Do you have a plan for the future?  As Ben Franklin said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”  It’s his birthday today, and my mom’s too!

I set up a retirement ROTH account this morning.  I always hope I’ll “die in the saddle.”  The idea of retirement has no appeal to me.  My dad is still pastoring and he’s 76.  Honestly I think he’s doing some of his best work!

I have a meeting in a few minutes with a pastor friend of mine.  I’ve worked with Robert Carter for several years.  He used to help us at Oakbrook until they shut that door to us.  I’m hoping to get him plugged into Kensington Station–a huge complex of over 1,200 apartments! Pray that that meeting goes well.

I’m still dealing with the medical immigration forms for Jouvens and Ernest Mocombe–two young men that are like sons to me.  What a hassle these immigrants have to go through.

I’ll go by and check on the kids at Azalea after my meeting at Kensington Station with Pastor Carter.

This morning I uploaded the short videos of my presentation at NAMB.  You might enjoy listening to some of them.  Go to www.whirlwindmissions.org and click on Mission Videos.

Peace.

I had lunch this morning with Bob Wiley, he’s in charge of Multi-Housing ministry in Georgia.  I am still amazed that he hadn’t heard of what I’ve been doing in this area.  I also enjoyed having Bennett Ekandem along with us for that meeting.  Hopefully, we can get even more churches engaged because of Bob’s help.

I’ve been at the office catching up on email for the last couple of hours.  My internet has been dead at my house (and according to Comcast in the three surrounding neighborhoods) for the last 5 days!  That’s not zesty!

I’ve moved a lot of the information I use regularly to be web based.  Pretty tough if you can’t get to the web!

That’s why the blog has been awhile coming.  Here’s what you’ve missed below!

Peace.

 

Monday, January 15, 2007

 Ashley and I worked together today!  She always makes every day better.

We started out in Lawrenceville where we picked up a bunch of jackets and coats that one of the Sunday School classes had collected for our ministry.

Then we headed over to Huntington Ridge on Buford Highway.  They had a fire this weekend which destroyed four apartments. I met with Ben Sawyer, the director of that mission, and we left the coats and blankets we collected in Lawrenceville.  I’ll go back and collect the rest of what’s left over and take them to Ashley’s mission in Clarkston next week.

We went by my office at First Baptist Doraville to check on mail, do a quick clean up and rearrange my collection of Outreach Updates.  I wanted to sort all the originals.  I was SO glad when I found the first year’s collection!

We also did a little shopping at Perimeter Mall.  Ashley was still feeling kind of under the weather so I wanted to cheer her up a bit.  Shopping pretty much always does that.

Kathy went back to the hospital to check on her Mom.  Apparently she’s doing better.  I’m still not sure she’s able to come back to our house to stay, but that’s probably what will end up happening.  If she keeps falling I just wonder about her safety.  The doctor’s still don’t really know what’s going on  with her.  Makes me wish we had House to take on the case.  I reckon TV’s not the real world, eh?

I talked with Steve Nolen from Crosspointe today.  He gave me some great news about their team working in a new apartment complex.  They’ve had about 12 people accept the Lord and many waiting on Baptism!  EXCELLENT!

I’m probably going to the library today to try and catch up on my email.  Internet at my house has been out for 5 days now.  I’ll put all this stuff on the blog in one whack.

Peace.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

 Ashley has been sick the last couple of days.  She seems better today.  I took her out for breakfast and I’ve been trying to help take care of her.

Kathy got home after watching her mom for two days.  Sure did miss her.  Her mom seems better.  I’m glad about that.

Ran 5.2 miles this afternoon.

Peace.

 Saturday, January 13, 2007

I went over to Emory Hospital to check on Kathy and Nell.  Kathy seemed to be doing ok but her mom was really out of it.  She was feeding herself with an imaginary fork and thinking there were spiders in the room.  Pretty sad.

I also checked out the Carlos Museum of antiquity which was just around the corner from the library.  They had an exhibition on Indian art that was interesting.  Of course I always enjoy looking at the mummies and the Roman antiquities.

Ashley hasn’t been feeling well.  I’ve been trying to help her feel better.

Worked out when I got home.

Peace.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Kathy found her mom lying on the floor at 8:30am this morning.  We helped her back into bed but she was very disoriented.  Kathy called her sister Ann who lives nearby and is a nurse.  They decided that it was time to take her to the ER and have her checked out again because of loss of strength in her legs and her labored breathing.

Ann took her over to the hospital at about 10:30am.  K and I got a bite to eat and then she went on over to the hospital to be with her mom and sister.  She spent the night with her mom last night.

Ashley and Jesse and I went out for Thai last night, then over to Borders book store.  I always like looking at books.  I bought a new dictionary and thesaurus last night.  Simple pocket one, but pretty comprehensive.

We also bought some new mollies and platies.  I’ll acclimatize them to the salt water tonight.

Our internet has been off and on, mostly off since Thursday.  There were four Comcast trucks at the top of our street trying to fix it.  Some kind of outage in the whole area.

Ran 2.5 miles and picked up trash—about 5 big garbage bags full.  I really hate it when the roads near my house get littered up.  I pick up my mile route just about once a week.  I ran a different direction just to clean that section of the road up.  You get a totally different impression of the neighborhood when it’s clean and tidy.

Peace.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Worked on my financial report at the office.  Did my email and vlog.  Worked on blocking out some of the light into my office.  This time of the year it really blinding and it’s hard to see the computer screen.  I’ve got some window glare material coming that sticks to the glass by static electricity.  That  should help a lot.

Went to the mission to check on the kids.  Took them more ink for the printer.

Picked up Bennet Ekandem, and Alex and Beth Doty from Willow Branch.  We went over to NAMB in Alpharetta.  We made a presentation to the staff for the Spiritual Focus day.  The video is available on You Tube.  Go to www.whirlwindmissions.org and click on Video Log to see them.

Nell has really been doing poorly today.  I had to keep her from collapsing to the floor several times.  Miles helped me put her back into the bed.  Her son Paul came over.  We discussed how to make the bed safer for her.  She can barely get in it.  If she keeps falling like this I think we’ll have to reevaluate her staying with us.  It’s just not safe.

Practicing on the new Yamaha keyboard.  It’s fun to lay down beat tracks.  It really is an amazingly powerful machine.  I feel like a kid in the candy store with all these different sounds to play with.

Worked out on weights.

Peace.

Took care of shopping for stuff for the missions today.  Picked up a bunch of food and drinks for the kids along with more printer ink.

My mother in law isn’t doing well.  Really dizzy.  I checked on her and she was hanging on the side of the bed trying not to fall.  Sad.  Hard on everyone.

Received email from Cherry Faile today, the missionary we’re working with in Niger.  She sent me a quick lesson on Fulfilde–Language of the Fulani People.  Fo fo ma!  Howdy!

I need to go home and run.

Peace.

Windy day here in Atlanta.  Nearly blows my hat off my old bald head.

I’ve been trying to track down a scrapbook for one of the kids at the mission to use in his class.  I don’t think these teachers have any idea how hard it is to find stuff like that.  I finally found something I think he can use.  It’s amazing how long it takes to do “easy” jobs.

I had such a happy thing happen yesterday.  For about 6 months I thought I’d lost the first year of the Outreach Updates that our ministry put out.  I was so discouraged about losing something that I thought was very valuable–at least from an emotional point of view.  I told Jesse, “It’s somewhere safe.  So safe, I can’t even get at it.”  I started looking in the safest places possible and I found them!  They were in another binder with web site stuff.  PTL!  I bought some new binders today so I can separate the years and keep them safe and sound.

I consider myself a really organized person.  My confidence is shaken when I lose something like that.  Much better now.

Jesse and I worked on the web site for hours last night.  We’re still going through the www.whirlwindmissions.org  site with a fine tooth comb.  Yesterday we organized the buttons and started working on a new blog site.  Eventually, the blog will be located on our site rather than Xanga.  I’ll let everyone know when it moves.

Special props to the folks who SUBSCRIBE to this effort!  I really appreciate you guys the most.  Do you know how to do RSS stuff?  If you don’t know what it stands for, you probably don’t.  Jesse is always encouraging me to use the best methods of distribution and he swears RSS is the way to go.  When we roll it out, we’ll include simple instructions on how to do it.  Then it’ll be “goodbye Xanga.”

Jesse and I also figured out how to do a Donation page on our web site.  We linked it to the NAMB site for donations.  Now on our web site you can click on “To Donate” it’ll take you directly to the page associated with our ministry and you can use your visa card to set it up regularly or a one time gift.  Pretty slick.

I need to go over to Azalea to give the kids the stuff I tracked down for them.

Pray for my Bengali kids at the mission.  There were at least 15 yesterday, all playing together, chatting in Bengali.

Worked out hard on weights this morning.  Feeling good.

Peace.

BEAUTIFUL day today after hard, stormy weather last night. Had over an inch of rain according to my rain guage!

Been working on my financial report and email.

Setting up the schedule for our Outreach Band—Cruz. Man, I dig playing with those guys. I’m really looking forward to getting some good live recordings this year.

Jesse has insisted that I check out a new way to blog and put it on our whirlwindmissions.org web site. Once we get it up and running (which will include subscriptions, just like now), I’ll let you guys know! Sure don’t want to miss you!

PLUS, if you haven’t checked out the Video Logs, you should see those too. They’re fun to watch and keep up with what’s going on in a little more detail. I’m trying to keep it to five minutes at the most.

Ran 5.2 miles this morning. I hope to work out on weights this evening

Peace.

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