My Family 2

I forgot to mention in my last post about the nature of our church at the time. It was, as you may have inferred somewhat charismatic. It was a place that would creep a lot of people out, but at the same time, I think it attracted many people looking for deep emotional connection in our spirituality (the kind of passion of which is sometimes lacking in the circles I've been in.) Anyway, despite this, our first taste of "friendly fire" was at this church. Before my dad died, they brought in prophets. Not like Moses or anything, but people who thought they were modern day prophets. Anyway, they turned out to be not very good prophets, or maybe it was just a bad day, but they were dead wrong. The prophets said that my dad would make it through the cancer and live. Hmm... There were even a couple people in the church who blamed my mom for not praying hard enough. When I was old enough to hear this I was so angry. But for the most part people were kind and we had community around us which is cool.

On with the story...

After my mom was remarried it took time to adjust to the changes. My dad (stepdad) and I had to figure out how to be father and son. It took a long time, in fact it probably wasn't even quite finished when he passed on. My adolescent years were somewhat tough between us and at the same time I learned so much from him. He made us follow rules that, even looking back, show that he was still inexperienced as a parent. He made us sleep with toys that we forgot to pick up. My sis and I didn't like that. But he was so intentional in teaching us about God and the Bible. He had a makeshift office that he took us into and taught us curriculum called "Bible Truths." Some of that stuff has stuck with me for years. It's pretty amazing when you think about it, something that I learned when I was so young echoes throughout my adulthood. He taught me to pray for wisdom. He taught me how the love of money was evil, but being responsible and giving to others was the way of Christ. My mom told me that he had goals of things that he wanted to teach us kids. I'm not sure if I could tell you exactly what those goals were, but I would tell you that he taught me a whole lot.

My dad had the same job as Joel Haist. He sold phone systems to companies. He was pretty good at it too I guess, but he felt in his heart a compassion for people. A guy from a jail ministry who he had known asked him to go on staff with them and he decided to go for it. It meant no secure income. It meant no benefits, and it meant that he would have to support raise his entire salary. Prison families aren't usually the type of people to have a bunch of money laying around to spend on the minister that led their patriarch to Christ. So it was hard. Me and Rach were some of his biggest "volunteers." We spent evenings on mailers. We had nightmares about stuffing envelopes. We visited kids whose fathers were in jail. We helped with "Operation Shoebox" where people stuff shoe boxes with all kinds of cool stuff for the inmates. We had to take out any pencils that had metal binding on them, because that could be used as a weapon. My dad would read us letters of thanks from dozens of guys who couldn't believe that so many people cared enough to send them something for Christmas. When I was older I would go into the jail with him and he would let me lead a song, usually Amazing Grace, because most of them know that one. We had ex-cons living in our house at various times until they found something permanent. My dad told us that when we take people into our homes like this it was like we were doing it for Jesus.