Yesterday I was chatting with a friend who works for a NASCAR race team. We were talking about his job for the team. During a race he’s monitoring track temperatures, tire pressure, track bar adjustments, and other driver’s pit stops. I’ve been out there with him in the pits. He and I know that his car is set up better than Carl Edwards, and yet Carl wins?

“Regardless of how well a car is set up, it really comes down to the driver,” my friend says.

I was thinking of my life in relationship to a “well set up” NASCAR car and came across this:

Here’s who you are, “Two cells now united in a miracle. Two cells, each containing twenty-three chromosomes and within each chromosome hundreds of genes, which would govern every characteristic about you, from the color of your eyes to the charm of your manner, to the size of your brain. With all the combinations….God could have created three hundred thousand billion humans, each different from each other. But who did He bring forth?” (From Og Mandino’s, “The Greatest Miracle in the World”)

“What is it about Carl Edwards that allows him to win or place 2nd or 3rd in so many races,” I asked my friend. “He’s not afraid. The best car still drives awful. He’s just not afraid.”

Mission Discovery’s Don Schreier is a Carl Edwards to me. Don was a Pennsylvanian coal miner who was led to God by his wife Karen. He left the Marine Corp after a knee injury, went to seminary, and got his masters degree. Don joined the Mission Discovery staff 18 years ago and within years expanded our work with the addition of HOLD the Children, ministry division that helps over 450 children go to school and have a hot meal each day in Haiti and Jamaica. He was the visionary of the HOLD the Children Children’s Home in Haiti that rescues child slaves.

With the completion of an intense doctorial study Don believes God is calling him to new things. He leaves the work of HOLD the Children in good hands. Rich Rohde will oversee the program now.

Don has driven well. He has impacted thousands of people, saved lives in Haiti. We will miss him so much, and know that he is well prepared for God’s next big chapter and the checkered flag.

Thank you Don for what you have meant to us at Mission Discovery. Especially me!