Today (Tues.), we leave for Alabama to attend the Dykes's family reunion. There are nine siblings in Dad Dykes's family, with only two in heaven. The oldest is in his nineties. We'll be meeting and reminiscing and eating and chatting and singing, etc. for three days in Dothan.

In the 1920s, when Dad Dykes was three years old, his father was accidentally killed, which left his mother with nine children to raise by herself in the Great Depression. There were two children younger than Dad, the youngest being six months old. With God's help, she succeeded, and several entered the ministry, and some of the grandchildren became ministers, my husband Milton being one of them. It's a story of God's mercy and grace.

It's a Christian love story.

Milton has often said when he was a teenager, he felt badly for his father because he never had a father. But he had a heavenly Father.

The heavenly Father nurtured this family and sustained them and comforted them.