Thursday was another amazingly full day. The members of the UAM Cotton Blossoms who are on the trip with us – Becca Tipton, Kayla Temple, Savannah Morin, Lindsay Randall, Amy Mardis and Becca Sustaire – have been simply incredible. We all knew their team was fantastic, but what we were unprepared for was just how good these girls really are – not just at their sport, but in their love and work ethic.

They have burned the candle at both ends and served long, hard hours in kids camps and practicing with a newly-formed baseball team here in Krakow. All at their own expense and from the donations and love of others. The end goal is to honor and bring praise to Jesus Christ here in this beautiful city.

They’ve built relationships and opened several doors for the missionaries to continue their work and ministry. I’m also grateful for the parents and families of these girls who have trusted us and Journey Church. They helped contribute and encouraged us as we pressed forward with this trip – even with scant details.

Carolyn and I have been grateful and so blessed to see how the Lord has used every member of our mission team so far on the trip. Lou has been simply incredible with the kids that she has taken under her wing. She’s been a constant strength and source of help at every phase. Tracy has continued to battle with me for title of funny man of the week. Too bad he’s losing so far. Seriously, I am so grateful for his presence and his witness and leadership. As a campus minister, trips like these not only help him connect with the students with us but capture a vision for ministry on the campuses of the world.

After another jam-packed day of ministry and softball, we cleaned up and ate at a Chili’s-style restaurant called Yummies on the Rynek, and it was delicious. Two of the baseball players joined us and then took the gals around after dinner while us old folks searched for an ice cream stand before heading back to the hostel for a rousing game of Phase 10.

Truly, there is nothing more surreal than walking around the Rynek at night with the gorgeous lights on the St. Mary’s Cathedral and seeing the carriage rides lined up along the cobble stone roads. Thanks to those of you who gave so generously to make this trip possible. We are supremely grateful at every moment for the sacrifice and generosity that you displayed.

We were amazed.

God is good.

When you bring a mission team overseas, you always emphasize the “F” word. That’s flexibility. You just never know what will happen or how your plans will actually turn out. 

Our hope all along for this trip was for the UAM softball gals to be able to conduct a sports camp for kids here in Krakow, to teach and demonstrate the sport of softball to a European town that cherishes soccer above all else and doesn’t even have a baseball field. That was our hope, and it was high.

We actually didn’t know if anyone would show up. The missionary team who are in Krakow had worked hard the last few days, passing out fliers and creating a buzz, but they too, had no idea if anyone would show up. That was until 11:00 a.m. yesterday. It was then that more than 50 kids showed up, full of excitement and enthusiasm.

We were so proud of the girls. They were more than champs. Not only did they conduct this impromptu, unstructured camp in a setting that was challenging, but they did so with joy and deep character. They showed the kids softball. But larger than that, they showed them their hearts.

And while they were swinging bats and throwing balls, the Lord was behind the scenes hitting homeruns. One of the leaders of the Krakow YMCA “just happened” to be in the park, and he offered the use of their building this week should it rain. He also wanted to coordinate future things with the missionaries here. A great contact!

After a wonderful afternoon in the Rynek Square, we went to another location, and the girls worked with a newly formed guys baseball team. Baseball was new to them. So were girls who could outplay, outhit and outthrow them. I think it was a little difficult on them in this culture getting trained (and schooled) by girls. 

One of my favorite moments of the day was when Becca and Amy suited up and threw pitches. The loud pop of Becca’s glove hitting her leg after her pitch, followed instantly by the louder pop of the ball in Amy’s glove was pretty awe-inspiring. The kids and later the guys watched in awe. So did we. 

All the girls found key roles to play, and when we had our devotional time last night in the hostel (the Techno Twins weren’t around), we celebrated and unpacked a full day of ministry after Tracy shared about Elijah from 1 Kings 18. 

We are all grateful for your prayers and your generosity that got us here. God is at work. Will you please continue to join us in this great work with intercession? More later!

I woke up in Krakow. At 4:50 a.m. local time. Wiiiiide awake. So off to the shower and then to find Coffee Heaven – my favorite coffee hangout here in Poland (that I know of so far). I was looking forward to seeing if I remembered how to navigate the tram ride.

Imagine my surprise to discover that Tracy was up and showered as well. I didn’t think campus ministers knew that the sun actually comes up after it goes down… ;)

So off we went. First stop was an ATM machine. Next stop. Buying a tram ticket. It all came back. It was a flawless ride to the Rynek Square. Imagine our disappointment to discover that coffee shops in Poland don’t open until 7:00 a.m. It was 5:30 a.m. 

We wasted time by exploring some side streets and discovering free WIFI zones with my iPhone and Tracy’s iPod Touch.

Finally… 7:00 a.m. and hot coffee and muffins. We both took some time to look at the team’s scripture reading for the day: John 6.26-51. The questions: Why did Jesus say He was bread? How does manna relate to Jesus? What is your own hunger level for this bread of life?

Finally.. back to the hostel to discover all the girls, including Carolyn, still in bed. This should be fun… More later.

We are here! After many months of fundraising, prayer, communication and planning, our Poland sports mission team arrived in Krakow this afternoon. We had a looooong, fun, exhausting, movie-filled plane ride of a trip. 

The main development of the trip has been the official declaration of a jokes war between me and Tracy Reed. So far, I’m winning. 

I’ll be posting regularly all week about the trip, so stay tuned!

Over last weekend, we started hauling junk and treasures out to our driveway and carport. All week long, we’ve continued to add items daily as we clean rooms, attics, and closets in our house. It’s been quite the adventure. Here are some things you learn during a week-long yard sale:

• No matter how many times you say, “You get all this stuff free if you buy the house!” and no matter the tone of voice, you get no takers.
• Just because your iPhone says it’s 95 degrees doesn’t mean it really is.
• if you have to take a 4-hour shift, watching your junk and dealing with potential junk buyers, the best shift to take is in the a.m., from 8:30-9:00. (Yes, I know that’s not 4 hours, but if you plan right, you can have a meeting during that time that takes you away…)
• Yard sale shoppers are some of the most, um, interesting and unique people on the planet. (I actually sprayed air freshener in my carport after one of our customers left today. The alternative was gagging.)
• You discover the drama of nature that you never knew before. It was like Discovery Channel to watch a perpetual fight between a woodpecker and a tree full of squirrels. The squirrels had made a nest in the hollow section of a pine tree. That was the same section that the woodpecker kept returning to to, well, peck. The squirrels were rather loud in cussing the poor pecker out in squirrelese. I was shocked at the language they were using. It was nuts.
• You can get a lot of reading done while manning a yard sale. And you can tell which pages you’ve read by the sweat drops in your book.

People will buy anything. I repeat – anything.

Upcoming Schedule:

Carolyn and I are leaving for Poland on Monday! I’m excited about going back to work with Team Krakow. They’re an incredible group of IMB missionaries.

Our kids flew out today to spend a week with their grandparents in New Mexico. Sam was at Kanakuk two weeks ago; he and Adelyn were at Lake Tiak O’ Khata for kids camp with First Baptist this week. By the time they’re home again, we will be just about ready to move out to Virginia.

We are trying to schedule the movers for July 15. We’re hoping to cram a float trip to the Buffalo River into July 14. I can’t believe my kids have never been! It’s an Arkansas classic outdoor experience.

So stay tuned around here! I moved my web servers this week on top of everything else, so most of my sites have been offline for a couple of days. I’ll be posting from Poland next week. If you’d like to read last October’s entries about Poland, check them out here.

When a friend told us, “Don’t plan anything for the night of June 21,” we knew something was up. We just didn’t know what. Then came the announcement in MonticelloLive.com about a “reception,” and Carolyn said, “Oh no. I hate being the center of attention.” Having endured a roast before, I was a little nervous too.

However, when we arrived at the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at 7:00 Sunday night, we were unprepared for the diversity of people there and the outpouring of love and laughter.. and tears. From a great video composed of 100s of pictures from our years here (did I ever really have that much hair?!) to a few meaningful speeches, to a massive prayer time for us. Our gratitude for the time God lent us in Monticello has been increasing.

There was the pie from Chips Barbeque sent by my sis and husband in Little Rock. There was two massive cakes. There was a money tree! There were former students, pastors, and a pleasing assortment of Christ-followers from several churches in town.

It was special to be in the new BCM building for which we worked so hard to begin raising funds. It was humbling to hear from folks I respect so much how the Lord had apparently used us in lives beyond our capabilities. It was surprising to know of the coordination behind the scenes to get the word out.

Sunday evening was worshipful for us. It wasn’t because of the undeserved accolades given to us. Rather, it was because the abundant love led to our own increasing gratitude of the God who led us here. We never imagined how precious this paranthesis of life would be.

We came home and put the money tree in the middle of our living room, breaking branches all the way through the house to make it fit. We all sat in a circle on the floor around it, slowly unpinning the money and savoring the cards and letters which we will read over and over to remind us of God’s goodness.

One of them in particular – the Saffold’s – stuck out:

May you leave slowly and come back quickly and often! You always have a place in Monticello. Peace of Christ. ~ Scott, Mistye, Nora Catherine, & Patrick

Philippians 1.3 is an apt description of our increasing gratitude: “Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.”

Both of my grandparents have passed away now. I will see them again, I’m confident of this. But that wonderful summer left an indelible impression on me. Sweet tea, Corn Flakes, shelling peas and seeing young lives transformed left my cup running over.

There was a tick crawling on my arm. I sent him sailing through the air with a flick of my middle finger. It was hot. I took another sip of my lemonade, the ice cubes sliding forward to clack against my front teeth. My back was wet with perspiration against the wooden slats of the porch swing.

It was July. Four months earlier, I had been asked to be the summer youth minister at First Baptist Church in Crossett. My grandparents’ home was just 15 minutes away, located in the pine forests south of Hamburg. I was living with them for the summer and commuting to work, rather than trying to find housing in Crossett.

I sat on the front porch swing sipping lemonade, deep in thought. It was my supper break. I had to be back at the church in an hour to open the activities building for the youth. I took a deep breath of the magnolia-scented air. It was still hard to believe I was getting to spend the entire summer with my grandparents, Opal and D.B. As long as I can remember, I have had a special love for their home in the pine forests of Ashley County.

I didn’t experience the wonders of the country alone. I had grown up there with my cousin Robert Allen for two weeks every summer when I came to visit. He was just a few months older than I, and during those few weeks each summer, we had developed a bond that would never diminish, because cousins, unlike childhood friends, never grow apart. They only grow closer together.

Looking back, it seems that a pair of young boys 20 miles from the Louisiana border cornered the market on happy childhood memories. There was no world out there but the one we experienced.

It was a world of superhero action figures and G.I. Joes with kung-fu grip. They always went bald when you got their head fuzz wet. It was the best argument we could think of for not taking baths.

It was a world of war. When we played “army,” our guns had an unlimited supply of ammunition, but neither one could shoot the other. Detente was reduced to two simple words, “You missed!”

Not a single inch of our grandparents’ land had gone untouched or unexplored. We knew every tree, every stream, the garden, chicken house and barn just like we knew who each comic book belonged to.

I remember that on those rare days when it rained, we were sentenced to the confines of the house, including the front and back porches. But even then, there were endless possibilities. We would pull out the Hot Wheels or retreat into the world of “play-like.” We were astronauts, cowboys, cops and robbers in less than an hour, each making a miraculous recovery from five or six fatal wounds incurred during that time. However, this summer was different. My cousin was at advanced training camp for ROTC, and there were few physical remnants of the time we had spent together. In the yard, a few initials cut into trees years ago were still readable. One lion of a set from the Holy Land was sitting on a shelf in the living room. For some ungodly reason, we had thrown its match into the fireplace during a scientific experience. There was still a hole behind the barn that Robert Allen had dug and covered as a trap for me (it had worked). The numerous pictures we had drawn for my grandparents were hanging in frames on the kitchen wall. All gave mute testimony to the fact that two small boys had shared a special moment in time.

None of it was new to me. However, the purity and simplicity embodied in my grandparents’ home and land never ceased to amaze me.

I looked down at my lemonade sitting where I had set it down beside the swing. The ice cubes had shrunk during my brief reverie.

I was now 20 years old. I was used to paved roads and interstates, flouride city water, a gas fireplace and grocery shopping at Kroger’s with double discount coupons. Yet my dad’s parents had a dirt driveway with a cattlegap. They had a well house and a butane tank behind the house and homemade preserves and cakes in the kitchen. And to top it all off, there were deer tracks in the garden.

This summer, I had learned that it wasn’t just Opal and D.B. who had a monopoly on the aspects of country living. Driving to work on any given day, I saw endless emerald fields of soybeans, more expansive than any airport runway. I saw dogs and cats just running around. The only fences were barbed wire to keep in the cows.

I recalled that one morning, when I rounded the corner, there were these dog-sized cattle things just standing around on the road. It was incredible. I was even more amazed to discover that they were goats. I thought they were only found in the mountains. I had acquired some of that country hospitality by then. I stopped at the next house to tell the old man sipping coffee on the porch that his goats were escaping. He laughed and thanked me. I had watched him in my rear view mirror as I drove off, but he never left his rocker.

D.B. had told me one evening at supper that we had rabbits in the garden. He urged me to nail one with the .410 if I got the chance. That next afternoon, I had tiptoed stealthily around the garden, a shotgun clutched in front of me. I felt like Festus on Gunsmoke. I rounded the end of the dead corn rows — their raspy blades rattled in the breeze, covering the crunch of my footsteps on the dry dirt. And before me, just sitting there on his white cotton puff of a duff, was Roger Rabbit. The only rabbits I had seen this close were in the IQ Zoo in Hot Springs. Our moment together was infinite, frozen in time. Hours later, I raised the gun and fired. The rabbit jumped so high that I figured he must have anticipated what was happening and dodged the blast. I was awed at his reflexes, content to let him escape for his skill. Such was the respect between hunter and hunted. But the rabbit never got up after he landed. The ground slowly reddened around him. I had left him lying there as I ran back to the house yelling, “I got one. I got one!”

Several weeks and several rabbits later, I had noticed that I was living in a regular Garden of Eden. I found I could keep myself fed by picking pears, peaches and apples right off the trees. That fact, coupled with the presence of a water faucet next to the back porch, led me to believe that survival of the fittest wasn’t hard at all. As I had sat on the edge of the back porch, looking at the clothes line and munching on a pear, I had calculated that with all the fruit trees around, I could probably make a few hundred dollars by selling their produce to the Big Star in town. I never got around to trying it, though.

I had also learned that bees were evil that summer. They were truly spawns of Satan. I learned this fact one morning while strolling past the three hives D.B. kept behind the garden. One hive wasn’t doing much at all. The others were a, uh, a bee hive of activity. I threw a small rock at the dead one to get them on the ball. I must have run around the house for 30 minutes trying to escape the demons from hell.

I looked at my watch. It was time to go back to work. I got off the swing, drained the rest of my watery lemonade with one gulp, and went inside to eat a snack.

That was four weeks ago. The youth group and I had played volleyball at the activities building that night. The rest of the summer had gone by quickly. Too quickly. The paradox of the activity at the church and the peacefulness of the country gave me a sense of perspective that has stayed with me today.

August 19 was my last day in south Arkansas. I had to be in a wedding in Mountain Home the next day. My send-off was a quiet, though emotional one. Few young people ever have the opportunity to know and to love their grandparents as real people, as individuals. The opportunity and experience gave me insight into my father, my past and my future. It also gave me a respect and appreciation for this world that God has given us.

As my car bumped over the cattlegap, I was sweating again, but this time it was from the arduous task of packing. My grandparents were still there on the porch waving as I drove off. I breathed goodbye to them, my summer and my temporary lifestyle. And as I turned the car north onto Arkansas Highway 81, I began to cry.

It didn’t stay on my radar screen long.

Enter peoplebrowsr.com.

You’ll notice quickly that it has the ability to display as many columns as you want. You can shrink the column width or expand it. From there on it, it’s just downright amazing/fun to discover all that this site (and its corresponding Adobe Air app) can do. Everything is mouse-able.

I particularly love the ability to view my Twitter contacts’ “@” replies as a threaded conversation. That’s extremely handy for figuring what in the world is going on in your Twitterverse. Sure beats scrolling back a mile to figure out who said what.

Hovering over any contact photo gives you a plethora of options to respond to your contacts. Shift-clicking on a status update allows you do something pretty nifty… create a Tag Group.

The Adobe Air app has all the same features of the web site. One of the amazing things you’ll find about peoplebrowsr is that after many minutes exploring, you’ll discover that there are different levels of use for different levels of users. I typically use the Lite Mode, but there is also Advanced and Business Modes. Very nice.

The Settings are also a great feature at the bottom of the window. You have all kinds of options, and you can even change settings per each column.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one social media browser that combines the two most popular services – Facebook and Twitter, you may have finally found a great solution. Better than Tweetdeck. More full featured than Streamy. At home on whatever computer you choose… PeopleBrowsr.

Adelyn got some money for good grades, and when she combined it with what she’d been saving, the next thing you know, we are the astonished owners of the technological fitness craze called the Wii Fit. I was skeptical at first, but after watching it and now playing with it for two days, I’m impressed. I knew it was a great invention when it gave me a Wii Fit age of 42 (only one year off) after measuring my weight, BMI, and testing my balance and other things. Carolyn didn’t fare so well. She has a Wii Fit age of 55. I have been offering to help her descend and ascend steps all day.

We started packing today. It’s a bittersweet moment, but pack we must. We have a ton of stuff, junk, and treasure that we’ve collected over 14 years here in Monticello. We began in the studio, and we spent most of the morning and early afternoon going through my books. I had 5 bookshelves full, and we sorted them out between books heading to my office at Northstar Church and books that I want to try to sell in a near-future garage sale.

In the middle of packing and sorting, there was also some cleaning. Carolyn stepped out at one point (conveniently enough). While she was gone, I noticed there was a basket on top of one of my bookshelves. As I began to empty it, my insides turned to ice when I saw a pregnancy test box. It was unopened. Still new. “What the…?!” I thought. Soon, however, I assured myself this was some strange anomaly. It was covered in dust.

When Carolyn returned, I pointedly asked her about it, and she couldn’t remember how it got there either. But for some reason, she thought it was extremely funny that I was quizzing her about it so anxiously.

With Sam gone to Kanakuk Camp this week, Adelyn has the run of the house. We went this evening over to our friends, the Saffolds, for the closing softball pool party. I was the assistant coach of Adelyn’s team. We had a perfect record. We didn’t win a game. All the trophies we distributed tonight said, “The Team With the Most Heart.” The girls didn’t seem to mind, and so Tim Chase and I drowned our coaching inadequacies in brownies and homemade ice cream.