Heaven is rejoicing

…and on earth we celebrate God’s victory.

Yesterday, Pastor Dennis Trout went to be with Jesus. How sweet for him! And yet here we can only say that we wish we had more time with him.

His legacy is immense-just look at the Facebook page set up for family and friends. 9 out of 10 posts I see are to that page, and this morning it was almost every single post focused on his life, legacy, and eternal life with Jesus.

Pastor Dennis and his lovely wife Linda

But I’m not going to look at Facebook to determine this great man’s legacy. I look to the fruit of his life.

Pastor Dennis was {what an awful word-was…so final and past-tense} our Marriage and Family pastor, basketball coach, Biblical Ethics teacher, and those are just some of his official titles. So to examine his legacy, I look at the fruit.

• practically everyone who has been married at our church has gone through PT’s courtship questions and premarital counseling, and many many people have had him tell their story during their wedding.
• it amazes me how many young men he coached on and off the basketball court! On the facebook page for him, most of the young men addressed him as Coach, and they thanked him for coaching them in life; basketball was only a small aspect of what he trained these men in.
• ahh, 11th grade Ethics class. I remember feeling trepidation on my first day of 11th grade, because I did not know what to expect from PT’s class, and I had heard that he was a hard teacher! But that class ended up being my favorite class {it’s everyone’s favorite, I think!} and Pastor Trout is so endearing. 

He wrote a “Passion Prayer” that each student in the class had to “perform” with all their hearts-yelling, dancing, jumping, etc- and preferably in an accent. Oh, the humiliation. But afterwards, I think we all realized that we as a class were more closely bonded {who wouldn’t be after that experience!?}, and Pastor Trout taught us more seriously about the passion we all should have in our lives.



Pastor Dennis, I know you’re dancing with Jesus right now, and I’m so happy for you, that you are healed and that you are seeing the face of God, the face that you represented so well to us. I’m sad for myself, that I won’t hear you call me Deborah for a while. I’m so, so thankful for everything you are and for your passion. It was not in vain, and I pray that the coming generations can live up to your example. I love you, PT!