I love to write about people. When I was a newspaper reporter and editor, my favorite things to write were the feature stories about what people did, saw, experienced, achieved or travailed in life.
Miss Didi Nicely is one of my two all-time favorite teenagers. She joins Laurie Winfield Griffin, a lovely grown woman now with a husband, family and wonderful career. I taught her in junior high for three years in Montgomery, Alabama years ago.
Miss Didi Nicely, a home-schooled senior at my church, received word that Barry College, a Christian-focused college here in Georgia, awarded her their prestigious Presidential Scholarship. The honor means full tuition for Didi, a huge blessing for Didi and her folks. She is still awaiting word on other scholarship offers.
Didi recently competed with more than 200 other top students for various scholarship programs at Barry. Didi interviewed and tested for two days. When the results were in Didi scored out among the top ten students competing. Not the top 10 percent. THE TOP TEN STUDENTS! That’s the top one-half of one percent. Half a percent. Now, I’m no good at math, but even I recognize that’s way up there.
Right up there with all those academic accolades is Didi’s heart for Jesus. She is an authentic follower of Jesus and shares the Gospel with passion and compassion. She will make a wonderful witness and a stellar example of allowing Jesus to live in her and through her to reach others for Jesus. She has a heart for missions and a heart for the children and people of Romania.
In addition to all that Didi is a goofball! She has a finely honed sense of humor and uses it with abandon. She’s also extraordinarily talented in a bunch of stuff. She has her own website jewelry business and crafts pieces out of knickknacks and paper clips and bottle caps and other things you’d never think would appear in creative jewelry.
Another thing about Didi, I’m convinced Didi has a condo or an apartment somewhere on another planet. She speaks a language about all the videos and TV stuff she watches and reads that I don’t comprehend. It’s become a joke between us. I razz her on Facebook when she comes up with all these posts about the characters from the planet where she lives.
Her vocabulary includes all the words in the English language (she can spell them and define them if you ask her to) as well as a 50,000-plus word vocabulary in the other three or four inner-planetary languages she speaks fluently. She sometimes uses those words with me and I just look at her like a deer in the headlights. I have absolutely no clue what or whom she’s talking about. When we engage in conversation I have to keep on my toes. I know if I’m not intently tuned into her wavelength and listen carefully, she’ll be over my head before I can say, “Really?”
I am eager to stay in touch with her as she begins her journey with the Lord as a young adult this fall. I am eager to see how this wonderful young woman will impact the world for Jesus.
I’ll keep you posted.
Please pray for Didi and her mom and dad as they pray about and ponder the many decisions they face in the next few months. Please pray for God’s wisdom and guidance and His continued blessings and grace on Didi and her family. This young lady is special.
If you’re interested in reading the post about Winfield (that’s what I called her, and she called me Sawyer), as well as a seventh-grader I taught who is now a fine young family man, follow this link.
For His Glory 