To all who have invested in me…thank you! 

I remember standing in the dorm at God’s Bible School having my mom comb my hair when I heard it…the children’s meeting workers!  At campmeeting in the ‘70s and ‘80s, they used to go out with accordions and shakers, walking all over the campus, and collecting children like Pied Piper.  I can’t explain the excitement—something like Christmas to my fast-beating heart!  They would lead us down the flights of stairs to our special children’s service.

I don’t remember a lot of my childhood; I only have bits, pieces, and snatches.  So, I find it amazing that I still remember singing “Untold Millions Are Still Untold” and trying to say the Scripture so loudly that Richard Barbour could hear it in the stairwell!  I remember Aunt Helen Leigh and Judy Anderson (now Simmons) telling us captivating stories!  Not a pin would drop!  I remember the student who did the monologue on Fanny Crosby and Scriptures that were taught.

Somewhere crouching by the stain glass windows in the stairwell, I realized what had always been in my heart—GBS was where I would go to school one day!  This was partly because of these college students.  Those poor child evangelism workers, especially the year that we followed them all over campus (until they tried to get away from us) as we sang “God’s Not Dead”!  Thank you for investing!

The poems, prayers, and Scriptures that my mother and sister taught in CYC clubs and Good News meetings are still with me—hidden deeper in my heart than the events of last week.  That’s where I learned, “The voice of God is quiet, but I know it can be found.  I hear it like a whisper.  I feel it like a sound.”  Songs that didn’t mean anything to me when I was a child, like “One Step at a Time” would make sense as an adult that I needed to “walk that one step carefully.”

How many workers planted seeds in my life in campmeetings, children’s services, and vacation Bible schools across the country?  I say, “Thank you!”  I doubt if the man who offered us a prize if we would say the entire Psalm 121 at Frankfort campmeeting had any idea how hard I would study.  As I left children’s meeting that day, my eyes were on the Bible as I walked home, not the road.  (incidentally, not far from where I was hit by a car the same year!)  As I walked home, I studied these verses, learning them.  The investment that the worker made was much more than the physical prize.  It was this prize in my heart!  How I have needed and used the words that would flood over me, “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.” 

My husband and I both had an encounter with God as children that would shape our entire future!  The things that we learned as children left an impression that remains to THIS DAY!  That’s why I believe in teaching children songs—even adult songs.  They’ll need them later.  That’s why I want them to learn Scriptures.  They’ll need that hidden where it can’t be taken away.  That’s why I believe in children’s ministry!  Thank you!  Thank you to all who have invested.