She grew up in a remote corner of the Navajo Reservation where they spoke little or no English. Like so many Native American kids of her generation, she was taken from her home and made to go to a boarding school far away. The bad news: they forced her to learn English and forbade her to speak her own language. The good news: a dream was born while she was there. First, she was required to attend a church, where thankfully, she gave her heart to Jesus. Secondly, she read "Dick and Jane" books, and those books showed her a bigger world where, as she tells it, there were bathrooms indoors and lives where people did something other than take care of sheep. And she decided to go for it. She graduated from high school, then college; she's taught school for many years and, as a single mom, raised two strong children who really love the Lord; one of whom serves at our Headquarters as a gifted young Native leader.
Our daughter and our three-year-old granddaughter were looking at a friend's wedding pictures. And our little princess, who loves to get dressed up, asked if she could have a dress like that and be like the girl wearing it. Well, Mommy explained that someday Jesus might give her a man who loved Jesus that she could marry and be like the girl in that dress. Her reaction: "How about next Sunday?"
My wife’s a Southern gal; I’m a Chicago-born Yankee. So when we visited the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, we bought a blue Union cap for me and a gray Confederate hat for her, which we hung on our respective motel bedposts. Is that what they call “consorting with the enemy?” I don’t know, but… I heard about this one guy in the Civil War who came up with a questionable plan for survival. He decided to wear a blue shirt and gray pants, so he managed to get shot at both ends!
Our son-in-law opened his Father's Day card from our ten-year-old grandson and found an acrostic of his first name. Now, each letter gave our grandson an opportunity to reveal some of his perceptions of his dad. For example, for the letter "R," our grandson wrote: "Refreshed after Mommy kisses him." Our son-in-law said, "How do you know that?" And his son simply pointed to his eyes with two fingers and said slyly, "I see it!"
For people in South Florida, Andrew will long be remembered as one of the most destructive hurricanes of all time. His 250-mph winds just tore buildings apart, and as always, some amazing storm stories came out of Hurricane Andrew. Like one family of ten who were found buried under the rubble of their Florida home - all alive! The father told what sustained them as they saw and heard that storm just ripping their house apart around them. He said, "We felt we were going to die, so we just kept yelling that we loved each other." That's what enabled them to hang on.
