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Monday, May 7, 2007

This grandparent thing can be an expensive proposition. Without grandchildren, you can walk past hundreds of cute toys and never miss a step. But when you have a grandchild, you keep seeing your grandchild's name on those toys. Which means you must buy toy with name on it. Right? Well, not all of them, but probably too many of them. We happened to be in a store not long ago with our little one-year-old granddaughter, and I happened to see this great stick horse that I thought would be entertaining for another grandchild, our nearly three-year-old grandson. When you squeeze the ear of the head of this horse, the William Tell Overture (otherwise known to us non-intellectuals as the "Lone Ranger Theme") starts playing, and the horse starts whinnying and snorting, and its nose starts twitching back and forth inside its halter. Well, I walked up to the grocery cart that our one-year-old granddaughter was riding in, and I turned it on for her to see. Her reaction was interesting. She reached in the direction of that twitching steed, wanting me to bring it closer. So I did. But as I brought it near her, she pulled as far back as she could, laying her head against her mother's shoulder. So much for my field test.

Monday, April 30, 2007

One of our team members is quite the woodsman and the hiker, you know. And one foggy Saturday morning, he volunteered to lead a group of men who wanted to go hike to this distinctive rock formation called Hawksbill Crag. He had the book on the trails in that area; a book written by the man considered the expert. My friend kept consulting the book as they went along, pretty confident that they would soon end up at Hawksbill Crag. They ended up lost in a poison ivy patch, and the fog wasn't helping much. As they tried to retrace their steps, they passed a house set back in the woods and they happened to see its owner outside. My friend called to him and asked him if he would help them get "un-lost." That man went above and beyond. He actually came to where they were, helped them make sense of the map that they had, and pointed them right to the trail that got them to their goal. Of course, it turns out he was the man who wrote the book.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

If you want a unique dining experience, you should try my wife's Javanese Dinner sometime. It's actually from a friend's recipe, but man it is a smash hit once people figure it out, that is. I love to see people's reactions when they see all the ingredients she spreads out in bowls on the table. Your first impression is, "What does all this make?" There's rice, there's some chicken, there's a bowl of pineapple, there's celery over there, grated cheese, onions, there's a bowl of coconut, there are almonds, a bowl of crunchy noodles, and there's hot broth. Our guests invariably look a little dubious, but we assure them they'll love it when it's all put together. And they always do! In fact, they always come back for more.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Seattle - Earthquake! As I watched those words appearing on CNN's Breaking News, it really caught my attention in that airport. I expected to see the word "earthquake" associated with a place like California or other parts of the world, but that day it was Seattle - 6.8 on the Richter scale. Now, thankfully, the damage was not nearly as great as it could have been, but the experience was a sobering reminder of how unstable the ground beneath them really is. During the quake, a camera was rolling during a meeting in a conference room, and the video showed the reactions as the realization dawned on each person that his world was suddenly shaking. One moment, it was business as usual. The next moment, everything was moving.

Friday, March 2, 2007

If you want to have a philosophical discussion about the subject of grandchildren, sorry - I'm busy. Now if you want to talk about my grandson, I've got all the time in the world. I hope you do. If you want to discuss the institution of marriage, say goodnight. But if you listen to this broadcast very much, you know I love to talk about the woman I married. That would be my wife. This is a no-brainer, isn't it? It's the difference between the concept, the institution and the person!

Monday, February 19, 2007

When you live and work on a remote Indian reservation, as our sons have the past twelve years, you get good at shopping without going anywhere. Because anywhere is so far away! Our sons have gotten to be very skilled Internet shoppers. They've found gifts there that I didn't even know existed, and they've found bargains I was jealous of. Sometimes, I've been able to watch over their shoulder as they bid on an item that's being auctioned on the Internet. They've gotten pretty good at knowing what it's going to take to own what's being auctioned. For all the little tricks of the trade, there's one decisive bottom line. Everyone knows that it belongs to the one who bids the most.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

When you're taking a team of Native young people to nine different reservations - often in pretty remote places - you need a combination command post/prayer room/counseling room/supply room on wheels. Our rented RV served all those purposes. Now I'm still getting used to this RV thing. Some of them are like entire civilizations on wheels. They're actually in two zip codes everywhere they go. Ours was a lot simpler, but it did the job. One challenge for me was the distance from the RV to the ground. I think really that there may have been some mix-up at the factory and some NBA player got part of my legs. It looked like a long way to the ground for Mr. Vertically Challenged. But the RV had a cool feature. As I stepped out, a step automatically came up under my dangling foot and helped me land safely every time.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Tall grass, dead mower. That was my sad situation last spring. I tried everything to get my power mower going, but it really didn't want to start. Of course, that didn't stop the lawn from growing. I went away for a little while, came back, and the grass was now taking over. I played with my mower again and again, and it still didn't respond. We were starting to look like the set of a "Tarzan" movie and, of course, my mower didn't care. So I started looking for alternative equipment to get the job done. Let's see now, my hair clippers were working fine; you know, the kind you use for haircuts. I was desperate but, no, I did not try to cut the grass with my hair clippers. See, they work great on hair; they would not work on my lawn. But, on the other hand, how would you like to get your hair cut with a lawn mower?

Friday, October 13, 2006

New York City is a bit of a shock to any first-time visitor. It's especially jarring for someone who has spent her whole life on an Indian Reservation. Now Linda was from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and she was part of our ministry's Native American Youth Outreach Team. We call it "On Eagles' Wings." She was able to see New York from a distance at first. There's the Empire State Building, there's the skyline, and she said she wanted to see it all up close. Ha! That may have changed now that she has seen it up close. See, she went in with us when I spoke in the city one night and the traffic and the crowds - they were all over the place and they made her feel like maybe she was on a battlefield without a helmet. She also found certain aspects of the city exciting and, you know, she might want to go back. But as our team was driving along the Hudson River, we were headed for the George Washington Bridge, and Linda must have been reflecting on her life on the reservation for a minute because she looked up into the Big Apple sky and she just said two words, "No stars."

Monday, October 2, 2006

Sister is a dog. I did not say my sister was a dog, actually she's my sister-in-law, and she's an angel! But my friend Curtis has a dog named Sister, which leads to some fairly amusing sentences. When I first met Curtis and Sister, she lived in this big fenced-in area outside the house. But Curtis got a nice doghouse for Sister and went to work making it a nice winter home for her. He installed two inches of insulation, he put in a new floor, he even put a water bed heater under the floor and then some zip-loc bags with water for the heater to heat. Sister basically has a warm home with her own waterbed. But for the first couple of weeks after her home was completed, she wouldn't go in it! Curtis was away for the weekend and he asked a friend to check on Sister. Well, one of those days was a day a powerful nor-eastern hit our area, and I mean, we're talking drenching rain. And when Curtis' friend visited Sister, there was that dog running around outside the doghouse in the wind and the pouring rain, still refusing to go in the home that had been provided for her!

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