An Interview with Dad

I was mindlessly going through several boxes of old stuff from my childhood the other day. It was a very mundane chore that was on the "to-do" list. I didn't expect anything special.

As I was choosing what to keep and what to throw away, I came across an old assignment from middle school. It was an interview of 8 questions that I had conducted with my dad about his travels across the world with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).

My dad died in 2000 after battling a lung disease for nearly 10 years, so my curiosity was especially peaked. What would a conversation with my dad have been like that many years ago? I was pretty sure it was going to be filled with silly childish questions and that it would have little substance and even less meaning. To my surprise, the conversation proved to be more significant than I could have expected.

I can see now, all these years later, that my dad was taking the opportunity to teach me a valuable lesson.

Allow me to share the part of the interview that spoke to me the most:

Q. "What is the most memorable time in your traveling?"
A. "It was not visiting presidents, or kings, or queens, which I have done. But it was when I visited a very poor man in Africa who spent 1 month's salary to buy food for a meal that he thought I would enjoy. This meal included only a bottle of coke, bread cut American style, and peanut butter."
Q. "What is the poorest place you have ever been to? What was it like there?
A. "India. It was very dirty with very few roads. The living conditions are very horrible. Very few people have water or electricity. They don't name their babies until they are at least one year old. This is because most of them die before that age. They pick up dead bodies on a regular basis, just like they do garbage here. They drive trucks around and the people stack up dead bodies by the path for the truck and the truck takes the bodies away."

Since my dad died several years before I was an 'adult' (I was 15), I have often wondered what he would think of who I have grown up to be. I have changed a lot since I was 15. Would he approve of my faith and values as they are today? I don't necessarily fit into the box of the typical American Evangelical Christian. I find myself caring more about those who are poor and suffering in our world than the political hot topics that many Evangelicals tend to focus on.

Would Dad be proud of that?

So now, on Father's Day, 9 years after my dad died, I read over his words from this interview. I can't remember if I, as a middle-schooler, fully grasped the message that my dad was trying to convey that day. But as I catch the lesson now, at 24, I feel more confident that maybe I am becoming the man that he was hoping to raise me up to be.