and noticed there's a bunch of guys in suits surrounding the tennis court. I noticed there were a bunch of houses for sale. I thought they were realtors. However, they were from a local church, and they were doing a little bit of street preaching and evangelism.

So I say good morning, but ignored them and got into my work. They come over to me and they ask, "Are you a coach? Are you a teacher?" And I explained to them that, yes, I have a job in the city, and then I was coaching tennis. And they said, "You know what the Bible says about teachers?" And I said, "Oh, no." I did not want a Bible lesson, especially with everything going on in my life and blaming God for most of it.

But I thought no reason to ruin their day, so go ahead. What do you got? Tell me what the Bible says about teachers. So he says, "And the things that thou has heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also." And I looked at him and I said, "That's in the Bible."

I said, "That's funny because I have mentors," the mentors that I previously mentioned. They used to say that to me all the time, "We're gonna teach you so that you can teach other people." I never realized that was a Bible verse. This guy drops bombs and says this, and I thought it was very interesting. So it intrigued me.

I said, "What Bible verse is that?" And he said, "2 Timothy 2:2." And my jaw dropped because Timothy was the name of my friend who lost his life right after I was held at gunpoint, and his football jersey was number two. I actually had his jersey in my trunk. I could see it from where I was standing as I was unloading equipment on the tennis court that day.

I looked at the guy and say, "Boss, you have no idea what you just did." As I leave to go home, I called my one friend who went to church, and I explained the situation, and he said to me, "It sounds like God is trying to get your attention. Why don't you come to church this week and see if there's anything else He wants to say?"

And I said, "I will absolutely do that," because this was the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. So that Saturday, I slept over at his house, went over to his church in New Jersey, and that morning his pastor preached on Matthew 11:28, where Jesus says, "Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

And that morning he gave an altar call. I looked at the lady next to me and I said, "Ma'am, move. I'm going to get Jesus." And I gave my life to Christ that morning. When that gentleman shared 2 Timothy 2:2 with me, that was a Nathaniel moment. And if you read the Gospel of John 1, Nathaniel comes to Jesus, and Jesus says to him, "Before Philip called thee, when thou was under the fig tree, I saw thee."

And Nathaniel answered and said unto him, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel." All the questions that I had, "Why did you let this happen? What's the purpose of all this pain? What did I do wrong?" He was saying, "I saw you."

Kate Lepore: That's right.

Lou Lepore: Really, I almost break down thinking about it now because that's only God. That is only God. The fact that the God of the universe would pay attention to little old me is really just a life-changing situation. As you know, we transform to Christ. Everyone who's in Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:17, is a new creature, and that's what I was on my way to. That's when everything came into focus and started to change.

And as we serve the Lord now, looking back, and the whole premise of the show really falls in line, is that the tests that I was going through became my testimony. Everything that I thought God was doing to me, he was actually doing for me, and it all brought me to Christ. He didn't use it to break me, he used it to build me.

Romans 8:28 says that, "He works all things for good who love God and are called according to his purpose." God can multitask in the most beautiful ways. So as this is happening to me, Kate was in Chicago, and God also got your attention.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, so while you were doing all of that here closer to our hometown, uh, I was out living in Chicago. Um, I was working. I was in a serious relationship at the time. And when I wasn't traveling, I was spending my time continuing to just play soccer, playing in co-ed leagues around the city of Chicago. A lot of my identity was based around that. And as, as trite as it sounds now, um, a lot of who I was was based around the fact that I had a cool job working in soccer.

I played soccer with my friends all the time. In 2011, I trained for and ran the Chicago Marathon. But the burden that that placed on my body, I didn't realize. And in February of 2012, I actually broke my leg. Uh, it's called a tibial plateau fracture. It's a very serious injury that requires surgery. It required plates and screws placed into my knee.

I was non-weight bearing for about eight weeks. And it really had taken away those accomplishments that I had placed so much value on, and all of that led to almost a crisis of identity and having to figure out who I was. It also sort of led to the end of this serious relationship that I was in at the time.

And so all of these things were kind of falling at once. And ultimately that led to me not feeling like I had a reason to stay in Chicago any longer. Um, I felt like it was the time for me to just come back to Pennsylvania where I was home. So the opportunity to just sort of start fresh, I guess, as much as you can start fresh in your hometown, um, but to be closer to my parents, uh, and to just really rebuild myself in a place that was home to me, uh, was just calling out, and I took advantage of the opportunity to just kind of cut ties with my life in Chicago.

Lou Lepore: While me not knowing this, and this is God working in her life, but at the exact same time, my daughter turned seven years old. God started working on my heart, and here's what happened. It was one of those months where you get three paychecks, and I was at that month, and I had a whole paycheck I could do whatever I wanted with.

I actually paid all my bills, so I'm gonna go have a great day, and I'm thinking, "Am I gonna golf?" I was like, "Man, I could fly to Disney World if I wanted to. I could go to the beach. I could go into the city." And as I'm sitting there thinking about my plan, anticipating a great day, I felt the spirit of God say, "You're gonna have a wonderful time, and no one's gonna ever know about it."

And for the first time in probably forever of my life, I was sitting there kind of lonely. I got down on my knees in my apartment, bowed my head, and I said, "Lord, if you would send me a wife, the woman that you have for me to marry, that I am supposed to honor you with, build a life with, that we're supposed to have a godly relationship, and if it's your will, godly children following, we're gonna serve you together, and we're going to come out of what we used to be into what you want us to be, and use everything that you've done in our life to just move forward for you.

I know that I messed up in the past, and I am not perfect, but if you'll send me that woman, I will do everything I can to have a godly marriage and honor you for the rest of my life." I got off my knees, jumped on Facebook to see what was going on with everybody else.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, social media was very different back then, wasn't it?

Lou Lepore: Yes, yes. And Kate's away message said, "After seven years in Chicago, I'm moving home to see what's next on my journey." And I just thought, "Well, that was fast." Because I had known Kate from high school, always had, like, little crush on her, but never pursued it because, you know, I was in high school and I'm stupid.

But I looked at that and I thought, "Well, let's give it a shot." So I reached out.

Kate Lepore: He cheated and I didn't know.

Lou Lepore: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. No, I prayed her home. I literally prayed her home. And so I reached out and just said, "Hey, you're coming back to the area. It'd be cool to catch up. Would love to show you all the new things at Collegeville," whatever. And so she accepted, and within a week we went on our first date.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, that's right. That first week that I moved home I had a job interview, I had to buy a car, 'cause I didn't have a car 'cause I was living in the city, and we had our first date. So I was offered a job, and had a car, and we had our first date that same week.

Lou Lepore: And I just, I wanna give the glory to God. When you're moving where you're supposed to move, He makes everything work out. He's already gone before you. He walks with you. He's behind you in your story. And Kate makes the next move, which is God's will for her life. She comes home. So on our first date, I will say this, I knew that we weren't missionary dating, right?

So we were just friends hanging out, but I said, "I'm gonna share my faith with her." And so on our first date, I shared my testimony of everything went on. I shared how I'm following Jesus, and how I wasn't going to stop for anything. And I invited her to church. She showed up with me that Sunday and came to church.

I guess maybe a month or two went by and you accepted Christ.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, it was a few months after that. Um, and just keeping in mind that we had grown up within a few miles of the church that we go to and are serving through now, but I had never really stepped foot into a true Bible-believing church. I had known through work, I had known about Christian athletes and things like that, but I had genuinely never heard a clear gospel presentation until I walked the doors of Valley Forge.

Right away, I recognized that even though these people grew up in the same area or they were living in the same area that I was now, that I had known for so long, and the church is about the same age as I am, so it had been around for a while, there was something different about the people when you walked through those doors.

And what ultimately led me to want to come back and continue to learn was I wanted what they had. Even though I didn't know what that was, I wanted what those people had, and I wanted to figure out what that was. It took a little bit longer than I would like to admit, but later that year, I kinda figured it out, and I raised my hand for salvation and became saved later that year.

Lou Lepore: Yeah, the Lord was working on your heart, and mine as well. And when you hear the gospel, we know that the word of God never returns void. We get that from Isaiah 55. And we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God, so you're getting around preaching. And we found Jesus. We were young Christians.

God gave us this relationship, and through all the trials and the heartache that it took to get here, I know you'll agree with me that when we look back, all of it was worth it.

Kate Lepore: Absolutely, and your journey was different than mine, but it's crazy to think back about how different our lives were not that long ago. And how naive we were about everything that God was doing in our lives. And I know you mentioned that person that you met in the tennis courts, and I've heard this story a number of times, of course, but I think at some point we tried to figure out who that person might have been or what church they might have been associated with, and we never figured it out.

But we know that he's just part of that story, and we'll get to meet him someday in heaven, and I'm so looking forward to just sharing that with him that day.

Lou Lepore: For sure. I wanna meet him now. I would love to shake his hand now. We tried.

Kate Lepore: We tried. We unfortunately were never able to figure out who that was. But if you're listening to this podcast and you remember some weird tennis coach on the playground, it was me. You reach out to the show. But all he was, was a guy who was faithful to Jesus to just share their faith. And to share what was being offered to him. Now, I didn't accept it that day, but that event... You never know what God's gonna use. You may be the hero in somebody else's story.

Kate Lepore: Yep.

Lou Lepore: And now, we know that Jesus Christ is ultimately the one who does it, but God wants to use us, and you could be the person that He uses today to bring someone else to Christ. For us, our lives would be totally different if that one guy wasn't willing to hit the street and tell somebody about Jesus.

Kate Lepore: Yeah, that's right. And even how we kind of came to the church, and how somebody being faithful and bold to share his witness, and the church just kind of welcoming me in, and just exuding just joy and peace, we've really taken a great sense of duty from those things.

And we think that it's part of our life's work is to welcome people into not just our church, but into the family of God, and just let them see what it could be. Because we've had that unique experience of not knowing anything. We didn't know anything until somebody was faithful. And then until somebody just welcomed us into a church, and were kind, and not judgmental, and helped us learn things. And so we've made it part of our life's work to just make sure that other people feel that same thing.

Lou Lepore: Yeah. When you mentioned we didn't know anything, just to make sure everyone understands, we didn't own a Bible. And God bless Pastor Wendell at Valley Forge Baptist, but when he said, "Open up to the Book of Matthew," we looked at each other and we were like, "What page is that?" And if you know the Bible, you can't exactly look — that's not how it works. But I came to two conclusions.

One, I don't know what page that is. Two, apparently Jesus had a friend named Matt. And those were the first two facts about the Bible that we learned that morning. And really, the whole premise of everything is to say this. Yes, we have an opportunity to do this podcast, feeling God moving in our life, to just stay faithful to Him, to let people know, hey, we've lived it.

If God can use our trials and our story to bring people to Him, He can use anybody.

Kate Lepore: That's right. Yeah, there's nothing special about us.

Lou Lepore: What we found in our lives, as life was hitting us and we found ourselves at rock bottom, we always laugh when we read Matthew chapter 7, where Jesus says, "The wise man builds his house on the rock."

We always looked at that verse as saying, you know, when you're at rock bottom, that's God's gift. God wants you to build on rock bottom. And when you get to the lowest point in your life and all you have is Jesus — you learn a wonderful fact, that Jesus is all you really need.

And we look forward to catching you on the next episode of the More Than Conquerors podcast, where today's test is tomorrow's testimony. I'm your host, Lou Lepore and we'll see you soon.