We had three kids. They all were in the junior high band at different times over a seven year period of time so I got to go to seven straight years of Junior High Band concerts. Now, I enjoyed watching our kids develop musically, but I cannot say that it was a memorable music experience. Now fortunately they stuck to pieces that were at their level. But suppose they had attempted Beethoven - okay, imagine you don't know much about Beethoven, I tell you, "Beethoven was a musical genius. Now why don't you come to the Junior High Band concert with me, they're playing a Beethoven symphony. I know you're going to be impressed with Beethoven's ability." Okay it's after the concert and I go, "Oh, what did you think of Beethoven?" You go, "I am not impressed." And tell you, "I know there were a lot of squeaks and squawks and instruments missing but please, please don't judge Beethoven based on the way they play His music! He is a genius, they just don't play His music very well."

One of the exciting episodes of my life in the past few years was working on the Billy Graham crusade at the Meadowlands, in Northern New Jersey. Man, it was well organized. One thing that was especially well organized was security. You've got thousands of people coming and going, so security, of course, had to be very well thought through. Now, it was my privilege to be the chairman of that crusade but I'll tell you, if I was stopped, I still had to have my proper badge on! It didn't matter what your title was because if you didn't wear your badge, you weren't going any further, you weren't even going in that night!

At 1:00 P.M., Tuesday, October 4th, 1995, much of America came to a sudden stop! Everyone was waiting for the O.J. Simpson verdict. Nine months! Probably the most watched, most analyzed trial in history and then we're all stunned when the jury announces they've reached the verdict in about four hours! So everybody was guessing, they're all buzzing about it, and then as the verdict hour arrived America stopped to hear it. The verdict will probably be debated for years but one thing is sure, we were obsessed with knowing what the verdict was.

We have a four-legged member of our family - our dog Missy. She's a spunky little black and white Shih Tzu. She's not always spunky. I often get up early and when I hit the kitchen there is a definitely unspunky Missy. I can usually find her sprawled out under this white desk we have in the kitchen. She's awake but that's about all. Her head and her eyes and her ears are drooping and nothing I say or do or offer can coax her out of her hiding place. But as soon as she hears any stirring upstairs where her master is, Missy is suddenly out of her blahs, up, standing expectantly at the kitchen gate and wagging her tail. Now my day begins when the alarm goes off, but not Missy. Her day begins when she sees her master.

Now it's always been my impression that the police like to have the element of surprise in their favor. Suddenly there's a police car coming up behind you, or appearing out of nowhere. That's why I was surprised by something I saw when I was meeting with our Latin American team in Guadalajara, Mexico. At night we were driving around with our Director, David Isais and we saw a police car in front of us. Now, he was in no particular hurry, but his lights were flashing - and David said, "You know the police cars here do that all the time, they leave their lights on whether they are on call, or not." Now, that's an interesting approach to law enforcement - let them know you're coming.

The world's best selling book, but hardly anyone knows what's in it. It's the Bible, of course. Maybe you've had a hard time getting somebody to read the Bible, I think I can make you feel better. I mean, your problem is nothing compared to a fellow named Gabrielle. I was at dinner with a leader of an international Bible distribution organization and their representative in the country of Zimbabwe is named Gabrielle. Now his problem is not dust collecting on peoples Bibles, it's the Bible literally going up in smoke. You see, the pages of a Bible in some African countries are thought to be just perfect to roll a cigarette with. So, he met one man and was offering him a Bible and the man said, "Well, I'll take the Bible," but he said, "I need to let you know that if I take it, I'll smoke it." I'm going to give it to you, Gabrielle said, "I'll give you the Bible if before you smoke it, you read it." Well, he did what he said he would do - he read it, and then he smoked it, until, well, that's the exciting part...

Well it was always fun to get the kids together and get all five Hutchcrafts jammed into a car for a long trip. And of course immediately we had turf wars in the back seat, especially as the kids bodies got bigger and bigger, and you've got three kids trying to figure out who gets which third or more, is the ideal if you can do it, of that turf in the back seat. Of course that was only one of our problems. After we'd been driving for a little while, well, sometimes I would hear these really gross sounds from the back-seat, and what was happening was this, our poor first born, our daughter was getting sick and her brothers would kind of imitate some of the noises she would make as she was feeling more and more confined in that back seat because if she got the middle and couldn't get neat a window it wasn't good for any of us! Hey, she had a touch of claustrophobia, she needed some space.

It's the mission the birds made famous. During our ministry trip to California, I had a chance to visit one of the most charming of those old Spanish missions, San Juan Capistrano. If you heard of it, it's because of the birds, the swallows. There are what seems like hundreds of swallows who like to hang out at that mission until about October 23rd every year then like a lot of northerners they fly south for the winter. Oh, but they will return. In fact, lots of local folk and tourists will be at the mission on March 19th, that's the day they will return. The time might vary a little but one thing you could be sure of when you see them leave, you can be sure they will be back.

Recently I was having lunch with my friends Scott and Brenda, and they told me that the view had really improved at their house recently. They told me that everything in their backyard had looked so dirty and so dingy for a long time until the other day. They did something that totally changed the view. They cleaned the big window that looks out on that yard. When you're looking through a dirty window, everything looks dirty.

A dog and bubbles make a very amusing combination. I think my wife discovered this first when our little Shih Tzu dog was just a puppy, a new member of our family, the only one with four legs, and she was still discovering her world. My wife went out and got one of those containers of bubble lotion - you know, with the little wand that you could blow bubbles out of. We used them when we were kids. Missy cannot resist those bubbles. She'll kind of pounce there on the floor on a bubble as soon as it lands, and she attacks that thing. Of course, when there are some in the air, she is watching them come down. She's in an attack mode. The problem is that the bubbles disappear as soon as she gets to them. She starts to attack it or to put it into her mouth. It's gone - leaving this bewildered dog sniffing and searching, and she's looking up into the air at the rest of the bubbles coming down. She wastes an awful lot of energy looking for them.