I don’t know if I ever told my Dad how proud I was of him, he’d always done his best to do the right thing in life, and as such, had gotten the short end of the stick more times than I’d care to mention, but he never stopped trying to do the right thing, and that made me proud.

When my Dad died unexpectedly on thanksgiving of ‘07 the whole family came together and comforted each other, and did everything we could for my Mom. They’d been married for 39 years, and together for 3 years before that, for a total of 42 years together. I expected my mother to fall apart without my Dad, but she didn’t.

You see, my Mom and Dad had a good relationship, and she does miss him terribly, but she doesn’t have many regrets, and so she doesn’t have a lot of those “what ifs?” that we always hear about people having. But why should she have any what ifs? After all, my parent’s had never been very rich, but they always had love, and above that, they always had the Lord.

My Dad had done lots of things in life, and was met with mixed successes and failures, but one thing you could always say about him, he never gave up. I remember when I was 5 years old, we moved for the summer to Missouri to go to candidate school for the missions board my parents where going to work with. I have fond memories that where made that summer, my 13 year old brother and 3 year old sister where there too, and we didn’t have any schoolwork, so we got into all kinds of mischief.

I remember being on the fund raising trips, with the seemingly endless hours in the car, then the truck camper, then the motorhome, but I really didn’t mind, I secretly loved all the time together, and I not-so-secretly loved all the traveling and time away from school.

I remember going to Belize, and seeing the poverty and disease, and I remember seeing all the heart that the people had. And of course, us kids got into lots of mischief, but that goes without saying.

I also remember the heartache that my Dad had when they weren’t able to raise the support they needed to remain in missions.

Yet, my Dad never gave up, he was always working on some idea, some plan to help the family, or make the world a better place, sometimes both things at once.

My Dad was my role model more than he ever knew. I can’t tell him anymore, So I’ll tell you.