My version of what Tim Whipple said in front of us all the other day is this: I only have one story, it just depends which part you want to hear. I would like to share part of it with you, and I’ll try my very best to use the short version, which I’m not very good at.

I was brought up in a southern Baptist home from birth, and also as an Air Force brat. I was born on “The Yellow Brick Road”. You guessed it, Kansas. So that already throws a wrinkle in it. I grew up learning bible verses and going to Summer Bible School. Because of being an AF brat we weren’t always able to go to church together, as it sometimes affords a challenging lifestyle, so I would a lot of the time be finding my own way down to the church. And we moved a lot. We were in Springfield, Illinois staying with my grandparents on Moms’ side while Dad was in England looking for housing for us. I was attending a local Methodist church and the Sunday school teacher would even come by the house and give me bible study. Mom says my salvation is as a result of this lady’s faithfulness. I don’t remember exactly knowing up to this time that I needed to make a personal decision. I was around 9 or 10 and the year was say 1957/1958. Grandma & Grandpa sometimes liked to go and eat at the Salvation Army on Wednesday evenings, so one Sunday, Mom,Grandma and I attended Sunday morning service. That morning I heard the message, don’t delay, this may be your last chance to make the decision to spent eternity with Jesus. It was loud and clear, and I was terrified because I had to cross in front of Mom and Grandma to get to the isle, but I made it. It felt like walking to the Kings throne with everyone standing for you.

Fast forward a few years in the throws of life, good bad and ugly. I was fresh out of my own tour of duty in the Air Force and living in Hickory,NC. I was 25 and going through that stressfull thing “finding your manhood”. To top that off I was working at Shuford Mills Tape Plant, so the chemicals in that place were doing surgery on my brain. To say the least I was very fragile emotionally. Many nights I was able to get only a couple of hours of sleep while iI buried my face in my bible just to maintain sanity. That’s where I received my first really great foundational bible knowledge. Its taken all this to reach the punch line here. I prayed and told the Lord I had no idea where I was headed, good or bad, “but please don’t ever let go of me”. I’m still here and He has Never let me down. Amen and amen.
Thank you for your patience in hanging out with me to the end of this part of the story. God Bless.

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I stand there like an idiot, hands folded behind my back, feeling completely useless. My brother, a physician, is discussing medical matters with a neurologist, both of them cool and detached. A monitor beeps quietly, almost politely. I catch a few words here and there, all of them ominous, none of them comforting or the least bit encouraging. (Ever notice that in medical parlance you never hear adjectives such as “massive” or “severe” used to describe “recovery” or “improvement”?)

A few visitors wander in from time to time, shaking hands with Roger and me. “Your mother talked about her boys all the time,” they say, or “It’s nice to finally meet Lily’s sons.” Most of them are Chinese, like our mom, and many of them speak with thick accents. A good number of them are from Mom’s church, it seems, and some bring their entire families – five, six people crowd into the room. A few of them hold Mom’s hand and pray aloud in Cantonese. I understand a few words or phrases, wondering if – hoping – that somewhere deep down in her subconscious, Mom is nodding and praying along with them.

One young man, thirty-something, walks in around 5:30 in the afternoon. He looks tired and a little concerned as he holds Mom’s hand, leans over her and says a prayer. He nods at us and leaves. “I’ll be back later,” he says. Sure enough, two hours or so later, he walks back in, this time with his two little daughters. Each girl has a balloon, and they proceed to talking to Mom in Chinese.

The man chats with us. He came over from Hong Kong only a few years back, before his children were born. I don’t remember where he said he met my mom – my impression was that she just started talking to him one day at a restaurant or someplace like that. Then he says, “My whole family loves Aunt Lily … she introduced us to Jesus.”

Over the next day or two, we find out that Mom has been quite the evangelist there in Los Angeles, meeting random Chinese people – sometimes entire families – and inviting them for a home-cooked meal at her small apartment, followed by an introduction to her Lord. (It helped, of course, that she was fluent in seven Chinese dialects, speaking not only in the different languages, but with the different provincial accents.) According to her pastor, Mom routinely had a dozen or more people she’d only just met crammed into her living room, all eating – take my word for it – some really good food. And afterwards, feeling full and grateful, these same people listened to this new friend (who was, in many cases, their only acquaintance in the States) telling them, in a language they could understand, about man’s problems of sin, separation and death, and God’s answer of love, salvation and eternal life. They listened to her introduce them to Jesus.

And by all accounts, Mom had done this kind of thing for years and years.

A few days later, I came back to Florida. We eventually moved Mom to a care facility in Indiana, where my brother lives. I went to see her a few times when I was up visiting Roger. She looked bad the last couple of times – really bad. I knew it wouldn’t be long before my brother called me, before life went on hold for a time. Mom passed away quietly last May, after three years in a coma from which she never awoke.

But you know what? As sad as I’ve been now and then, thinking about how much I miss both my parents, how much I wish they could watch their grandson grow up … I can’t help thanking God for letting me be in that hospital room in L.A. to hear that one, priceless phrase: “She introduced us to Jesus.” The grandest eulogy, the boldest epitaph would have been cheap drivel by comparison.

“She introduced us to Jesus.”

At her funeral, as I touched her cool hand, I whispered – whimpered – “I love you, Mom.” And right about then, I like to think, Jesus was hugging her and saying, “Well done, Lily. Welcome home. You won’t believe how many friends of yours I’ve gotten to know …”

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