The first call came when I was out of the country. It was a request for prayer. I promised not only to pray but make a visit as soon as I returned home. The second call came in less than a week – from his sister \u2013 one year ago this past week. Unfortunately, my promised visit would be to conduct his funeral. When I was fourteen years old my pastor-father changed churches and I was not happy – leaving my friends, changing schools, changing churches, etc. I dutifully went to Sunday School on the first Sunday and took a seat in the only empty chair in the room of unfamiliar boys. The one next to me said, \u201cHi, I\u2019m Jimmie Don.\u201d Thus began a friendship that lasted sixty years \u2013 through baseball & basketball, car-pooling, double dating, groomsman at my wedding, Vietnam, his post -Vietnam marital difficulties, car sales (him to me), phone calls, birthday calls every year on Pearl Harbor Day with a comment of how easy it was to remember his birthday, High School reunions, prayer times, long conversations about life and eventually about death. Jimmie Don Ulrich was my friend. I miss him. Friendships are a wonderful part of life, often taken for granted until it is too late to appreciate them. Proverbs 29:9 speaks of the sweetness of friendship. So if you have a really close friend, recognize them as such, communicate with them, and appreciate them. Enjoy the sweetness of friendship \u2013 while there is yet time to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first call came when I was out of the country. It was a request for prayer. I promised not only to pray but make a visit as soon as I returned home. The second call came in less than a week – from his sister \u2013 one year ago this past week. Unfortunately, my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}