Dan and I are at our daughter’s college (Trinity College of Florida) missionary conference. We set up our booth yesterday a.m. and were prepared when classes were dismissed. Dawn walked by our booth with a group of her friends. When she got to the end of the table, I was standing there and she gave me a big hug. One of her classmates gave a gasp, her hand flew to her mouth and she said, “Dawn you can’t go around hugging the missionaries!” Dawn turned around and “She’s my mom!”. Her friend’s eyes flew open wide and the look of chagrin on her face was priceless. Everyone around had a great laugh about it. She knew Dawn was an MK, missionary kid, so she figured that due to that Dawn felt a real affinity toward missionaries and was going around hugging the missionaries. She didn’t know we were her parents. It really was hilarious!
As the students were milling around, perusing the booths, the school’s 4 Haitians found our booth. One of them picked up the Creole hymnal that we have out and found her favorite hymn. She started singing and the others joined in. They stood there and sang all the verses. A crowd formed and listened to the impromptu concert in a foreign language. It was cool. Each one of them have made an effort to find us from time to time during the day to say hi and talk about Haiti.
Yesterday, the first day of the conference, also found me having an interesting conversation with the Child Evangelism Fellowship missionary at his booth. He is what I call a ripple effect. He quit the military to become a missionary because of the ministry and influence of my dad who was a CEF missionary to the US military in Germany. When he got to the US for CEF’s training institute, my dad was one of his teachers. One can never tell how far out your ministry will ripple! It brought tears to my eyes. I wish my dad knew how far his ripples have reached! (My dad died of ALS in 2002.)
Today has been a good day of interaction with the students at our booth, at meals and in chapel. It’s been fun to meet Dawn’s friends, too, and to see her going through “the college experience”. Tonight Dan will have 7 minutes to share with the student body.
Tomorrow we will have a 45 minute workshop (one of several offered). The conference ends at lunch time.
