An evening with our hero.

We had the privilege last night of meeting a man who Shawn and I respect and admire so much, Mr. Mike Huckabee (future President of the USA, in case you wondered).

He was at Davis Kidd bookstore in Nashville doing a book signing of his newest book, A Simple Christmas. The guy has to be exhausted. He's covering 60 cities in 3 weeks.

At around 8:20pm, he arrived with applause and greeted the 200 or so people there, then began greeting each person individually and signing their books.

To show you how close we were, my camera has no zoom. :)

We waited (nervously) in the line for about 20 minutes and brought our book for him to sign as well as this photo:

The woman in the photo is my Grams, who just passed away a few months ago. And the guy in the light blue pants? Mike Huckabee himself. (And no, the guy in the black is not related to John Stamos/"Uncle Jesse", although he looks sooo much like him! That's James Robison, an evangelist.) Mike Huckabee and my Grams and Granddaddy Ware worked together in ministry back in the 70s. When we put the picture in front of him, he asked, "Now where did you find this?" with a smile.

I told him that Reba was my grandmother and he asked, "So are you Melodie's daughter?"

Amazing! He knew who we were!!

He went on to talk about how much he loved my grandmother and how he's never heard such beautiful piano playing like hers. He told us he was so sorry to hear that she passed away and hoped that we had received his message on her memorial site (uhh yes!).

Then he asked what my parents were doing these days and we filled him in. He was so genuine, humble, grateful for the support, and kind.

We stood there with him for several minutes and it was magic. What an honor.

To cap off an already amazing night, we met Master Sergeant Whaley, who stood in front of us in line.

We thanked him for his service, then got to talking to him for a while. What a dear man. You can tell he loves the Lord and he was thrilled to tell us about how God is moving in the military these days. He had been a missionary kid in Alaska and was excited that we had graduated from Moody. When we looked him up later, we found this article about him. He actually raced in the Iditarod!

After saying goodbye, we headed outside and spotted the Huckabee tour bus (how could it be missed?).

We know we'll see him again. Hopefully in a large, white house.