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L. Frank Baum

Dear Brennan,

We first met in Kenya when you came to be the spiritual director for a conference I was the director of called the Christian Medical Dental Society Continuing Medical Education program (CMDS-CME). It was, and still is, a program bringing CME credits to missionary doctors and dentists. I had heard some of your tapes and was fascinated to meet you. Being program director and having control over such things, I placed you in a room next to mine at Brackenhurst Baptist Conference Centre, about an hour outside of Nairobi. I remember being struck that you were frightened about coming to Africa and that after knowing each other only a day you were comfortable sharing that with me.

The missionaries were from all denominations and sponsoring home boards, but, not surprisingly, the largest single group was here with the International Mission Board. Some of our CMDS board members had objected to a renegade, married Franciscan coming to lead a group that had only a handful of Catholic missionaries. But the missionaries clung to your ragamuffin message like refugees around a water truck. With your mixture of profound truth and poetic license, hungry shepherds were fed and healers were themselves healed. It was truly amazing. When you weren’t leading the evening worship services, you were being pursued by a steady stream of missionaries who pleaded for individual time with you. You invited the three or four Catholics and myself to celebrate the Eucharist with you in the predawn time before breakfast. I remember being struck by the fact that you had brought with you a large candle, which took up a good portion of the small single piece of luggage you’d brought to Africa. In the light of that candle, in the blending of our voices in ancient ritual prayers, I came to a whole new level of intimacy with our Lord and felt that the Reformers would have done well to have held on to this approach to the sacrament.

Soon after we were all home from Africa, I drove from Louisville to Cincinnati to have dinner with you at the end of a retreat weekend there. During that dinner you wondered what I, as a psychiatrist interested in group dynamics, thought of the idea of getting together a group of Christian men, maybe ten to fourteen, for a week of sharing and praying for one another. Different from the other weekend prayer retreats you led, this would be comprised of men who for the most part knew only you. We’d meet each other at the weekend. You’d pick the participants from men met in your travels; I thought it was just crazy enough to be worth trying. I agreed to assist in any way I could. Out of that evening grew your invitations to all of the others for what would be our first meeting in Gulf Shores. As you know, that was really supposed to be the one and only meeting of the group. But, at the end of it, we all wanted to do it one more time the next year. And it went from there.

Yours,

Bob

Brennan,

We miss you and love you. You know how God has used you in our lives both through your writing and our personal relationship. We want you to know that we are with you in this stage of your life and will continue to pray for you. Your guidance has molded our entire perception of God and His attitude toward us. Seeing God as our Abba would not have been possible had you not been a part of our lives and modeled that concept. We also learned to listen to the “still, small voice” through the disciplines we first heard from you, and that is why we are in the good place we are today.

Thanks and God Bless,

Butch and Suzie

Dear Brennan,

Each day I pray that God will go easy on you. But I thank God that He has you in a safe place with loving caretakers. When I think of the near-miraculous help that you have been to Lolly and me, I am swept away with gratitude. There is no denying that had you not been kicked out of that Catholic venue in Providence and then made your way to our house, my darling Lolly would never have