My Father's Son
(I’m justifying the personal nature of this by not telling anyone to look at it)
Today is my father’s birthday.
My father is his father’s son.
Grandpa Mehl is and has always been, as far as I can tell, selfless. Years back, sitting around with him and Grandma looking at the photo albums and listening to him explain his duties and struggles as Commissioner of Seward County Kansas--local politics, elections that got personal, dinner with Bob Dole, a letter from Ronald Reagan--it all got pointed to someone else. And, more noticeable than the re-direction of attention, was how it looked effortless. I think it was effortless. I think Otto Mehl, by nature or by the grace of God, cannot think first about himself. I think he sees the entire world as God’s creation and when he steps back to look, he sees himself as the one there to help everyone who he knows needs help--family first. I remember being in Nigeria telling friends my Grandpa built American airplanes for World War II. I think he worked at a parts factory for a couple years or so. I don’t think Grandpa has ever left the continent, but I know he’s helped more people in a more genuine way than many who’ve traveled wide. I know he was gracious as an employer and builder when he ran Mehl Concrete Company for 25 years laying literal and figurative foundations all over Liberal Kansas. I know his primary goal when he sold the business and bought a farm was to make enough money to pay for the college of his four grandchildren. I know he was devastated when his farm was one of thousands foreclosed upon by the banks in the 1980’s before any of us graduated high school. I know we all somehow loved him more after that than before.
My father is as selfless. No matter what his job description, he’s a career missionary. He’s been bent toward helping people long as I can remember. God wanted him to take job with a mission organization and he moved the family from Wichita to New Jersey when my mother was eight months pregnant with me. Three weeks later I was born with enormous complications that would have killed me in a hospital in Wichita. Earl Mehl has listened for what God has asked him to do and he’s responded. He hasn’t been rewarded with dollars. He hasn’t been rewarded with much that I can point at that you could also see. But he’s got a wife and two children and a son-in-law and two grandchildren who are lives that would be nowhere without his selfless devotion. I guess you can point at us as rewards. I think Dad would point at us. I point at him as the reason I’m in Uganda. I was sitting on a bench in Pasadena looking at bricks between a J.Crew and a juice bar and I called him and he asked what I was thinking about going to Uganda. I told him, “If I had to say so right now, I’d say no.” He said, “I think if you don’t go, you’ll be missing out on something big.” Maybe any father would say that. But the way Earl Mehl has lived his life in the presence of me and my family, I heard a whole lot of wisdom and honest excitement and even prophetic urgency in what for him was probably just a response. Not only did that response push me to Uganda, it’s kept pushing and pulling me to and from things while I’ve been here. I don’t want to miss out on “something big.” Just yesterday, Dad sent me an email.
Let me share something that I have been turning over in my mind for several weeks. This thought relates to the memories and thoughts you will have from your Uganda experience...after you return at the end of your second year. You will always have the day-to-day stuff you have to do. But since you only "go around once" consider the option of carving out time to spend with one or two nationals who will still be in Uganda long after you return to the USA.
I guess what I am trying to say is reproduce Christian values and your writing skills in one or two individuals...that can in turn pass them on to others...the disciplining process. No doubt my thoughts are not unique or the first time they have crossed your mind.
What you accomplish through other people will out live you. The time I spent training others in Nigeria accomplished far more than the accounting work I did at the ECWA Headquarters.
We can talk this over in April...but I just wanted to plant the seed since it keeps coming to my mind.
Besides the body of the little message which serves to illustrate exactly what I was trying to explain about him, what kills me is the first and last lines. Dad sits around the office, sits around the house, eats dinner, drives around town, and he thinks about me. He might have thoughts about wishing I was closer or about my safety here or my future back home and wonder if I’ll marry and wonder how I’ll earn a living and all that, but the thought he’s been turning over for several weeks, the one that keeps coming to mind, is he wants me to accomplish something eternal. God’s Love, in Earl Mehl, pulls his life toward His Eternal Kingdom. Earl Mehl’s life directs others toward the same Eternal Kingdom.
I pray I become my father’s son.