During the first week of my Freshman year at Howard Payne College (now University), in Brownwood, Texas, I was walking from class to the Cafeteria when suddenly there was someone walking beside me.\u00a0\u00a0She said, \u201cHi! My name is Betty.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I replied, \u201cHi!\u00a0\u00a0My name is Dan.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0She said, \u201c I know. I worked at Glorieta Conference Center this summer and some of your friends told me about you.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The next time I saw Betty was at church on Sunday morning. Along with approximately a dozen other students, Betty and I both joined Coggin Avenue Baptist Church in Brownwood, where they had an \u201cAdopt a Student\u201d program. A family came forward announcing, \u201cWe want to adopt a boy and a girl; a brother and a sister.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0They took Betty and me.\u00a0\u00a0Having always wanted a sister, now Betty was the sister I never had.\u00a0\u00a0For the next four years, I watched my adopted sister be a sister with many students, especially international students, studying far from home, needing a friend.\u00a0\u00a0Then we both graduated, and it appeared our special relationship would end.\u00a0\u00a0I enrolled in Southwestern Seminary, but who lived in an apartment on Seminary Drive, but my adopted sister, Betty.\u00a0\u00a0For the next sixty-three years, we remained adopted \u201cbrother and sister.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Along with our spouses, we re-united while living in Austin for six years, and later in Fort Worth, for eighteen years.\u00a0\u00a0We served together on the Alumni Board of Directors of our alma mater and enjoyed our visits during annual college Homecoming events through the years.\u00a0\u00a0Last week, I participated in the memorial service for Betty Ann Fowler Smith who had gone to her eternal home.\u00a0\u00a0But our relationship still has not ended.\u00a0\u00a0Since \u201cGod decided in advance to adopt us into his own family\u201d (Ephesians 1:5, NLT), Betty and I will someday, be brother and sister again in God\u2019s forever family.\u00a0\u00a0See you, Sis!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the first week of my Freshman year at Howard Payne College (now University), in Brownwood, Texas, I was walking from class to the Cafeteria when suddenly there was someone walking beside me.\u00a0\u00a0She said, \u201cHi! My name is Betty.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I replied, \u201cHi!\u00a0\u00a0My name is Dan.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0She said, \u201c I know. I worked at Glorieta Conference Center this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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-3458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458","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=3458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3460,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458\/revisions\/3460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}