Thankful for this memory...

Hope you're having a wonderful Thanksgiving!

This interview with Ruth Friesen and my grandmother, Hilda Miller, is in 1987. I digitized it from a VHS cassette in 2009, and searched the web for Ruth Friesen and her show, Beauty of Life. I wanted to get her blessing to post the program, but there was no online record of the show’s name paired with her name. 

Recently my wife, Joyce, and I have been involved with Christian Union’s Great Experiment. We’ve committed to five disciplines for a month, and one of them is asking the Lord every morning what he wants us to do that day. Joyce calls it a concrete kindness for the Lord. Two days ago I felt like the Lord was asking me to look into posting this interview. This time the internet pulled up Ruth’s name in her obituary. She died this April. I reached out to her family by Facebook and noticed that they’re friends with Grandma’s niece’s husband. I reached out to him, and he said the son-in-law just Friended him on Facebook! Soon the family got back to me with their blessing, and then I saw why the Lord had prompted me now. One of Ruth’s daughters pointed out that this will be their family’s first Thanksgiving without her mother. I'm so glad they'll have this wonderful memory to share today.

The interview is mostly about Grandma’s prison ministry, and it reminded me that I was 10 years old when Grandma first brought me in with her to minister to the first prisoner she mentions. I continued to go with her from time to time throughout the rest of her ministry. 

Throughout my career I’ve performed and taught in a few prisons, and I know that was on my heart because of Grandma's prison ministry. My most dramatic encounter was earlier this year in the gang unit on Riker’s Island. 

Grandma talks about how much energy the Lord was giving her, but within a year she sensed him telling her, “Get your affairs in order.” As a high schooler I remember thinking, “Does God want her to clean her room?” July of 1988 she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The Lord kept shining through her right to the end, which was three months later. She was a tremendous witness to the doctors and nurses attending her. One of the nurses told me how she was feeling a bit down one day, and there was Grandma, jaundiced and taking her final breaths to encourage her. 

I count Grandma my greatest spiritual mentor and pray I can encourage others right to the end.

For those of you who watch this who aren’t family, I can’t expect that you’ll be as blessed as we are by this interview. I’m writing this after just having seen it for the first time in eight years, and I’m a blubbering mess! I do pray it will give you a sense of gratitude for family members and friends who have represented the Lord well to you. 

Watch the video below, or if you're receiving this via email go to www.Blog.RichDrama.com (Thanksgiving Day).

For more information on Grandma’s mission work in Kenya click here.

To read about the miracle that kickstarted Grandma's ministry click here.

To find out more about a relationship with the Lord, visit www.RichDrama.com/MyPassion.

><><><

See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story in Beyond the Chariots. Watch it online and book a live performance.