Thanks for listening today, friends. You know what I love about this program? It’s my chance to introduce you, the listener, to new friends of mine, one of which is Pastor Dale Meador. He and his family have been twice to one of our Joni and Friends Family Retreats. Dale, welcome to the program.
DALE: Thank you for calling.
JONI: Now, as I understand it, your wife and daughter had come to Family Retreat first. Of course that’s where we run these five-day retreats for disabled children, their moms and dads, and your daughter had come with your wife, but you had not joined them in the past. Why not?
DALE: Well, I thought it was a great activity for them – a mother/daughter kind of a thing, but I really didn’t feel like it was my thing. I was happy for them to go and my daughter just loves it, she would live at Joni and Friends Family Retreat all year if you’d let her. This year it didn’t look like she was going to be able to go. My wife suffers from chronic pain, we weren’t sure if they were going to be able to go and I thought, “Well, I’ll go,” just because I didn’t want her to miss out.
JONI: Wow! Thank you, dad, for doing that for your daughter. Thanks for bringing her to Family Retreat. But, tell me what were your impressions?
DALE: Well, to be honest, I really didn’t want to go. I felt like that was their thing. I have not had hardly any exposure to persons with disabilities and to be honest, I was really pretty nervous about the whole thing, and yet it was really a breakthrough for me. The Lord blessed me with a wonderful camper. I was connected to a 19-year-old young man with Down Syndrome who turned out to be just an angel, and my involvement with him was delightful. The people around the camp were fantastic. They trained us and helped us to understand what we’d be up to, and it turned into a marvelous opportunity that I came back and shared with my congregation I was so moved by it.
JONI: Wow! Now, when you came back to your church from having attended Family Camp, you said to a couple of my friends up there a Family Retreat you really learned some important lessons. What was probably the most important lesson you learned?
DALE: Joni, it’s hard to pick one out, I learned so much. I gained some sensitivity for and appreciation of what families with members with disabilities go through just getting out of the house, getting out shopping, going to church, why they don’t go to church. I learned some of what their day-to-day life is like and I learned how precious so many of these persons with disabilities, by whom I honestly have been off put all of these years, are. But once you get to know you them, once you get connected with them, you find out that while they may not speak very clearly they can communicate and they have great big hearts. I was moved just like another dad who was there, again, because his daughters had been their previously and he really didn’t want to come either. In fact that he told me after the training and before the campers had arrived he was scared out of his wits. He didn’t know what he was going to do, what he was going to confront. I have a picture of him that I took in the last minutes of the camp and he is cradling his little camper in his arms. It was a little boy also with Down syndrome. After I snapped the photo this fellow, an engineer, looked up at me with tears in his eyes saying “I don’t want this moment to end.”
JONI: “Real men” should come and volunteer at Family Retreat. It’s a place for “real men,” right?
DALE: I came back to my church and said every mover and shaker in this congregation, every guy who’s never spent more than a few hours alone with his own children needs to go with me next year. I want to bring a lot of guys with me.
JONI: Oh, hey, that’s fantastic. Well you tell the men at Bear Creek church where you are pastor that I am expecting them to show up next year at our Joni and Friends Family Retreat, okay?
DALE: I will do that! Coming from you that means something. From me, not so much!
JONI: Okay, I’ll see you next year at Joni and Friends Family Retreat. Thanks Dale.
DALE: Thank you, Joni.
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