Hope you received the praying Santa?

He was a farmer and a tither – when he harvested his grain, the check for the first truckload was written to the church, then the next nine loads were his.

As a child I spent many summers on the farm in North Dakota with my Grandparents. I remember many times seeing him help out someone else even though he had his own work to do.

I once asked him why he didn’t lock the door to the house when we left. His response was “If someone’s car breaks down or needs help, they might need to use the phone while we are gone”.

He was a kind and gentle teacher – I remember one summer he had me drying grain while he was out in the fields. I didn’t really understand how to start the grain drier that was attached to the tractor. I had the tractor running too fast and when I engaged the power take off unit, I destroyed the coupler. His response later that day was – “Guess we need to fix that”. When ever “city folks” would come he would spend hours explaining anything they wanted to know.

I heard many stories from others about all the people he helped during his life: the pregnant teen who would be rejected by her family, the teacher who lived with them so there was a teacher at the local one room school, the young man that would be in trouble with the law that he hired and mentored who later became a highly ranked sherrif, the family down the road who never had much that he would drive to town for supplies, etc.

When he passed away several years ago, hundreds of people came to his funeral. There were many people that came to the funeral that nobody knew. They all told stories of how he had helped them in one way or another. Several of them drove 8 or more hours to attend his funeral.

He was a generous man.