There is a time for patience and a time for pushing ahead.  Melissa and I are feeling an urgency to get our family to Haiti – even the kids are feeling it.  The teaching positions at Cowman School just outside of Cap Haitien, Haiti, today stand wide open and unfilled – and have been all this semester.  Currently at Cowman, the principal is doubling as kindergarten teacher and has therefore necessarily limited class to three days a week.  Melissa is anxious to step in to the teacher role and allow the principal to get back to her administrative focus.    At the other…

Everybody’s heard of “deja vu” – that strange feeling of “I’ve done this before” that pops up every now and then at the oddest moments.But I had never heard of “vuja de” until this weekend.  Some creative soul coined the term to indicate that feeling which is the opposite of deja vu – while in the midst of very familiar territory, you see something brand new … as if for the first time.I have experienced sporadic deja vu in my lifetime – but lately, vuja de seems to be a pretty common occurrence!It actually started two years ago on the flight…

Self-centered followers of a selfless God?I have been working on a sermon the last few days.  I get the opportunity to preach tomorrow morning at Shiloh Community Church in Franklin, Indiana.  The pastor gave me the option of preaching a favorite sermon – one that I’ve done before, but I really don’t like to approach preaching that way (not that there’s anything wrong with it). So it took me a long time to settle on a passage to preach.Several leadings eventually caused me to land on 2 Corinthians 9:6-15.  I tried to avoid this passage, because it sounds just like the sort…

Self-centered followers of a selfless God?I have been working on a sermon the last few days.  I get the opportunity to preach tomorrow morning at Shiloh Community Church in Franklin, Indiana.  The pastor gave me the option of preaching a favorite sermon – one that I’ve done before, but I really don’t like to approach preaching that way (not that there’s anything wrong with it). So it took me a long time to settle on a passage to preach.Several leadings eventually caused me to land on 2 Corinthians 9:6-15.  I tried to avoid this passage, because it sounds just like the sort…

That’s what I told Melissa a couple of months ago in response to our mutual concern that we wouldn’t be able to raise the support necessary to get our family to Haiti in January.  It was my (half-hearted) attempt to express faith that the Lord could still work a miracle and put us on the mission field after Christmas.Now it’s October 31st.  I was in Walmart last night and the workers were already shoving aside the candy CORN to make room for the candy CANES.  This time of year always goes by so fast (at least for all of us non-children!) and January…

I am reading Jen Hatmaker’s book, Interrupted: An Adventure in Relearning the Essentials of Faith.  I had never even heard of Hatmaker until three or four days ago when a trusted friend who is serving with her husband in Africa in medical missions mentioned on Facebook that she was reading Interrupted.  Then she posted a link to Hatmaker’s blog and the post there concerned a trip the author took recently to Haiti and her impressions of the experience.I was hooked.  (If you care to check it out for yourself, go to jenhatmaker.com)I just came across a quote she included in…

I used a bit of an earlier blog post for this month’s newspaper article, but most of this is new:But the bell was not some electronic buzz – it was a handheld bell, powered only by a vigorous shaking by Mrs. Z, a 70-something missionary who teaches 1stand 2nd graders. I got to see firsthand what a challenge this may present.  American teachers are well aware that technology will let you down when the timing is most inconvenient.  In Haiti, it is not just high tech gadgets – it is anything powered by electricity.So what did I do with my…

… And the Ladies Don’t Even Know It!  Yet.UPDATED**As if on a mission, these ladies came out of the Sunday worship service one by one the morning I had preached at the church of my good friend, Tim Price.  Each one asked me, “Which one is Caleb?” And I would point them to my oldest son.You see, in my sermon I had included the story of Caleb’s unsolicited generosity at age 9 when he willingly gave Melissa the two $20 bills he had been saving for Legos so she could take them to Haiti to give to two different needy families.That Sunday morning in Troy,…