Several years ago it was my privilege to be a part of Billy Graham's Congress on Evangelism in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. After several days packed with these challenging sessions, the 10,000 evangelists there spent one entire afternoon in what was called a Day of Witness. We were given these box lunches and sent across Holland that day to do evangelism in scores of places. And I was asked to be the bus captain for our 40 or so evangelists. Now when I mentioned those lunches to Richard, our bus driver, he was not a happy camper. He didn't seem particularly sympathetic with what we were going out to do - and he sure wasn't going to allow those lunches on his bus. He said, I always end up cleaning up a busful of garbage. The only way we ever got out of the parking lot that day was that I pledged to clean the bus myself.

About every five years or so, I run into my scrapbook while I'm going through this closet. Oh, there's the geeky-looking, eighth-grader there, holding his county spelling bee trophy. Oh, there's chubby little Ronnie in his Indian outfit on a vacation to Minnesota. And, the picture of our championship Bible quizzing team. Now it's also a lot of fun when we pull out the old photos of our family. Two decades of Christmas Eves, scenes from scores and scores of vacation adventures, sons in football uniforms, a daughter all dressed up for her first recital - ah, the memories. Now it isn't that we haven't had some not-so-great things happen. There was the automobile accident, the painful injuries, the bouts with various sicknesses - but somehow they just didn't make it into the memory book.

The Titanic has sailed into the Internet - bigtime. You wouldn't believe the mountains of information available about the sinking of that "unsinkable" ship back in 1912. With the Academy Award-winning movie, and endless TV shows and articles, a Broadway musical - fascination with the Titanic is at an all-time high. A lot of this information has been known for decades, but suddenly there's a tremendous appetite for that information. Like the tragic mistake made that fatal night by a radioman on the Titanic. The ship had received a number of warnings about ice ahead, and had adjusted her course southward as a result. But two hours before the Titanic hit the iceberg, the radioman received a warning from another ship about a major iceberg, along with the longitude and latitude coordinates. They put that iceberg right in Titanic's path. It's the one that sank the ship. But the radioman didn't know it was in their path. He was busy that night, so he stuck that message on a spindle where it could be dealt with later. That one choice doomed him - and 1,500 other passengers who died that night.

I first noticed it one day when I was mowing the lawn - a little dent in the ground. Over a few weeks, that little dent became a growing sinkhole. The ground was literally collapsing. I asked a neighbor, who was an amateur "sinkholeologist," what caused this phenomenon. He told me it was the drought of rainfall that we had been having. He said an underground spring had probably dried up. And that dried up the ground, and the roots above it - and my yard fell in.

I was with several members of our Team in the relentless evangelism schedule of one of our "Make A Difference" Weekends. We were getting pretty tired and our minds were totally focused on our outreaches. In fact, so tired and so focused, that I forgot about a radio station that was calling me for a live interview that afternoon. Now, I had just awakened from a brief nap and the phone rang. Thinking it was one of our Team members, I jokingly answered, "Good morning" - at 4:00 in the afternoon. Somehow, I was able to rebound immediately and go enthusiastically into that interview, and I don't think the folks on the other end ever knew I was surprised by their call. When I told my Team members about this, Esther said, "Ron, I've seen you come to life like that a lot of times. You're like a ventriloquist's dummy." I thanked her for sharing that, and she felt she should clarify what she meant. She said, "No, no. You're like this." Then she closed her eyes, hung her head, and leaned lifelessly against the wall. Then, without warning, she opened her eyes real wide, started moving her head from side to side, and said, "Hi, everybody! How ya doing?" I laughed so hard I could barely drive.

Apparently, the airlines know you have to keep us Americans amused. They try to keep something happening on those video screens during much of the flight. If it's a long flight, you get a movie. If it's a shorter flight, you get shorts - not to wear, I mean, the kind you watch on the screen. And I'm usually so busy amusing myself with all the work I have to do, I don't pay much attention to the screen. But on this one flight, I did occasionally glance up at the girls' gymnastics competitions they were showing in the sports highlights. The big competition was between the United States and Russia, so my star-spangled blood was pulling for you-know-who. After each girl performed, they would do this little replay. I never saw a replay of anything she did right. They insisted on showing two or three times where she messed up. "Look, everybody - see the one thing she did wrong." That bothers me.

When I'm in Mexico where our Latin American outreach is based, my "Taco Bell" Spanish doesn't get me very far. I mean, how much meaningful communication can you have when all you know are words like "enchilada" and "burrito grande"? "You look burrito grande today." Our Director of Latin American Ministry, David Isais, is a wonderful translator and my best hope of communicating while I'm there. Needless to say, I light up when someone there is fluent in English - I can converse unassisted! In the course of talking with one bilingual, Mexican man, I learned he is involved with automobile racing in that country, sort of the Mexican NASCAR. He's an engineer. When I asked him if they have anything like America's Indianapolis 500, he told me they don't do long distance races like that. They can't. Then I asked him about the pressure of repairing a race car during one of those pit stops, and he informed me that they don't have pit stops. They don't stop. But they can't go as far as cars that do.

We have a wonderful Christian radio station in our area. Well, it's wonderful if you can hear it. A lot of people can. But I just talked with a friend who lives another direction who says she just can't pick up that station where she is. But then I've met people who live in a part of the area where the station has a strong signal - and they've never heard it either. They have never turned to that frequency. Important information is being communicated over that station - actually, eternally important information. But a lot of people are missing it. Some because the transmitter isn't transmitting their direction. And others because their receiver isn't tuned into that frequency!

Here's what my airline ticket said - Friday afternoon Ron will fly from Newark to Houston - and then 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 any of us know that my flight would be delayed for a last-minute repair. A lot of passengers were concerned because many of us had connecting flights in Houston - many of us to various destinations in Mexico. Well, the good news was they finished that repair in enough time for most of us to still have a shot at making our connections. That was the good news. That's when the pilot said, "But we do have another problem - the copilot's seat just broke." Yeah - right! Now listen, I have flown a lot, but I have never heard of the pilot's seat breaking. Now apparently they don't have a spare copilot's seat at the gate, just in case - it took quite a while to get another one. I got off to make a phone call - and, sure enough, there was a dead seat, lying face down in the jetway. Oh well.

Michelle and Tara - they were the darlings of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Now, Michelle Kwan was favored to leave Nagano with the coveted gold medal for women's figure skating. Fifteen-year old Tara Lapinski was widely expected to win the silver as the second greatest female skater in the world. But, to the surprise of most of the world, Tara skated to the gold as the youngest skating gold medalist in Olympic history. Michelle Kwan went home with the silver. One morning after commentary said of Tara Lapinski, "She was too young. Too immature. Too unrefined. It wasn't her turn. The reason Tara Lapinski couldn't win the gold medal is the reason it hangs around her neck today: She was a kid." The writer went on to observe that while Michelle Kwan stayed with her parents in her room most of the time before her performance, young Tara was marching in the Opening Ceremony, mingling with other athletes, cheering for her team at other events - even playing video games and football. And then, "it was time to skate the long program. There was no fear. No nerves." Michelle talked about being, in her words, "more cautious." But for the gold medalist - they called it "no fear."

I remember that one time years ago that our area had a garbage strike. I think we've finally gotten rid of the special aroma in our garage after all these years. See, the garage It just piled up while the sanitation folks figured out their deal - and it took a while. Since I know how nasty the garbage can get, I'm sympathetic to the man I heard about recently. There was a garbage strike in his area, and he came up with a creative way to get rid of all that accumulating junk. He simply took some of his garbage each day, put it in a box, and gift wrapped it. Then he left that little gift each day on the bus or the subway as he commented. I'm not sure what happened to any of the lucky recipients of all those packages, but you have to admit - if you've got garbage to move, it's pretty smart to gift wrap it.

Since we're not all military types, it's probably good to explain what a beachhead is before we talk about one. A beachhead is not where the beach begins, or a guy who just thinks about getting to the beach all the time. In wartime, a beachhead is very serious business. It's a small piece of ground you try to take as your first step in taking all the ground that your enemy holds. For example, during World War II, two of the world's greatest generals went against each other when the Allies set out to take North Africa back from the Germans. General Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the Allied forces, planned to land and take three important beachheads. German general Rommel - the famous "Desert Fox" - basically said, "We must stop Eisenhower within 48 hours of his landing - or we won't stop him." They didn't stop him. And five months after Eisenhower successfully captured that first beachhead, Rommel had to flee and surrender everything, including 250,000 soldiers. But he lost it at that first beachhead.

She was only one woman - actually an inmate on Death Row - but she became the center of a public opinion hurricane. Karla Faye Tucker - convicted of a brutal pickax murder in Texas, sentenced to die, on Death Row for almost 14 years. Reporters from across the country and around the world descended on Huntsville, Texas in the days and weeks before her scheduled execution. And millions of us heard Karla Faye speak for herself as she explained the dramatic change that had taken place in her life. Karla Faye explained that she had trusted Jesus Christ to be her Savior, believing that the sin He died to forgive covered even the heinous things she had done. The way she lived in prison, the way she seemed to speak from deep in her heart lent credibility to the story of rebirth that she told.

My friend Jim loves to wear this shirt that says, "I've been to the wilderness" - that's on the front. On the back it says, "I can handle anything." Sounds a little cocky maybe, but he did earn the right to wear the shirt. He went on a two-week wilderness program where they pushed him, and all those on the trip, to go way beyond their limitations. Running for miles, climbing for hours with a heavy backpack, living off the land, blazing trails, enduring the heat, going solo for two days with almost nothing to live on. Hard? Yes. Fun? Not particularly. Worth it? Ask Jim. Or, better yet, read his shirt. "I've been to the wilderness - I can handle anything!"

Spock, Scotty, a doctor called "Bones," the Starship Enterprise, the transporter, the Klingons - they're all part of a universe millions of people know as Star Trek. And if the oft-repeated TV shows weren't enough, the Star Trek crew became the stars of several major movies. And then came the new crew, set even farther ahead in our future - "Star Trek - The Next Generation." They were still boldly going where no one had gone before on the Starship Enterprise. But "Star Trek I" and "Star Trek II" had at something more than a ship in common - they both had a strong captain in command. First, Captain Kirk - who always seemed to have things under control. But then along came the "Next Generation" skipper - Captain Picard. He had a lot less hair than Capt. Kirk - but he seemed to be even more in charge. There was never a question as to who was in charge of the ship, the crew, and the situation. And when Capt. Picard would give an order, he would follow it with three "no argument" words that were always the bottom line - "Make it so."

Ian is an amazing man. If you only know the public Ian, the private Ian is going to shock you. If you only know the private Ian, the public Ian is going to shock you. He's a friend of mine who has been the leader of Youth for Christ's highly effective ministry in New Zealand. As you converse with him, you quickly learn that Ian has a stutter - which sometimes makes it difficult just for him to complete a sentence. While it's noticeable, it's not important. Ian is a godly, magnetic person. But then when you see him in action before a crowd - as I did at a national youth convention with 3,000 teenagers - well, prepare for a shock. I felt bad, wondering how he would communicate effectively to all those kids with that stutter. To my amazement, I discovered there suddenly was no stutter. His speech was perfect, and he emceed and preached flawlessly. That's what's so amazing about Ian - something happens to him when he has to speak well. And to you.

When you grow up in the city like I did, your neighborhood usually has a neighborhood bully. Ours did. His name? Boomer! I don't know if he was born with that name or if he earned that name. All I know is that for the little kids on our block, Boomer was like the original terrorist. He would beat us up for nothing, he'd take our stuff, and generally intimidate us. But one day I got tired of it - he had taken my White Sox cap. Sure, I was just a little guy. Sure, I was no match for him. But I walked boldly down our street to where no kid dared to go - to the corner apartment building where Boomer lived. I went to the back porch, knocked on the door, and asked for my hat back. You say, "My, what a brave little boy." There is one detail I left out - my father went with me. And that made all the difference. See, Boomer was bigger than I was. But my father was bigger than Boomer was!

You may not be able to tell over the radio - but I'm not a very big guy. Oh, I'm big inside. But outside, more of a Volkswagen than a semi. Which makes it amazing that both my sons ended up playing line in football. That's usually where they put the monsters. Actually, we used to joke that linemen wore their IQs on their jerseys - you know, like 75. But it was brawn more than brains they needed to either hold the line while their opponents were trying to move them or to break through those gorillas on the other side of the line. There are just a few simple instructions that every coach wants every lineman to learn and live by. Our guys heard this one all the time - "Keep your feet moving." No matter what. Even if it feels like you're going nowhere. Even if you're getting hammered. Even if you think it's doing no good. As long as you keep driving - as long as you keep your feet moving - you're making a difference. The alternative - getting knocked down.

It's been almost 80 years - but there's something about the sinking of the Titanic that fascinates us. Latest evidence - the incredible success of the blockbuster movie, "Titanic." I've always found the story of the last hours of this supposedly unsinkable ship to be a haunting story. People representing just about all the kind of people that there are, knowing many of them will probably die,facing the reality that, at best, half of them will get into a lifeboat. The ways people handled those terrifying hours on a sinking ship tell us so much about what we are really like.

If you've got a tie that's gone out of style, hang onto it. It will probably be back in style eventually - and you can be cool again. In fact, a lot of clothes are in, then out, then eventually back in again. But it's not just clothes - it can happen to toys, too. For example, that classic toy - the yo-yo! They were popular when I was a kid! And, no, they weren't made out of stone back then! But they say the yo-yo is actually making a comeback! In this age of computers and high-tech video games, a lot of kids are interested in that little round wooden toy at the end of the string. It's great. And they're learning the same old tricks - they're doing "walk the dog" and "around the world." I feel like I'm in a time warp! I never could master all that fancy stuff. But there was always one thing I could count on with my trusty yo-yo - when it got to the end of the string, it started coming back to me! Unless, of course, it wasn't attached.