I first met Yee during my seminary years when my part-time job included cleaning his office. I grew to know his bright personality when I came around to empty the trash. I also remember the way he opened up our world as seminarians in his class on multicultural ministries.

Twenty years later, I met him again. This time I was a pastor, and Yee asked if I would mentor Wendy Cheung, a Taiwanese-American student studying to be a pastor through the TEEM (Theological Education for Emerging Ministries) program. Yee created TEEM to train committed leaders who weren't yet ordained but were already serving in specialized communities. They needed an alternate, shorter route than the traditional four-year master of divinity program. Today, about 100 ELCA pastors have completed the TEEM program.

Cheung and I shared our lives and faith as she studied, took classes and became an ordained ELCA pastor. She is amazing-vibrant, committed and intelligent enough to study theology in her second language. She now serves Grace Chinese Lutheran, a thriving congregation in north Seattle. I continue to learn from her as a pastor.

When I met Yee during seminary, I couldn't imagine the possibilities God had in store for us. Our partnership expanded my picture of God. And now when I think of "little Lutherans," I think of the dozens of children at Cheung's church whose Asian parents are learning to be Christian at the same time as their little ones. I think of the kids in my congregation whose vision of God was stretched by Cheung, Yee and TEEM .

Our kids walk us into unknown futures, even though at this moment we lead them by their little preschool hands. We can't imagine yet when, where and how our kids will tell God's story in their lives. We'll have to trust — as Yee trusted from the time he was a little boy — that God's story will certainly unfold.

More: Read "Sage for the ages," an article about Yee in the May 2009 issue of The Lutheran.