Ive loved all the time we spent together when the girls were babies in Chicago. My mind was blown my one of my best friends in the history of my life was having children and I knew it was going to effect me personally witnessing it. Sadly I had to leave Chicago and the supreme irony that you arrived there after years of me being there. When we connected in Michigan after I got married, it was so special to have more good times this last year going out for breakfast as a group of friends with Katy and ZZ.

Reading this dedication to your daughter Katy brings me back to when we all went to camp together in 1992. I remember VIVIDLY coming back from campfire and the feeling that remains with me. The times we drove to Denny’s and had our own fellowship over endless months and pots of coffee. My friendship with you reinforced what I knew I felt about Jesus Christ having found him through a near death experience on my own. I say all this about myself because I know how powerful those experiences were and what it meant to have you as a friend there to corroborate that relationship with Jesus because I knew I wasnt crazy experiencing all that I was with the friend I had in you and Derek Sonksen. I had church happening all the time I needed it in the two friends that I will always have.

I see Katy has the budding of that relationship starting interpersonally which makes it so special and real… it gives me goose bumps. I reminds me all over again what makes our connection so real and special – timeless in fact… and who she stands to connect with in the world in her lifetime and how she will impact them like her Daddy did with me too. You and Margo are faith carrying freightliners and your children recognize how all encompassing that passion is in you both. I have confidence that they, will like water, will flow into the most dry hearts and influence them like their Mommy and Daddy do in the most loving of ways.

GO KATY, GO GO GO!

Such a beautiful testimony. Mom (Mimi) and I are so proud of you and Margo…and so happy and proud of Katy. I remember the experience that I had when I decided that I wanted to follow Jesus. I remember the feeling that I had, not only in my heart, but from head to toe. We pray for each of you daily (Z too). We love you so much -

Perhaps more importantly, your children see you and Margo striving to live out what you “preach” and teach. I vividly remember Angela (our oldest) at 4 years old as we were getting ready to go on our first bike ride as a family. We put helmets on her and Daniel and placed them in the Burley, then Becky put hers on. I’d been riding a bike my whole life, so I didn’t need one. Angela looked up at me and said “Daddy, you put helments on us because you love us, right?” I knew right where she was going, and decided at that moment I could not lie to her, and went out and bought a helmet the next day. She remembers that too, because she can continue to trust me.

In your struggles, in your discipline, in your play time, in your talks, you and Margo are opening up the world a bit at a time to your children, letting them take control of their interaction with it bit by bit. And, you are showing them how to deal with pain and excitement and discovery and the realities of life. But it is your walk with Christ that they see in everything you do with eyes that we kind of forget how to look through.

Take a moment and thank your bride for the life she lives for you and your kids, and then promise yourself you will continue to be the open and forthright person who has the responsibility to keep pulling the curtain back on the world and your relationship with your God. It is an amazing process of discovery for all of you. Your children are not only a blessing, but a stewardship, because you hold God’s dream for them in your daily walk with them. Keep the faith, man…