As I finished up here at KCU and we move into the Christmas season, I have reflected back on this fall. Today I taught my very last class here this fall semester. This is my third time teaching here as the Missionary-in-Residence has been a great experience. KCU is a great place where there is a solid commitment to Christ and His kingdom and yet rock solid scholarship as well. My colleagues in the school of ministry are the greatest bunch of guys and it has been an honor to serve with them for this fall semester. I have enjoyed this time very much.
Whenever I serve like this, I appreciate the chance to train the next generation of missionaries and to share all that God has taught me over the years. There are even times when I wonder if maybe this should be how I spend the rest of my years on this earth. In fact, as I pondered that possibility, the Lord spoke to me through a heart felt letter sent by the father of one of our students at our Christian day school, the morning after his graduation. He wrote:
Dear Dr. Dale, I am always grateful for your help and unconditional support for the Peniel school, the teachers, and students; and for the help you have been to me and my son. I will never have sufficient words nor just the right terms through which to express my joy and gratitude, which I feel at this moment, reflecting back on some difficult times in the raising of my son. It was your providential interventions to correct, exhort, and educate him that made the difference. That was so valuable and came at just the right time in his development in every aspect, from the economic, the social, and the spiritual.
Your intervention in that process, especially with a scholarship just as I was questioning our ability to keep him in the Peniel school, that was an admirable effort showing all of the devotion and leadership you have for this ministry of our Lord. We give you our thank, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. Through your ministry you have rescued children from drug addition, prevented suicide in girls who had lost all hope, brought boys out of delinquency, and given hope and faith to many. You have planted the seed of the Word in hearts that were hardened by evil and poverty. For all of this we say again, thank you, thank you, thank you!
This community carries you in our hearts. Last night my son graduated from High School. He was a child that some people without vision considered to be “abnormal” and all they could see where his problems and the negative. But God can work so much more than our feeble minds can even imagine. Who would have ever thought that possible? But we registered him in Peniel School and you took it upon yourself to begin that process of teaching him and helping him to adapt, and he has made so much progress that last night he graduated with honors and was selected to give the farewell speech; oh what a special moment for me!
My son has now been accepted into the university in the civil engineering degree program. Who would have ever imagined that my son, that hyperactive boy who could hardly even speak in understandable sentences, would today sing in the praise band at church and be such a fine young man with clear values, capable of correcting himself, so well liked, so committed and capable of helping other young people just as you helped him. Now he wants to give everything to others just as you have given so much to him. You saw in him this great potential and you struggled to develop it in him. For this, I again say Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, and Thank you!!!!!!!!!!
Please express my appreciate, and give a big hug, to those dear friends in the United States who helped so much as well. We anxiously await seeing you again very soon.
God’s blessing,
A Grateful father
I was humbled by his kind words and so thankful that the Lord could use me in such a special way in his life and in the life of his son. In expressing those kind words, he confirmed to me that I have not mistaken God’s call for my life and ministry. I will be looking forward to heading back to Colombia right after the New Year. It has been such an honor and joy to serve in Colombia all of these year and to be privileged to help so many young lives. But his kind words were not really so much for me as they are for you; our partners in ministry in Colombia. You are the ones who so generously give the scholarships. You are the ones who provide for Jeanie and I so we an serve in this way. You are the ones who made this all possible and so made such a difference in this young man’s life!
So at this Christmas time, as we thank God for His greatest gift: the gift of salvation in Jesus, we thank you as well for so generously partnering with us in the preaching of the Gospel in Colombia. May God grant you many very special blessings at this special time of year!
Your co-workers in Christ,
Dale and Jeanie Meade