Thankful for Terry

I remember when I first met Terry he was preaching at a youth revival at a camp -- I prayed Lord, "I want to marry a man like that."  Eighteen months later he became our youth pastor and he tells the story he looked out from the pulpit and saw me and said to himself that he was going to marry me. (something about I looked like an angel???)
We've been a team for 43 years -- 45 if you count our years of dating -- when you date a youth minister -- the whole Church youth group is your chaperone.  The power of our team has been surely been given a work-out these past few months.
This man gives me unconditional love --insight -- another way of looking at things -- and has shown me the world as we've traveled all over it with him speaking.
 I loved parenting with him and GRANDPARENTING is a blast. (do they still use that word?)  Even when his rheumatoid pain is high -- he finds so much joy in being with and playing with our kids - he calls them good medicine.

He's the Dad who built a play house in a converted den from our garage that had a space underneath for a bed for our guests.  He used old boards from a stadium to make a play house for Bethany and Marshall when they were in elementary school.
He could make up songs and silly stories and keep our two engaged on long trips - he loved our trailer camping and we were able to be on lots of those long trips.
It's not just our kids -- but woven into our ministry years has been different ministires to children we did together.
In the late 70's he was a Bus Minister to 300+ black kids from Memphis' inner city.  He's built a submarine for a learning centers-- devised a plan for a Fort Adventure --enjoyed the ranch theme that two of our men at church put together for our Life Park kids were involved in a kids' Adventure week at another Church.  We have enjoyed our work with Kids University since 2012.
He has a pink gorilla outfit from his days of leading a girl's chorus -

This weekend, I saw it again -- as "Goobers" the Gorilla came out of hiding and showed up at the grandkids -- Jack cried -- Sydney ran screaming for her momma and Campbell backed up as she was saying, "Pappa . ? .? ."  Later he passed out candy with me to our neighborhood trick or treaters-- 
Parents yelled from the street how much they loved our outfits --  
A mom had us pose with her trick or treaters for a picture 
and one little guy on his way down the drive, yelled back,

"I love you Gorilla!"

I do too!!!!