This is Mr. Dale DeLange from Michigan. He's a red berry farmer and a shop teacher. He lives and farms on the same land where he was raised and his father grew berries. He's a TeenPact dad and hosted us while we were in Michigan for the class.
Mr. DeLange gets up at 6 every morning to do chores before he goes to work. He's hard working and also one of the most subtly funny people I've met. I tried to figure out why I enjoyed being around him so much and then I realized it: Jesus is the key piece of his life. From Bible studies after meals to private devotions in the morning, Christ saturates everything he does. "The reason I'm so happy is because I've got Jesus." He even sacrificed celebrating his 50th birthday with his family to let them serve at TeenPact.
"Every year I give more than I did the year before and I always find that every year I have fewer needs than the years before...It's a heart issue; I've matured spiritually so that I love Jesus now more than I did last year and ten years and twenty-five years ago. The beautiful thing about the Bible is that it's so perfectly simple for the new believer and so deep and complicated for the mature believer." Mr. And Mrs. DeLange choose to live simply but are incredibly generous to everyone around them.
"I used to squirrel away money for retirement and worry about it. And then one day I realized that when I get to heaven, and see people who say the one thing they always wanted was a Bible and they never got one, and I had all this money, what am I going to say, ya know?" At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how nice of vacations or retirements we have. What matters is loving people like Jesus and telling others about the eternity we can have with him. I think we can all learn a little something from Mr. DeLange (Also, ice cream and farm strawberries is the breakfast of champions.)
Until next time,
Justin
