I had just gotten home one afternoon last August when my wife, Linda, greeted me beside the island in our kitchen. I noticed her watching me softly as we chatted about the events of our day. After a careful pause, she switched subjects.

"We got a call today about Joe Smalley," she said, her voice quivering. "He has a brain tumor."

We stared at each other in stunned silence. "Not Joe," I muttered. Pain pierced my heart. We sank into chairs, weeping and praying for Joe and his family.

Linda told me all she knew about Joe's condition. It didn't sound good. Joe, just 42 years old, had the most aggressive kind of brain tumor. He was currently in a hospital in Freiburg, Germany. Surgery was scheduled, but it was questionable whether it would be successful.

"I think you need to go there," Linda said with resolve.

During the following days as I prayed for Joe, I received reports that he had made it through surgery and had partially regained his speech. I called him at his hospital room. Our conversation was brief but happy. "Joe," I told him, "I'm coming to Germany."

It had been 10 years since Linda and I had left Europe, where I'd worked as a writer with Campus Crusade for Christ. Joe was one of my best friends. I'd often longed to return to Germany for the camaraderie of like-minded guys like Joe, especially during times of discouragement while I pastored a country church in Oregon.

Joe was always recognizable as a leader and a go-getter. In 1978, fresh out of Florida State University, he entered the annals of "Who's Who Among Young Men in America." When I met him in Europe in 1983, he'd already written two of his five books, More Than a Game and Heroes of the NFL. He'd also been chosen Writer of the Year by the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. Joe had come to Europe to pioneer Athletes in Action--the sports ministry of Campus Crusade.

Joe's creative energy burst into his every undertaking. Traveling mostly by train throughout Europe for speaking engagements and ministry meetings, Joe seemed to always find a way to share his faith in Christ with passengers seated beside him.

Under the diligent direction of Joe and his wife, Francine, Athletes in Action-Europe spread to 16 sports-crazy European countries with 60 national staff members.

When I arrived in Müllheim, Germany, last fall, chunks of dark hair had fallen from Joe's head after radiation treatments. His vision was blurred. Long conversations drained him. He sensed the tumor growing again. A strange, heavy sensation had settled in his head. His nights were nearly sleepless, due to heavy cortisone doses for reducing swelling under his skull. At times his head ached unbearably. Under such strain, his neck and shoulder muscles had constricted as tightly as steel cords.

I tried to alleviate his muscular aches by giving him daily massages. It was satisfying to feel his tense body relax. But I knew I couldn't touch the place where he hurt the most. Only God could soothe Joe's aching heart.

	Joe Smalley went alone to Europe in 1984 to launch Athletes in Action. There he met and married Swiss staff member Francine Michel, and began raising a family (above).

"My greatest pain isn't physical," Joe told me. "It's not the thought of dying. I honestly have peace about that. I know where I am going. It's emotional pain. It's the thought of leaving my wife and my children. That is unbearably painful."

During those sleep-deprived nights I saw Joe rise in the early-morning hours to meet with God. Lying flat on his face on his living-room floor, I heard him praying in tears for his family. Every day began with the same battle, but God's mercies for Joe were new each morning. As the day dawned, Joe's eyes radiated the contents of his heart.

Joe was happy when he saw his three children rising. He set the tone for them in the home. He didn't enjoy pity parties. He joked with them and played with them.

"I sure hope these punk hair-dos don't go out of style too soon!" he hollered, laughing. "I think my new look is great, don't you?"

Remy, 9, was a bit intense as he readied himself for school. But his dad made him crack a smile. Remy is spry and surprisingly strong--like his father. He plays goalie for his youth soccer club. He is goal-minded in school also. He does nothing just so-so. And like his father, you get the feeling that you'll be hearing about this young man some day.

Michèle, 5, is sweet and cuddly. She bantered back with Joe. She's sure her jokes are as good as his. And he gave her every reason to think so, tittering at her every quip.

Steven, 1, adores his big brother as much as he does his daddy. He smiles brightly when Remy returns from school. Remy rolls on the floor with his little brother laughing. This cheers Francine, for Steven will need his older brother's hand if his daddy can't be there.

Joe wanted to leave his children a legacy that will last the rest of their lives. He wanted them to always remember how their father faced the most severe trial of his life. He wanted them to remember that he stared at death courageously because he faced it with his God.

"I have come to see that this is God's plan for me," Joe told me. "It is not His punishment; it is His beautiful plan for me. A difficult one, but a good one. I have even come to praise Him for it. This may seem difficult for some people to understand. People say, 'What about the children?' How sad for the children, but they are God's children first and foremost. God cares for His children."

But the timing for this blow was hard to grasp. Joe's dad had lost a battle with cancer just a month before Joe's condition emerged. After a difficult pregnancy, Francine had spent the first year of Steven's life waking often in the night to treat his respiratory problems. She was exhausted long before all this occurred.

Francine grieved quietly for her husband and her children. The strain was in her eyes. Her frame was notably thinner. But she, too, was determined to bear up under the most difficult challenge of her life. She spoke of an overriding peace in the midst of pain.

"I know I could not endure this if it weren't for the many people praying for us," she told me. "People we don't even know write and say they are praying. We are so encouraged by this. God has given Joe and me a beautiful picture of the body of Christ."

Shortly after coming home from the hospital, Joe struggled with a recurring fear. "Lord," he prayed, "can You still use me? I am so weak. I can't speak well. I can't read, and I can't write, and I can't drive a car. But Lord, I love You and I want to be used."

"Now there is a side of me that delights in this weakness," he told me, "because I see God using me in a unique way."

Joe and I went walking near his home on a chilly October afternoon. We were surprised by two familiar figures jogging up the trail. It was Jürgen and Ute, a couple we had often run with a decade ago. It was a happy reunion. Then Joe told them matter-of-factly about his tumor. Deep sorrow filled their eyes.

"But I am at peace," he told them in German. "I have hope. I am not afraid to die."

Jürgen looked at Joe even more pitifully, as if to soothe him in his denial.

Joe read Jürgen's eyes. "God really has given me peace," he insisted. As Joe explained the reason for his hope, the couple listened intently.

"You know," Jürgen said, "we don't usually run this way. But just as we were at the bottom of the hill, I said to Ute, 'Let's go up here today. Let's do something different.'"

Jürgen halted himself from stating the obvious, so Joe filled in the blank for him. "I think God sent you this way," he said.

After Jürgen and Ute departed, Joe told me he had never had so many opportunities to explain the gospel. It seemed that God was arranging appointments for him to tell others about Christ. In the hospital, patients and doctors asked why he seemed so much at ease with his condition. He helped lead one man to faith in Christ whose mother had been praying for him for years. German neighbors visited Joe and wanted to know more about his faith.

"They see something in me," Joe told me. "They want what I have."

The same qualities in Joe that first caught Francine's eye were still visible to her. "A man with fire in his bones for God," she calls him. She had seen Joe operating at full capacity, a good steward of the gifts God has given him. And then she saw him faithful in weakness. A gifted communicator, a visionary, an organizer, Joe knew the time had come to lay aside the mantle of leadership in ministry.

"Joe is still leading us," Francine told a gathering of Athletes in Action staff members. "[But] now he is leading us in how to suffer."

EDITOR'S NOTE: On Sunday, March 7, Joe Smalley went home to be with the Lord. Shortly before he passed away, several people, upon entering the room, saw bright light surrounding him.

Jim Morud, his wife, Linda, and three children live in Warren, OR. Jim works with the Christian Businessman's Committee in Portland.

If you would like information on the Athletes in Action ministry in Europe, you can visit their web site at http://www.aiaeurope.com.