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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

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My outreach trips to South Africa have been with some wonderful ministry experiences. We saw African young people coming to Christ. We had the privilege of training South African youth workers to reach lost young people. And we're even training people to reach the lost and the young through radio. One afternoon we were able to sneak away long enough to visit one of the gold mines that helped make South Africa the richest country on that continent. Years ago this was the largest and richest gold mine in the world. Today, an old miner take guys like me, puts a helmet on them, gives them a light, and takes them on tours. It was fascinating to hear him describe how gold was uncovered and then extracted from deep inside the earth. At one point, he asked us to shine our light on one wall of the mine, and it sparkled with this bright, yellow gold! It was amazing - beautiful! The old miner told us, "Don't get too excited." He said, "Real gold is black. It doesn't even look like gold. That stuff that glitters, well, that's just fool's gold.

Monday, August 25, 2008

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Somehow we managed to surprise each of the three Hutchcraft kids when it came time for their 16th birthday party. Now our daughter's was a Teddy Bear picnic party. (You should have seen all those high school students coming with their teddy bears - even the guys! They really did!) And then the boy's themes were - well, there was the '50s theme, and then there was the Wild West party for another son. Actually, we have always tried to make something special out of the kids' birthdays. After all, your birthday is the only day of the year that's uniquely your celebration. It's always a great feeling to have a party in your honor.

Friday, August 22, 2008

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A lot of news stories just flash into our lives and then are forgotten almost immediately. Then there are those images that are just embedded in our brains for years to come. Several years ago one of those events happened, and a lot of us can still see the images of that dramatic rescue in our minds. A little toddler named Jessica had been playing in the backyard in Midland, Texas, and she plummeted down this narrow little shaft. She was wedged in there; trapped underground. It seemed as if the whole nation stopped to watch the tense vigil as rescuers tried to find a way to save that little girl. It was a long ordeal, but one rescuer, using a parallel shaft and working in the tightest of quarters, was finally able to get to little Jessica. And in a moment of incredible relief and joy, he brought her out.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

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I've had days when my back felt about 20 years older than the rest of my body. Sciatica is what I think the doctor called it. I just call it "sorebacka." I'm grateful I haven't had a bout like that for several years, but I can tell you that when I wake up crooked, I feel like just staying in bed or in any comfortable position I can find. But I got some good advice. Someone said, "Go for a walk when your back is hurting." Now, let me tell you this, walking is the last thing I feel like doing, but I decided to try it. I walked around our nearby lake, and by the time I returned, the pain had basically gone away. I had to force myself to exercise, but it was exercise that actually made me feel better. Now there's a new scientific study that compared two groups of people with "sorebacka" - one that took it easy and one that exercised. The exercisers reported less pain and more mobility. Now, what you don't feel like doing when you're hurting is what will actually help you stop hurting!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

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My friend, Bill, was used to handling heavy equipment, but he wasn't used to what happened that particular day. He had his trailer hitched to his dump truck. And Bill was driving his backhoe onto the trailer. One small problem - sort of a physics problem. As the weight of Bill and his backhoe pressed on the back of the trailer, the rear wheels of the dump truck were suddenly lifted up into the air which means no brakes on a downhill slope yet! So try to picture this: this man riding on a backhoe which is riding on a trailer, which is hitched to a truck that is heading straight downhill out-of-control. I said, "Bill, what did you say?" His answer was pretty simple, "Oh no! Oh no!!" He had absolutely no control. So how did he live to tell about it? Well, he threw that backhoe in reverse and backed off as fast as he could. Balance was restored and the truck and trailer - well, they jackknifed. And I'm not even making any of this up!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

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When you work at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, you know there will be no physical link to the outside world for you between February and October. You are 840 miles from the nearest populated site and you're facing average winter temperatures of eighty below zero. Now, imagine being one of the women stationed there and discovering a lump that indicates you have breast cancer. Distant medical authorities determined that this lady must receive some emergency medical supplies. (And it really happened.) Getting those supplies, though, is easier said than done.

Monday, August 18, 2008

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I was in the room when my friend Bob went up to the speaker for the day and made a fairly startling statement. He took his three young children with him, pointed to them, and said to this speaker, "If it weren't for you, these children wouldn't be here." Needless to say, the gentleman looked at him pretty curiously. But that was not an overstatement. And it attested to a dramatic miracle that my friend had experienced.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

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When our Native American outreach team went to Alaska, our only means of getting to remote Eskimo villages was by missionary aircraft.  Oh, man, our pilots were the best!  Many days we had to fly through low cloud ceilings and low visibility.  On a day like that, our pilots were checking every hour on the weather at our end and at our destination.  There was finally a break where we could fly, but it all looked pretty dismal when we took off.  The pilot of the plane I was in was instrument-rated, which enabled him to go to a higher altitude.  The pilot of the plane accompanying us wasn't able to take the high road.  So, my pilot kept in radio contact with the other pilot, but believe me, our planeload and the other planeload were seeing two totally different views.  From where the other plane was flying, it was dark, it was dismal, and it was very overcast.  But we were above all that. We were enjoying a beautiful, sunny day with all those clouds beneath us.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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When our older grandson was 14 months old, he had a ball discovering his world. I loved to take him in my arms and get him excited about something in God's world. I'd point to a tree, or a flower, or a dog, or a cow and teach him the word for it. After that, whenever we'd be together, he'd start the pointing, and he'd give me his version of the word for whatever he was point to. But I think I saw the greatest wonder in him when he'd look up at the night sky. It didn't matter what was going on around him, he'd start looking up and pointing at the moon, at the stars; oh, man, he loved the stars. He just couldn't miss those lights shining in the dark night sky.

Monday, August 11, 2008

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When we were involved in building a new headquarters for our ministry, I have to confess that was new ground for me. I've been involved in building people my whole life, but not buildings. It became very clear that there is a specific order in which you have to do things. Obviously, you don't just start by having the carpenters show up and start putting up the building. There has to be a foundation laid first. But wait - you can't lay the foundation or start building until you have the detailed plans for the building. Yes, it takes contractors, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, pavers, and heating and air conditioning people. But first, the architect! Without his design, it would be just a mass confusion at the construction site. But thankfully, we had a gifted architect lay out a detailed plan, and things are working well because everyone is going by the plan.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

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Not long after the Gulf War, an Air Force chaplain planted this mental picture in my head I've never forgotten. He told me what he considered to be the ultimate example of loneliness. The chaplain said, "To me, lonely is a fighter pilot in his F-16, on a night mission over enemy territory. The only light is this eerie glow from his instrument panel - and his instruments indicate that his plane has just been "painted" as a target for an Iraqi SAM missile. The only sound he hears in that ultimately lonely moment is this song playing in his headset - God Bless the USA.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

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I was going through a basement closet and I found some buried treasure. Actually, it was a little suitcase filled with the love letters that my wife and I had exchanged over two years of our courtship and engagement - and no you can't see them. It was pretty moving for me, though, to read them again after so many years. As I relived our early romance through those letters, I had an idea, why not put some of these in a scrapbook and give them as a gift to my wife. Small problem: how am I going to do this and keep it a surprise? Well, I set up a partition in the back half of our basement. I moved some big furniture around to further obstruct the view, and I made myself a secret "No Trespassing" workshop! Finally, one day I presented my wife with this book entitled "Chronicles of a Lifetime Love." She had no idea what I'd been working on for her - I did all the work on it, out of her sight!

Monday, August 4, 2008

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We were tooling across the backside of the Navajo reservation in this borrowed station wagon. Actually, some friends had loaned it to us so we could take some of our reservation team sightseeing. We could have gone back on the main road, but the back roads were shorter. So, I checked my gas tank before we set out through these long, unpopulated stretches: three-quarters of a tank - plenty of gas. We went about 30 miles and the car started sputtering to a stop - really in the middle of nowhere - true nowhere! We spent several nervous hours hoping and praying for a way back until this dear Navajo man stopped for us and he drove 60 miles round trip to bring us back some gas. It turned out that our gas gauge was broken. It sure looked like we were almost running on full, but we were running on empty.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

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It's amazing how nasty things can get when it comes to settling whose land a certain piece of ground is. We have some friends who have an interest in just such a controversial decision and the stakes are actually pretty high. The judge has to decide who really owns this particular property and then how it should be handled. There's a lot of rumors in the air; a lot of intrigue. Before the legal proceedings start, the judge has suddenly recused himself from that case. In other words, he's stepped down on this one because for some reason - maybe a conflict of interest - he's basically saying, "I don't think I should be the one to judge this one."

Friday, July 25, 2008

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It happened over 40 years ago, but it's one of those events I'll never really forget. It happened in Chicago where I grew up, and it was the most devastating tragedy most of us would remember from that time. It was December 1, 1958, and a fire broke out at the foot of a stairway in the Our Lady of the Angels School. That fire raged out of control very quickly, and it cut off any normal escape routes. Ninety grade school children died in that fire. But there's one I remember vividly from a news account that I read at the time and I still haven't forgotten. This little boy was in a second story window - they had a photo of him. The boy's father was down below, yelling to him to jump into his arms. That boy could see the fire racing toward him from behind, but he refused to jump. Then, in one awful moment, the boy disappeared. He was one of those victims.

Monday, July 21, 2008

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I grew up on the south side of Chicago, and honestly we did not have a lot of sheep running around. So I listened with fascination the other day when I heard my father-in-law tell about being the shepherd for his family's flock of sheep. He was just a boy, the only child, and Mom and Dad left the sheep pretty much with him, and he was with them a lot. One day he and his parents were watching the flock and he said, "Would you like me to call one of them out?" Right, kid. Like one sheep is going to know it's him you want? So Mom and Dad kind of laughed. The little shepherd asked them to pick a sheep they wanted called out, and then he made a little bleating sound and the selected sheep proceeded to leave the flock and come right to him. Mom and Dad were still skeptical. So he said, "OK, pick another sheep. " And they did. Another bleat, and Mr. Sheep answered the call. And no one else could get that kind of response. That little exercise was repeated several times, until there was no denying the amazing fact: those sheep had such a personal relationship with their shepherd that his was the only voice they followed.

Friday, July 18, 2008

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A couple of times this week I ordered out for lunch and it came on a paper plate. Guess what I did with the paper plate when I finished my lunch? No, I didn't wash it; I didn't save it for later. In fact, I've never done that with a paper plate. Now, look we've never had a lot of money, but I've never in my whole life saved a paper plate. I throw it away, of course, like you probably do. And I don't feel any great sense of loss or regret, "Oh, I can't believe I lost my paper plate." No, it doesn't bother me. But we have these other plates at our house, we keep them in a cabinet in our dining room and we save them for special occasions. We wash those when we use them, because it says "fine china" on those. At least that's what my wife wrote with a magic marker on the back. It's the best we've got. And when we're done, we put those plates away very carefully. In fact, if you drop them you're out of the family. What's the difference? Paper plates are cheap, practically worthless, right? You throw them away. Now, fine china on the other hand is expensive; it's too valuable to throw away. Do you know which one most people feel like today?

Thursday, July 17, 2008

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Not all the drama of the Olympics takes place during the Olympics. Some of it unfolds in the weeks and months leading up to the games. Like the Olympic torch, for example. In the spirit of the ancient Olympics in Greece, the Olympic torch is carried by runners over thousands of miles until it's finally carried into the opening ceremonies to light the official torch of the Olympic Games. Each year it's a journey of many, many miles. It can be as much as 15,000-20,000 miles. And that's quite a torch run. One person doesn't do that all. I mean, not even I can do that - even though I'm in such great shape! Every Olympic year there are a lot of runners who each carry the torch for a fraction of the journey and then they hand it off to the next runner. We've seen that. In the case of some Olympic Games a few years ago, Coca Cola selected 2,500 of the 10,000 torch bearers that were needed. They accepted nominations from anyone that you might know who you thought was "worthy to carry the torch."

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

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OK, backpacks are basically a good thing. They make it possible for you to carry some essentials while you keep your hands free, right? But backpacks are not always a good thing, especially when you forget you're wearing one! I've seen a lot of the dangerous side of backpacks, especially in airports and airplanes. You see, you get used to your body ending at a certain point, and you navigate through a crowd knowing where the "oops, I bumped you" point is. Now you add a backpack and suddenly you have enlarged what is commonly known as your space, but you continue to navigate crowds and narrow places as if you had the same old parameters. So you got to turn around and "aahh," you clobber someone behind you or next to you! I mean, its one thing to carry your load, it's another thing to hit someone else with it!

Friday, July 11, 2008

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When my airplane flight is over, it's not really over. You see, there's that closing chapter of a trip that you get to spend at baggage claim. At my home airport they have these big carousels where suitcases are dumped out and where they circle until their owners claim them. Now, my bags seem to have a knack for waiting until almost all the other bags are out, for some reason. So I just keep watching those suitcases of all shapes and sizes and conditions appear, and waiting for one I like - no, no, no. I mean, one I recognize. But there always seem to be some phantom bags there. They just keep circling and circling and circling. And since the luggage carousel is all I really have to look at, the show gets pretty boring! Yep, there goes that baggage again!

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