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Look, you can't study all the time when you're in college; you need a little diversion, right? For me it was that little social action group that I put together. It's called The Vigilantes. Yeah, our social action consisted of very strategic maneuvers – otherwise known as practical jokes. One of them turned out to be very impractical, actually.
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Governors' desks were vacant. Senators' offices were empty. They might as well have just put a sign on the door – "Gone to Iowa." Yep! The election season had begun a few months ago. Then they went to New Hampshire and South Carolina and on and on in the wild and crazy 2016 Presidential election year.
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Our grandson loves to take home souvenirs from visits to our house: Rocks, shiny rocks, colorful rocks. So why not a rock tumbler for him for Christmas? Today, it's running full speed ahead tumbling rocks. For three weeks! For goodness sake, how long does it take to turn a blah rock into a beautiful rock anyway?
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Denise moved to New Jersey to join our ministry team from Florida. Hello, climate shock! Now she grew up in Detroit, so winter wasn't exactly a new idea to her. But her last years in Florida showed her there was another way to live, like not having winter. It was in the early days of April when she came into a team meeting with this big smile on her face because of something she had seen over the weekend – a robin.
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Thirty-three years. That's how long my wife and I had been married when a friend asked her how she had put up with me for 33 years and she said, "I've only seen him for four of them!" Maybe that's a secret of a happy marriage. Actually, I know another secret for every husband: remember your anniversary.
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Part of our ministry team works on a remote Native American reservation in the Southwest. In fact, our sons launched this ground-breaking outreach to Native young people many years ago now. The ministry at that reservation is now part of our bigger initiative, "On Eagles Wings".
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There's one kind of nice trait that seems to have infected every member of our family. It's how much we enjoy trying to just get the right gift for each other. So over the years you'd often hear the question, "What would you like for your birthday, or your anniversary, or for graduation, or Christmas?" And the least appreciated answer goes something like this, "I don't know. Anything is fine." That's usually what I would say. Great! I was hoping for something a little more specific. I need some guidance.
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Okay, word association test! Fruit salad. What did you think of? Well, it depends on whether or not you've been in the military. You see, if you haven't been in the military, you probably thought of some little pieces of apple, or melon in a bowl together. But if you've been in the military, maybe you think of something less edible than that kind of fruit salad. I heard from a Desert Storm veteran. I said, "What do you think of when I say "fruit salad"? He said, "Oh, ribbons and medals."
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It had been a long ministry weekend in Chicago, and as I settled into my seat on the airplane. I was looking forward to being back home in New Jersey. The going home part of the trip is always the best part. I was quite surprised, needless to say, when the pilot addressed the passengers and said, "Some of you folks may have noticed we've been going north for a while." Now, you don't have to be a geography whiz to know New Jersey is not north of Chicago. We should have been flying east all the time! Great, we've got a rookie navigator.
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For several years, we had a Latin American outreach base in Mexico where our Latin American version of a youth broadcast was recorded. My limited Spanish didn't get me very far in Mexico. I mean, how much meaningful communication can you have when all you know are words like grande and mucho? "You look grande today." Well, the Director of our Latin American Ministry at the time was a wonderful translator and he was my best hope of communicating while I was there. Needless to say, I always lit up when someone was fluent in English there. I could converse unassisted!
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I don't know how long Presidential candidates have had campaign songs, but I'll bet George Washington even had one! Now, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's was pretty famous, as it represented the Great Depression "Happy Days Are Here Again." Bill Clinton had a song for his 1992 campaign. In fact, he reached back to 1977 for his song "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." They used it so much people wanted to sing, "Please Stop Singing About Tomorrow." Now I don't know how you felt about the candidate, and I don't even know if you liked the song...but it's not a bad theme for your campaign!
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When our daughter came into our family, she had Mom and Dad all to herself. It was a wonderful life! Life was a little more complicated for our next child. He got to do what every second-born gets to do. He competed with the first born for Mom's and Dad's attention! He also had someone to measure everything by. Obviously, at every age our daughter could have a few more privileges, a little more money, a little more freedom. So when our son wanted a little different response from us on something, we would often hear sentences that began with the same few words "How come she gets to...?" - sound familiar? When in doubt, compare yourself with a brother or sister.
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We were on vacation and just made some new friends, Bill and Darlene. They lived on this beautiful farm. But not always. When they first moved to the south, they lived in a fairly primitive cabin along a river.
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I'll sure never forget my Grandmother Irene. She was one funny lady. She laughed a lot, she gave me money a lot, and she was the life of the party. Some people in our family think she was a big influence on my personality. That's not a very nice thing to say about a woman who is no longer here to defend herself, right? But there's no doubt my grandmother did have a great impact on my life. I almost never got to meet her though, because she had a serious bout with cancer before I was even born. But she made it and I got an awesome grandma out of the deal. It took some radical action on the part of the doctor to save her though. He went in and totally removed the cancer and the areas around it. It was painful, it left some scars, but I'm sure thankful that he did what he had to do to keep her alive.
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There are some cities I look forward to visiting when I get a chance in this country. San Diego, California is one of them. There's just a list of things I love to see and do when I'm there. I was thinking about a particular trip prior to the invention of cell phones. (Yes, there was life before cell phones.) I was looking forward to getting out to see the sights, I was going to visit the beach, eat at a favorite restaurant there, but the meetings I attended were back to back and this happens a lot. I mean, I couldn't get out of the hotel. I mean, I hardly even got to my room! I wasn't there to see sights; I know that. I was there for ministry work, so I'm okay.
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You know, a sunny winter day can fool you. You look out the window and tell yourself, "It looks warm." Then you go out there and you 'shiver your timbers' and catch a cold! But there is something that the sun can really warm even on a cold winter day.
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Okay, spoiler alert. I am not talking about politics.
But, I can't remember an election where emotions have run this high. And the flood of passion is swamping the pundits. And that flood is sometimes carrying people where they never should go.
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It was hard to believe. Our daughter was pregnant. My wife was going to be a grandmother! And I was going to be...married to a grandmother! Our daughter and son-in-law had a lot of fun surprising both families with this wonderful news.
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Here's what my airline ticket said: Friday afternoon Ron will fly from Newark to Houston. An hour later, he will take a connecting flight from Houston to Guadalajara, Mexico. So much for what the ticket said. I was on my way to be with the Director of our radio outreach to Latin American young people. But little did I know that my flight would be delayed for a last-minute repair. Many passengers were concerned because they, too, had connecting flights in Houston and then on to various destinations in Mexico.
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When I was young, I hate to say it, so was television. Prehistoric guy you know! One of my television heroes was a space explorer called Captain Video. I wish I still had his decoder ring.
The day they took me to that children's hospital for those tests, they tried to pull a Captain Video scam on me. See, I'd been born with a heart murmur, so I was in the hospital to have a series of what was then state of the art tests to see how my heart was doing.
