When their son graduated from 12th grade, Colleen and Dennis Partain, Sr., asked him to “Give us one year of your life.” Dennis II had attended school near his home in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains.

“If you will take a year of mission training now, before getting into the pressures of college,” they explained, “we will help you financially at any college you choose.” Active members of the Beaumont Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Partains wanted something more for their children than lives focused on brand name clothes, “toys,” and entertainment.

A self-described rebel in his growing up years, Dennis II, age 17, was not impressed. Money for college sounded okay. But mission training?

His parents stood their ground. Out of respect for them, Dennis II finally agreed. He would be the second son from his parents’ blended family to hear the proposition—and accept it.

Earlier, Richard Ramont, an older brother, had also departed on an unexpected journey. Colleen and Dennis remembered how Richard had left home as a compliant but unmoved churchgoer, and had come home asking for baptism. He had then gone on to dedicate his abilities to God.

Now Dennis II set out for his mission training destination—Norway. After just two weeks at “The European Bible School of Health and Agriculture,” he realized he could actually have fun. In this remote school with its perceptive teachers and serious work-study program, Dennis acknowledged that he “began to see the importance of God.”

In fact, after one year of mission training in Norway (that also included time in Africa), Dennis extended his mission experience into a second year. His brother Richard, by then employed by the Tennessee-based Outpost Centers International (OCI), invited him to participate in one of the 52 evangelistic series that OCI planned to hold in the Urkraine in March 2003. Dennis said yes. Aided by a translator, the two brothers took turns preaching. Then Dennis was asked to return for another series in August.

Dennis turned to his 16-year-old brother, Ben, and asked, “How about doing the children’s program for us?” And so, after a brief training period in Norway, a third son went to the Ukraine. Ben may well travel again when he finishes 12th grade, becoming the fourth young person in the family to give his parents one year. That’s because his sister, Collie, graduated from high school in 2003 and has already begun giving them hers.

When selecting a Bible and service-oriented situation for teens, Colleen Partain will tell you that one size does not fit all. Daughter Collie chose “Witness for Life.” After taking “wilderness adventures” in Eden Valley, Colo., this past August, she will study or serve at a number of locations in the U.S. in coming months. Before she left home (rather reluctantly, as had been the case with her brothers), her father told her, “Get everything you can from the program. If there’s something you don’t like, don’t worry about it. It’s only for a year!”

“Give us one year,” is the way Dennis Sr. and Colleen have chosen to launch their children into adulthood. Although they didn’t remember reading counsel from Ellen White on this, their action mirrors her advice: “We [parents] are under sacred covenant with God to rear our children for His service. To surround them with such influences as shall lead them to choose a life of service, and to give them the training needed, is our first duty” (Ministry of Healing, p. 396).