Parent Compass Radio

Real Christian Families: I am especially excited to hear from our keynote speaker Ricky Dixon. Now, for those of you who don't know, if you've been living under a rocky road, terrible joke. Uh he is the retired CEO of Blue Bell Creameries. He's author of the really awesome title One Scoop at a Time Stories and Lessons from Fear to Faith book. Uh he's husband to Anita who I think is is here right now. Um and he's a father of five children and eight grandchildren. Um he's a man whose hallmark is leadership, integrity, and his Christian faith. Let's give a very very warm welcome for Ricky Dixon.

Ricky Dixon: Wow, I really Well, hello. I'm glad y'all could be here. What an introduction and also what a movie. I think we'd rather maybe just continue playing the movie. Why not? And bring out more ice cream. What do we say? No, it's definitely an honor to be here. I'm going to move these real quick. Okay. Um it's great to be here. I know the hour is kind of getting late, but at the same time uh what an event and what a cause and and Natalie, you've done such a tremendous job in 10 years. Uh so exciting and just the beginning.

Just the beginning. I love the theme 'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus. And when we were talking, I couldn't help but also think uh oh taste and see that the Lord is good. One of my favorite verses of scripture, of course, it ties in very nicely uh to to what I do. Um and I thought the theme of that along with and I did bring just a cover. I'm not promoting the book, but here I am promoting the book. Uh but um you've got ice cream and you've got taste, you've got see, you've got feel, and the senses.

And I thought how beautifully we are made by God in all these different ways to taste, see, smell, feel, touch the goodness of our Lord. And I really think that he not only wants us to taste and see, but he also wants us to live in his goodness so loudly that others can see and sense what he's doing in our lives. And so I want to go on a little bit of a journey. Uh I want to go through some of those senses. Um and maybe by the end of the the the talk, uh we can see a little bit clearer to what God is doing in each one of our lives because we all have a purpose, we all have a calling, we all have uh a perfect plan that he has from the very beginning of time.

It's in scripture. So uh I want to start by asking a simple question. We're going to go with the sound part of the senses. How loud is your life? How loud is your life? Now, my wife is doing the remote control. She's also doing the camera. And so there we go. I was waiting for the volcano to come up. It's okay, sweetie. We've never done this before. She goes, I think I can do this for you. So put her on the spot. How loud is your life? And the reason I say that is because no matter what we say, our life has a volume.

And so not only what we say, but how we live. How loud is your life? Now, let me ask you the question that is very simple. Um back in 19 or 1883, what you see on the screen is a volcano. What makes this special is the sound that it made on the day that it erupted. Now, let's put it real quick in perspective. When we talk, if we're sitting at the table, you're looking at about a 50 to 60 decibel conversation. If you uh were to go to a football game, depending upon what team you root for, you may get up to 100 decibel.

Uh you'll hear where I went to school coming up here in just a minute. And you know, I don't know if we ever hit 100. Uh we came maybe close once or twice and during a commercial break. But uh you go to like lightning about 120 decibel. At 150 to 160 decibel, the sound is so loud that your eardrums vibrate to the point that at over 160 decibels, they erupt. They break. Back in 1883 on August 27th, the loudest sound ever recorded on the earth took place. And it was a volcano Krakatoa, which was east of Java down in the Indonesian Islands.

The sound was so loud that it created 100 ft tsunami waves that traveled all across. 36,000 people died from that volcano eruption. The sound traveled five times over the next 7 days all the way around the earth. It was 3,000 miles away they could they had recordings of the sound of this volcano. So put that in perspective. If you're in New York City and you're walking down the street and you hear this sound of a volcano erupting in Washington, the state on the other side of the country, that's the distance which this sound took place.

So I ask you how loud is your sound? And in the case of the fact that it went around the earth over and over, not necessarily the sound you could hear, but the effect of the sound was what was right behind it. So how loud is your sound? Now, what's neat is we all start with a plain clean slate and we are all even. Meaning that when mom goes into the hospital and mom and dad and the doctors and the nurses are all in the room, what's the one thing they want to hear when we come out?

The cry of a baby. That's right. And that sound is joyous. Everybody's happy, dad's happy, the nurses happy, the doctors happy, mom's probably not happy, but she is happy. Don't get me wrong. But that same sound 2 weeks from then at 2:30 in the morning, same sound isn't quite as joyous. And then all of a sudden you hear mama and daddy and everybody's happy and that sounds good again until you hear no. No. So depending upon the sound in which you're making and what you say behind it is what defines us and who we are.

So I think what we have to do is we journey through this senses is what sound do you make no matter where you are in your life. For me, I'm retired uh from about for a couple of years. But as my wife and I have talked about, I feel like I'm in the fourth quarter. And what do they do when you enter the fourth quarter? And I don't walk around the house with my four up in the air like the football players do. But at the same time, I feel like this is the time that you want to give your very best.

So how we navigate through that? Let's start with first purpose. I think that each and every one of us has a God-given purpose. He put us on the earth to uh for his will, for his design. And so not only hearing and trusting what God has for us, but what is our purpose? Now, for me, I got to be honest. I I grew up in a Christian family. My mother and dad uh love the Lord. They taught us not just how to go to church and play church. They taught us actually how to have a relationship with Christ in the good times, especially so we have a foundation in the not so good times.

Well, I tried to choose a university to go to. All I know is I had a girlfriend that wanted to go to Baylor. So I went to Baylor. And uh I thought it was going to be the Mrs. Dixon, but it turned out not to be. Spoiler alert and I love my wife. She's right here. But that one decision to get me to Baylor got me in a consumer relation class. And that consumer relation class gave an assignment to follow a company for a full semester and how they relate to the consumer. So I go back to my apartment.

I called my dad and I said, I've got this project. I don't know who I'm going to what to you know, I'm in Waco. I've got to find a company. And he goes, you won't believe this, but right now I'm reading an article right when you called about this little ice cream company down in Brenham, Texas. And I thought Rocky Road or not, wherever, I thought this is uh this is a good assignment. So I went down and then it was really what I saw at that time. I thought this is really uh amazing because it wasn't the ice cream that really caught my attention.

It was the employees that worked there and the way they approached their day. They genuinely were making ice cream as if they were taking it home. And yeah, if there's something left, we'll sell it, but this is our ice cream. It was just a pride to it. So when it came time for graduation, I uh did the different interviews with different companies, but I went back to a little creamery. And uh they were really just getting started even though we were in We started in 1907 as a butter company. We were only in the the Austin and Houston and just had gone into the Dallas market.

So I thought, man, this is a jump on board. This is going to be fun. Well, my career took me all the way up into Oklahoma. And when they asked me to go go go to Oklahoma City, they said this is a great opportunity because we're going to grow continually. And if you go there, that this could be a stepping stone for your career. Could be a promotion, who knows. And so the decision whether to leave where I was at and to go, I said, well, I believe this is truly where God is taking me.

And so I'm in Oklahoma and I 'm waiting and I 'm waiting and I 'm waiting. I don't get that phone call. And I'm thinking, gosh, what did I miss? I prayed about it. And yet uh things weren't working at the pace and the time that I was expecting. And then I got the phone call. We're going to have this meeting. And after the meeting goes is over with, we want to talk to you. And so the meeting was over. I'm pumped. I go into the room. I'm thinking this is the moment. And I realized that this wasn't a fun one of those kind of conversations.

In fact, it was just the opposite. And for about 45 minutes on a on a yellow I never will forget page and a half of single-lined written-out notes on things that they saw in me that I wasn't doing, things that they were hoping that I do would do I wasn't doing. But it was just one of those moments where I had totally missed out somehow, some way. I had drifted from center not intentionally, but I'd left where I should be. Well, I went back to the hotel that I was staying in. I sat down on the end of the bed and I had that conversation that hopefully you probably have all had.

You pray to God. I was listening to the story of the couple and I thought, man, that's that's exactly the same thing. God, what did what did I miss? I don't understand. You brought me here. I thought that there was going to be this promotion, that we're going to continue to grow. And I I I in about that time in my spirit, I heard God very clearly say, I didn't bring you here for a promotion. I brought you here for my purpose. Now, I got to admit I didn't like that. I thought, okay, could you have told me that back before I had moved up here?

But then it dawned on me no that God, the creator of the universe, actually had a purpose for my life. And I thought I can either get on board with what he has planned or I could fight it. And I could go down again as she she said about opening up a restaurant or wherever that amount of take it be. And I was determined at that point if the God of the universe loves me loves me enough that has a purpose for my life, if I would just pay attention, then I'm on board. I'm on board.

Whatever that means. And let's throw uh promotions out the window, let's throw titles out the window. Just my only request, if you could say that, was God, whatever that is, put within me a passion. Put within me a passion. I want to be able to love whatever that is, the way you have planned it for me to love. And so I was thinking, you know, like that. I mean, that's easy to have passion over that kind of a picture. That's why I threw that one in there. I love the author Mark Batterson and he he writes um the day you start dying is the day you stop dreaming.

And ironically, the day you start living is the day you find a dream we're dying for. You see, at some point in our life, we quit living out of our imagination and we start living off of our memory. And that's the time we stop creating our future and we start repeating our past. That's the day we stop walking by faith and we start walking by logic. But that's the day we give up on what if possibilities. And look back and see if only regrets. But you've got to be lined up with what his purpose is.

You have to be lined up in his timeline. But I prayed for that passion within me. God put that in me. And so really, to be honest, what happened was when that promotion came, I found myself actually running our manufacturing facility in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Someone else actually got that title. But that was okay because I was having the time of my life. I mean, again, I was selling that, but now I get to make it. You get to eat all you want. Sell the rest, right? I mean, that's how it goes. Uh so I I think that uh the thing about that is is being where you're supposed to be and knowing that you're supposed you're there where you're supposed to be and then just living in a way that you can honor God through every step.

But then comes what I would say the third P and the way we make our sound. And that third P is patience. Now, I come from three generations of dentist. I was the fourth generation. And people say, why didn't you become a dentist? And I said, it's very very simple. I have no patience. Okay. I I'm sorry. I always throw one dad joke in there. The patience is is it's it's the process of what God puts us through. It's the patience that makes us who we are. I love the picture here of the Chinese bamboo tree.

The Chinese bamboo tree is the tallest tree that actually grows approximately 90 to 100 ft tall. And what's amazing about the Chinese bamboo tree is it takes 5 years to reach that five uh the 90 to 100 ft level. But what's interesting about it is when you plant the seed of the Chinese bamboo tree, you have to water it, cultivate it, fertilize it, water it, cultivate it, fertilize it, water for 4 and a 1/2 years. You may see about an inch or two come out of the ground, but it's very easy to look at and see, God, am I supposed to be doing this?

I mean, this thing's not even growing for 4 and 1/2 years. But in that last 5 to 6 week period, it shoots out of the ground to the height of 90 to 100 ft tall. So I ask a simple question. How long does it take to grow a Chinese bamboo tree? And you want to say 5 weeks, but the answer is 5 years because the 4 and 1/2 years of the 4 years and 46 weeks that it's you you're not seeing it grow. It's setting roots down below. And it's building up string to when it does come out of the ground and those trials do come.

And they will come that they can withstand those storms. And uh so I love that story. I love the fact that the Chinese bamboo tree reminds me to be patient even in times that I don't understand. God, why do you have me here? What are we doing? And again, I I love the video because it really truly showed that we have those raw questions that we ask. But why we're asking those if we just can keep our eyes focused on Christ? He's shaping and molding and making. And he's doing the watering, he's doing the cultivating if you all allow him to do that.

I can't help but think about when I got the phone call in 2015 from Paul Cruesy, the president of the company at the time. We found out we had listeria in the product. Now, listeria is not supposed to be an ice cream. I'm just In fact, we didn't really even think that was something that was possible. When you think of listeria, more importantly listeria monocytogenes, it's a pathogen that uh normally can be found anywhere, but you don't find it in a product that's pasteurized and then put in a -20 degree environment. So in the ice cream ministry, it's a very low risk.

But you know, I can sit here and try to defend it all day long, but we had it in a product. And I will tell you the days that followed it went from one product to two products to one plant to two plants. And I could spend a whole another hour explaining it. And I won't on what we think might have happened. But what I will tell you is we got on our knees and we prayed hard that God, we don't understand this, but we're going to keep our head down and we're going to rely on you to walk us through this process.

And if this is the end of the run after 108 years at that particular time, then praise you. But hopefully it 's not. And so we shut down in April of 20 April 21st of 2015 and we didn't open back up to September 1st. And in that time, we took everything out of the plants. We took the floor up, we took the walls down, we took the ceiling down. We talked to everybody that we could talk to that deals with listeria. And we we attacked it. We now test everything that we make before we put it out.

We probably gone from here all the way over here, but at the same time, when you eat a bowl of ice cream that I think we had ice cream tonight. Yeah. Uh we um don't have to worry about something like that. But that little listeria reminds me of that little thing called sin. And you don't realize that listeria likes uh to hide in a cool damp area until it wants to just kind of step out. And when it steps out, it takes over. And it's almost impossible to get rid of it unless you take the steps to do so to really eradicate it.

And then you go on full court press to keep it out. That's the way we should treat sin. Because you let the door open, the next thing you know, you've got the problem. And so I'm very thankful even though I've been retired uh for about 2 years after 43 years with Blue Bell. Uh I um will say that there are days that I miss eating the ice cream, but I don't necessarily miss some of those issues. But at the same time, if I can't help I if I could take you to the scene in Mark 4 where the disciples are on the ship and Jesus goes down below and the waves are coming in and they're crashing hard.

And they go and they wake them up, which still blows my mind. I don't know how you sleep on a ship or a boat. But Jesus is asleep to the point where they have to wake him up. They say, wake up. Don't you care that we're going to die? And what does he say? Ye of little faith. Almost one of those mic drops. Boom. Sea goes calm. And I will tell you in the times of my life that I really feel that man, the waves are coming over the top. I think of that story and I curl up with my Jesus knowing that if he can sleep through the storm, then I'll sleep right there beside him.

It's the peace I feel like passes all understanding because even in the hardest of times when you can get to that point, there's nothing better than being in the arms of Christ. The last or the next one right off of this will bounce pretty quick is walking by faith. And I shared that with you when it comes to our story of Blue Bell. There's a lot of other stories that I could share. For the most part, ice cream is a fun product and I've got so many fun stories that relate to the product. But more importantly, relate to what I'm trying to explain and what I'm talking about.

When it comes to all the different senses, you know, when when we try ice cream and you look at it as I look at it, I'm already judging what it's going to taste like. You go through the process, what it's going to feel, is it melted, is it hard? I see it. The same is true with our walk, the same is true with our sound. And so we like to say at at Blue Bell that we create memories. We don't make ice cream, we make memories. And so ice cream usually takes you somewhere uh which I think is pretty exciting.

I I wanted just to share a couple with you real quick and then I'll conclude. But um the first one is Uh go ahead and hit the next slide. This is a ransom note that I got from a 12 year old. And you can't really see it the top left hand corner, but it's a picture of cows. And it says, we got your cows. I love the spelling you are. We got your cows. Bring back cantaloupe and cream or else. There's a picture of hamburger. You got to love it. I wrote her back and I said, unfortunately looking at the picture, the cows are not smiling.

Our cows think Brenham is heaven and they're always smiling. Therefore, you may have gotten the wrong blue ice cream. We'll leave it at that. The next uh letter I wanted to real quick share with you is an actual letter that came from a lady. And it starts out, wanted to write you to share the memory of a special man that I grew up with, my Paul. Now, I won't read the letter because of time, but the letter talks about Paul, her grandfather. And what got my attention is she wrote this letter the day that he passed away.

And I'm thinking, why would you write an ice cream company a letter? But then you go on to read Paul had a passion and a love for Blue Bell. And he had a special freezer that he would keep all the different flavors of Blue Bell. And I'm thinking, I would like this guy. I like this guy. And whenever you would go to his house, he would say, what flavor do you want? And if you didn't give him an answer, then he would just go get him whatever flavor he thought you needed. But Paul had Alzheimer.

And as years progressed, he stopped uh recognizing people to the point where he in fact stopped remembering Blue Bell. But every day around 4:00, they would take a bowl of homemade vanilla. And he would start to eat it and his face would light up and his eyes I mean, she wrote it beautifully, but and the line that got me, she said it was at that moment we got our Paul back. Yeah, those are one of those letters you write and shut the door and you close the blinds and you pray no one calls. But I thought, wow, ice cream of all things.

But at the same time, I can't help but think that's the impact that a product has. It's not the product, it's what you expect out of the product. And same in our Christian walk when people look at us and the way our sound is developed and what we say and what we do and how we live our life for Christ. The last letter I'll share is uh a real special letter that came in. And I'll go again fast, but this is the old taste and see that the Lord is good. Think of it. December 28th on a Friday night, we get uh 4:30 in the afternoon, my uh administrative assistant gets a phone call.

And she says, my the lady on the other line said, my sister is dying. She's had cancer. And I'm panicked because we think she's going to go real soon. She has two wishes. She wants to live to 59 and the other is she wants when we have our celebration of life, we want to have blue she wants Blue Bell to be served at her celebration of life. So if you knew my administrative assistant, you know, okay, she got the right person, let's just say. She goes on. The lady was in Alabama. She connects, we get it worked out.

And you'll have to get the book to read the rest of the story. No, I'll tell you quick. I mean, there's a lot more to it. But what is so amazing I want to get this She she um wanted the little wooden spoons. And so that kind of okay, that we can do that, but you know, we didn't really ask why. But then she followed back up and said, why do you want the wooden spoons? She got both whiskers by the way. She lived at 59 and then when they did have the celebration of her life, they had Blue Bell.

But they wanted the wooden spoons. And that's what she wrote on oh taste and see that the Lord is good that was requested by this lady. We followed back up about 6 months later just to see how the sister was doing. And at that time, that's when we learned why the wooden spoons and she shared. But what got me in this whole thing was that she shared this post on Facebook. Now, this has been I don't know how many years back. But at the time of when I'm we put this in my book, 17,000 lives had read that story.

46 states in 14 countries. And it all started by one sound, by one request. Yes, it was ice cream, but it was so much more. It was telling about Jesus through the vessel of ice cream. And so I share those three and I I say that you know, not every day is homemade vanilla. There are the days that are Rocky Road or you know, we like to say great divide that we could jump over, but I will say this and I'll conclude that I started with your sound and how loud is your life. And all the different things that are wrapped around that that when people see you, even though you don't speak, they hear you.

And how you live your life even for us that are in the fourth quarter. Go with everything that you have until the the final clock shows nothing but zeros. The greatest of the loudest sound yes may have been recorded back in 1883. But to me, the greatest sound started with a bright light that normally happens with thunder. You have lightning. And the greatest sound is first started over the the manger. Go one more slide. There we go. It started over a manger when Christ came in the world. And he lived for 33 years and so much of evil tried to keep the sound from happening to the point that they put Jesus up on the cross.

But for me, the greatest sound that ever happened came when the stone rolled away. Christ is alive. And that sound, ladies and gentlemen, goes around the earth till this day, 2,000 years later. But it's up to us and how we live for that sound to be told that there's a savior. His name is Jesus. What y'all do in your shows and and the what you project is so important in a world that's so dark. But the beauty is we know how this ends. And if you don't know who Jesus Christ is your personal savior, man, please find me or find someone up here because it we're talking eternity.

And that sound is unbelievable. So 'tis so sweet to trust. I'm so glad I learned to trust him. Precious Jesus, savior, friend. And I know that you are with me, will be with me till the end. Thank y'all very much.