The Matt and Noelle Letters

By Dan Tice

I could imagine that most senior citizens approaching seventy years of age might look back on their life and wish that they had accomplished more. The author of this book would be no exception. But praise the Lord, he has very few regrets. He has had the great privilege to see God do things in his life he never expected that He would, and he has a wife and family that bless him every daythings that money could never have purchased, even if he did have more of it.

In the book of Acts, as Peter and John were walking through the temple courts in Jerusalem, a crippled beggar asked them for money. Peters answer to him was simply, I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you... (Acts 3:6, ESV). I would tell my family the same thing. What I do have, money cant buy. And they can have it too. God can be just as real for them as He has always been for us. And when He promises them, I am with you, they will never lack any good thing.

If I were being totally honest, I do have one major regret in life: I wish I could have told more people about Jesus, and would have been a bolder witness. But I am praying that, by Gods grace, the books I have written will perhaps accomplish what I didn't. People that I havent met, in places that I never went, can still read what I have written. And like that little boys lunchin Jesus hands, five loaves of bread and two fish, or maybe even my four books and one life, can still feed a multitude. With God, all things are possible! Hallelujah!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490824918

Dan Tice

It has to be said at least once that, without my wife’s help, I don’t know if these books would ever have been written. The last three could not have been written in such a short time, that’s for sure. That is because I have a wife who is so young; when I retired five years ago, she just kept on working to support my “habit,” letting me be a full-time author. I can’t thank her enough for doing that for me. (She’ll be a “saint” in heaven someday.) But besides that, I knew nothing about computers. So I had to lean heavily on her expertise, and also the E-mail messages from the publisher she would read to me. Plus she designed most of the covers. And in this book, she even wrote two of the letters to our son and his wife (chapters 12 and 21). And all of that doesn't even include the hours of tireless proofreading and correcting of my mistakes after each book was written. Her “fingerprints” are all over my books. She is definitely “the wind beneath my wings.” I want to give her all of the long-overdue credit that she deserves. The only other ones who deserve more credit for making me an author would be my mentor, Dr. Bob Taussig—and the Lord Himself, of course. You take Him out of my books, and you would end up with a flimsy “flyer” that would never get off the ground! Anything worth accomplishing is never done all alone—just read the credits at the end of your next favorite movie. If any readers need to know more about me, they can just read the “About the Author” pages in my other three books. I have never liked to repeat myself when I’m writing things. (Maybe deep inside, I want to save trees! ...Or more likely, I believe I’m simply all done now, and we’ll just leave it at that.)

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Copyright © 2014 Dan & Deb Tice .

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-2491-8 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2492-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2493-2 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902024

WestBow Press rev. date: 2/7/2014

CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER  1  Mountain Top Experiences

CHAPTER  2  My Childhood Miracle

CHAPTER  3  A Car Accident In College

CHAPTER  4  My Testimony (Part I) At Sterling College

CHAPTER  5  My Testimony (Part Ii) At Kansas State University

CHAPTER  6  My Brother Also Gets Saved

CHAPTER  7  The Revival In My Hometown

CHAPTER  8  A Robbery In Los Angeles

CHAPTER  9  A Battle In Vietnam

CHAPTER  10  Navy Memories

CHAPTER  11  My Mother’s Vision Of My Future Wife

CHAPTER  12  My Wife’s Own Story Of Her Healing

CHAPTER  13  When I First Met My Wife

CHAPTER  14  Hawaii And My Day Of Pentecost

CHAPTER  15  My Proposal And My Wife’s Vision

CHAPTER  16  Our Wedding And Her Vision Fulfilled

CHAPTER  17  A Short Story About A Bowling League And A Baby Girl

CHAPTER  18  Our Trip To Korea

CHAPTER  19  Springfield And Beloit

CHAPTER  20  Bazine And Amarillo

CHAPTER  21  Our Miracle Baby

CHAPTER  22  Angels, Angels, Angels

CHAPTER  23  Storm Stories

CHAPTER  24  Miracle On Court Street

CHAPTER  25  Angels In The Outfield

CHAPTER  26  My Father’s Sunset

CHAPTER  27  An Afterthought

CHAPTER  28  An Encore

The Infamous Appendix

CHAPTER  29  By My God…I Leaped Over A Wall (Psalm 18:29, K.j.v.)

CHAPTER  30  Let None Of Them Be Lost!

CHAPTER  31  The Mission Field Back Home

About The Authors

This book is dedicated to

Keith Portenier,

who read my first book,

Short Courses on Tall Subjects,

and encouraged me to write

a second book about the stories

he heard me tell.

Also, to my dear wife and co-author,

Debbie,

without which about half of these stories

would never have happened!

INTRODUCTION

This book was originally written in the first three months of 2010. My youngest son, Matt, had recently gotten married to his beautiful wife, Noelle, and I decided to write them a series of letters about our spiritual experiences. It would not be a biography exactly, but just stories of answers to prayer and small miracles that our family had experienced over the years. And, of course, I wanted to include my testimony of how I became a Christian.

They were living in Chicago at the time, and as I wrote the letters, I would immediately mail each one for them to read the moment it was done. When the last one was finished, I collected them all into a book that I took to a local printer to make spiral-bound copies. But that was as far as it went.

In the years that followed, I wrote two other books that have since been published; in the course of writing them, I found myself referring back to this book and the stories it told. So at last I decided to publish this one as well. But as I was reading it anew, I could see some changes that would be required, so that is what I have set about to do right now. And I also wanted to add two or three additional stories in the Infamous Appendix section at the end.

So without further ado, this is the revised and hopefully improved edition of The Matt & Noelle Letters.

CHAPTER 1

MOUNTAIN TOP EXPERIENCES

Dear Matt & Noelle,

My earliest memory was of a trip. I was only 3 years old at the time. It was in 1949 when my mother was expecting my brother, Ron, and we took a trip clear out to California before he was born.

What I remember was four specific things. I remember Las Vegas, but not the bright lights or the desert; just a big room with a man up on stage, far, far away. (I wasn’t very big.) He was probably a comedian—I don’t remember any music.

Then in California, I had fond memories of the beach and the ocean. My dad told me that I would run down to the water’s edge, and pick up sea shells until the waves came in and got my feet all wet, and then I would run back again. I had an early love affair with sea shells and rocks. One of my favorite books as a child was a picture book showing diamonds and rubies and opals and pearls.

Also I had a scary memory, of big statues and marble halls. I even had nightmares about it occasionally. My dad explained that we had gone to Forest Lawn cemetery and it had all of those things. When I was in California later on as an adult, I went to visit Forest Lawn again, to face my old monsters, and to see the graves of some very famous people.

Finally, I remember Chinatown in San Francisco, and the smell of Oriental soup, and the exotic buildings with dragons on the roof. It was my first interest in becoming a missionary to China, which never actually materialized; but I did get to visit Hong Kong in the Navy and meet some missionaries.

Then, after Ron was born and we were in grade school, we took another memorable trip to the east coast. My dad’s two sisters, Ruth (Courter) and Elva (Michal), lived in Syracuse, New York, and Newport News, Virginia, and we traveled from one to the other, seeing the entire east coast along the way.

We got to visit Washington D.C., and climb to the top of the Washington monument, and visit the Smithsonian Institute. In New York, we saw the Statue of Liberty, again climbing to the top to view the amazing skyline. And I loved Times Square and, later, Niagara Falls.

One highlight in New York City was seeing a Billy Graham crusade in person, in Madison Square Garden. My mom had never been on an escalator before, and we had to go up at least 3 flights to our seats. She would start to step on the escalator, then just squeal and back away. After this had happened a few times, a big police officer came over, and just picked her up (only 5 feet tall and 110 lbs.) and set her on the moving steps. He rode up with us to the next flight and the next, doing the same thing. So we finally did get to our seats to hear Billy preach!

But my favorite trips of all, as a child growing up on the farm in hot, dusty Kansas (the decade of the 1950’s was notoriously hot and dry), were our annual trips to the mountains in Colorado. Every year after harvest my father would wake us up after midnight and say, It’s time! My favorite words! We would pile in the car and sleep all the way to the Colorado state line, then wake up and scan the horizon for the outline of the mountains. You could see Pikes Peak a hundred miles away across the plains. We would go to Colorado Springs, where so many of our relatives lived after the Dust Bowl years drove them from the farm, or to Denver or Estes Park. In my childhood, it was as close to heaven as I ever was: cool and smelling like pines, with vistas like I had never seen.

However, after we had been there for a week one time, my father reminded me of the farmer that he was. He looked at the cliffs and rocks and forests, and sighed, Look at all that wasted ground! Not forty acres to grow a field of wheat anywhere. I’ve heard it said that fruit that God wants in our lives grows best in the valleys, not on the mountain peaks. So I suppose he was right. But I do still dearly love the mountains, and to this day, if I take a trip that doesn’t have at least a tall hill or two, I’m just a little disappointed. (And skyscrapers don’t count. I’m sorry.)

I’m not just rambling. I do have a point. The Great Plains are very symbolic of our daily lives. Nothing too dramatic, a lot of hard work there on the farm, with not a lot of reward—except that it’s a great place to have a family, to live with good, honest neighbors who go to church and attend school programs, and help each other with the farm work when they are in the hospital or on vacation. Good stuff, but sometimes mundane.

But every once in a while, God suddenly shows up in our lives. A dramatic answer to prayer, a miracle, a close brush with death that surely must have involved a guardian angel or two! A mountain-top experience.

Looking back over your life, these mountain peaks still give you a thrill that you can’t deny, and their memory is as vivid as the trips I just described. These experiences are what I want to write to you about, not in the least downplaying the smaller, day-to-day instances