Holiday Highlights

As always, we spent Christmas in Lousiana. In addition, I got to spend around 14 hours in a car driving from Lafayette, LA to Louisville, KY for The World Missions Summit. Nearly 4,000 college students from Chi Alpha groups across America gathered to consider their role in God’s global plan. And then I got to spend 14 hours driving back again.
Some highlights from the trip:

• Getting loot for Christmas, including Munchkin.
• Having Dana decide that daddy was her favorite for a little while.
• Watching my parents finally get broadband internet service. Also, fixing computers for both my parents and my in-laws.
• Discovering that Steve Barke has a snore that would cause a dead person to search for ear plugs. Also, purchasing ear plugs.
• Listening to J. Rufus Fears talk about Winston Churchill for 12 hours. I’ve long admired Churchill based on what little I knew about him–now that I know more I’m astounded. He was among the greatest of all time.
• Hanging out with Greg for 14 hours in a car.
• Discovering that there are whole stretches of road in the South which only receive country and/or rap stations.
• Chatting with Lindsey and Nicholette about their upcoming moves to join us. They’re both such great people–Paula and I can’t wait for them to be here!
• Meeting Will Phillips. He was every bit as entertaining in person as I had hoped he would be. For some reason he thinks he out-geeks me. Someday I may have to disabuse him of that notion (I contribute to Wikipedia, for crying out loud).
• Seeing my old bud Randy Jumper again. We were classmates at AGTS and have kept in touch digitally since. Nice to have a face-to-face again.
• Discovering that Stanford frosh John Sillcox can focus out of each eye separately. Freaky.
• Way cool worship in the morning. In an odd turn of events, the morning services were consistently 5 to 7 times better than the evening services.
• Seeing over 650 students make a one-year committment to missions with the option for a lifetime extension. Woohoo! And they weren’t just signing up for the easy places, either. A lot of closed countries are in for a big surprise.
• Watching the amazing level of panache with which the Ascent (a Chi Alpha staff event) was pulled off. Knowing that Belkas Lehmann and I had planned the whole thing made it extra-special.
• Getting a free copy of Full Gospel, Fractured Minds. I’m enjoying it so far, and I’ll post a review when I’m done. Big thanks to Jerry Gibson for hooking me up.
• Randomly walking around Louisville at dark looking for food (which I finally discovered at a gas station).
• Finally watching The Magnificent Seven.
• Watching The Fantastic Four and finally realizing that they’re the four elements.
• Having Dana behave on both flights.