In 2012, Lisa and Tricia bought an RV. This was a first step to different kinds of adventures in the outdoors; into transient but joyful communities of others looking for beauty and renewal in nature.

Francie Thayer graduated from VTS in 2012 and became a founder of a retreat house and property in Maryland the following year, which Tricia and Lisa were blessed to watch and help with as it unfolded. They also began to think seriously about being a part of a retreat house or intentional community in the future. Lisa has served on the board of the Retreat House, and Francie remains a constant sister in prayer — one of the first to hear and pray about the farm.

Also in 2012, Tricia's friend Father Jason Prati was forming an intentional community in New Albany, Ohio. Tricia attended the first vows of that community and prayed regularly for months with Jason about partnering in creating intentional communities. At the same time, Lisa was considering becoming an Associate member of the international Iona Community. The Holy Spirit was beginning to clarify a shared call to live an intentional life of service to others.

The political divisions, violence, and cultural turmoil that followed the election in 2016 clarified Lisa and Tricia's desire to live in some kind of intentional community after VTS, in some region of the country that had more diversity of belief and culture than a seminary campus. They began to feel drawn to a location where they could have a more direct connection to nature, food, animals, and a local community.

In 2018, VTS was beginning to plan a potential affiliation with General Seminary in New York. Lisa and Tricia began to consider ways to work and perhaps live between Virginia and New York, perhaps as part of VTS faculty and staff willing to commute or even move to or near New York to support the work at General. They envisioned living an uncluttered life in a natural and communal setting that might be a laboratory of learning and faith formation for others.

In September 2021, Lisa and Tricia learned that a family farm in northern New Jersey was going to be sold. The 138-acre property had been owned for multiple generations by the family of Katie Hoyer, a student at the seminary. Katie had visions in prayer which the Spirit was urging her to share with Lisa and Tricia: that perhaps their years of unfolding longing for a home in nature, in community, and for service to others might be planted in the land of Stone Bridge Farm.

Katie began to share stories and pictures of love and ministry at the farm. Over time, Lisa and Tricia came to taste and see the witness of this place as holy ground: land ready not to start a mission of Christ's love at their hands, but rather a living land ready to continue Christ's work under their care. They remain grateful to Katie for being the first person with whom God shared this vision for intentional spiritual life, ministry, and community at Stone Bridge Farm.