Been under a lot of stress today.

Sometimes living in someone else’s house can really get to you.  Just never knowing exactly where stuff is. . . .

It’s hard not knowing what will happen with Jesse, or when our house will get done, or if the new missionaries on our team are going to be ok financially.  I do the best I can to help out, but a lot of the time I just have to be patient.

I got my car worked on today.  I had to have a brake job.  Cost about $700.  Good news is I was also able to get my emission test done and my oil changed at the same time.

Gas is also just outrageous.  I put in over 100 miles yesterday going up to Marietta than to Norcross and back to Stone Mountain.  Somebody is making a LOT of money off of us.

When I get more stress I run. Did 5 miles this morning.

Also went to Dr. Barrington’s to pick up some medicine for Kathy.  Also got her another phone charger.  Another thing we can’t find.

Listened to a fascinating discussion on animal locomotion on Ted.com.  That’s a terrific site.

Love you guys!

Jesse and Ashley and I went to Marietta today to work on cleaning up one of our apartments.


The management is planning on renovating that section of the property. We have had a hard time getting volunteers to help us over there. When we have more help we’ll move into a new apartment!

Andrei Palmer was also a big help to us today.

He’s the son of Tim and Cathy Palmer who are our missionaries at Huntington Ridge. He always has a great attitude. It was fun having him around today.

We had a meeting with Austin Alridge who is the youth director for FBC Marietta. We enjoyed eating Columbian food and then went over to Preston Chase to meet the new manager and tell him about the team coming from Austin’s church to work at the apartment next week. Their team did a fantastic job last year. I’m sure the kids will really enjoy having them to liven up their summer!

We also went by to check on our team from the Atlanta Chinese Christian Church working at Azalea. The kids have sure enjoyed having them around this week. I know they’ll really miss them.
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We bought the food for the outreach event we’re having at Hamptons at Lenox this weekend. Andrei and I took the food over to the apartment manager so they’ll have it when they need it.

I sure was tired when I got home. Put over 100 miles on the van today.

I spent a good time with my friends Bennett Ekandem and Keith Harrell today in Clarkston.

We talked about the work in that area and how best to reach the people there. We also got to visit with another friend of mine Pat Combs who was recently appointed with the International Mission Board to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

My parents worked there for several years. It’s a pretty hard place to live.

Went over to Chamblee to check on the kids at the mission and see how the team from the Atlanta Chinese Christian Church was doing. They seem to be handling living at the mission just fine! The kids are loving having the team there. Makes me really happy.

Checked on bills at my office at FBC Doraville.

Visited with Tim and Cathy Palmer for a couple of hours this afternoon. They seem to be adjusting great. Today marks one month since they’ve moved in. I’m glad they’re here!

Went over to my house on Pitty Pat Court late this afternoon. Mowed my yard for about 2 hours. Hard work! My middle finger on my left hand got numb from holding the bar on the mower. Hopefully I’ll get the feeling back in it tomorrow. Weird typing. Sort of like when my fingers were burned and I didn’t have the nerves grown back yet.

I watched the dvd of NEXT this evening with Nick Cage. He’s one of my favorite actors. Cool movie about a guy who can see 2 minutes into the future. If you could see the future, would you want to?

Love you guys!

I had a great time working with my leadership group from the YMCA today!

We went out to the sites they’ll be covering including two new locations.

Should be a great outreach to that community.

Checked on my team at Azalea Place. My friends from the Atlanta Chinese Christian Church are doing a fantastic job at the mission.


The maintenance guy fixed the stove and the AC so they’re a little more comfortable, but talk about a total immersion! They also helped me get my letters labeled for my mailout this month!

Ashley, Miles and Jesse helped me write a little note on the letters. The kids just went over to mail them out for me. GREAT to have that job done!

Worked out on weights. I like feeling a little sore. Emphasis on little.

Love you guys!

A heavy price has been paid by our soldiers to preserve our freedom! THANK YOU Veterans!

I went to Azalea to check on my team from the Atlanta Chinese Christian Church today. I took the leader over to First Baptist Church of Doraville to make sure they have access to the church just in case the maintenance guys can’t get the stove fixed at Azalea.

The air conditioner was also leaking water today. Sorry we had to mess up the maintenance guy’s memorial day.

The kids are SO happy to have a team to work with them this week.

It’s so much fun to come into the complex and see all the happy faces beaming with delight and chasing the team around the yard!

We went out to eat Peruvian food at Contigo Peru for lunch. Delicioso!

I finished up our newsletter last night late. Ashley took the masters over to make copies at Staples. We’ll start working on writing letters tomorrow. I’ll have my team from ACCC help me with the labels.

We had a good time with Kathy’s family coming over to visit with us at our new mission house.

It’s fun to see all her family. Three years ago today her dad Bill Doverspike passed away. I sure miss him.

I got to jam with Miles and Bill Doverspike on his Austalian dijerido. Fun.

Ran 2.6 miles this afternoon in the heat. Summer’s here, baby!

Love you guys.

Ashley and I worked on getting our newsletters written.  We’ll make our copies tomorrow!

Ashley also made a presentation at Crossroads Church which is located directly behind her mission at Kensington Station.  She did a great job!

I worked out on weights this afternoon.  I’ll probably be sore tomorrow!

I have a team in from the Atlanta Chinese Christian Church staying at the Azalea Mission.  They’ll be here all week.  I’ll go over to the mission tomorrow to make sure they’re doing fine.

Jesse and I watched Oceans 13 tonight on video.  I think it was the best of the three.

Love you guys!

Jesse and I did some more shopping for our new house on Melanie Court. I have my office set up and most of my stuff is organized now. Kathy moved over here too. I just put her to sleep.

This afternoon I worked on my “Story Tim” project—my favorite stories from my 50 years on this planet. Today I told the stories of night time visitors, surprises in my short pants and being chased by a babk–a really, really big baby! I’ll work on editing and getting them on line soon.

I’m also excited that Smugmug has a new video uploader with some new technology. A new codex that makes video look terrific! It’s based on a new compression format set up by Adobe.  I’ll still post everything to my YouTube account, but I’ll also start posting it to the Smugmug site. I’d also like to make the videos available to Itunes so people could download them to their ipods.

Have you ever heard of the TED conference? It stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. It’s held every year in Monterrey, California. Only 1,000 people are invited. Costs around $6,000 to attend. Recently they started posting the 18 minute long presentations from TED. I have really enjoyed them! They are free on line from Ted.com. If you have Itunes it’s under Education. Some really incredible stuff.

Story Tim isn’t quite up to TED talk standards, but if you like stories about being attacked by spitting cobras or chased by elephants, maybe you’ll like mine too! Click on Story Tim from our Home Page at www.whirlwindmissions.org. I’ve seen some wild things in my 50 years.

I’m working on the Africa stories first. I’ll have a section on my life shooting news and another on travels in the bush too.

I’m reading an updated version of Ben Franklin’s autobiography along with several other books on design and art. I think it’s important to remember where we’ve been.

Kathy and I enjoyed watching a show on the History Channel tonight on Underground Jerusalem. Cool stuff!

Love you guys!

Ashley, Jesse and I had a fun time today with Ellynda Lipsey, the pastor of St. Timothy’s United Methodist in Clarkston. She has been one of my favorite pastors for years.

We first started working together back in 1996 when I was the Outreach Director for the Chamblee/Doraville Ministry Center. She’s a MK from Pakistan and knows internationals well. We look forward to working with her church more closely in the Clarkston area. St. Timothy is doing some innovative work around the community and I look forward to partnering with them!We took her over to Willow Branch as well as Ashley’s mission at Kensington Station. We hope to get their youth group involved with our work at KS.

Afterwards, we went to Borders Bookstore. Friday is my “off” day. My favorite thing to do is wander around the bookstore. Easily amused, eh? I picked up a book on Benjamin Franklin. It’s an updating of his autobiography by a professor from Baylor–where I went to school. Ben is one of my heroes. I like people that have a wide variety of skills and interests. I think of the Renaissance Man–equally adept at playing music, art, writing as well as math, science and philosophy!

Last night Jesse and I moved into our new house. The girls are still at the Lamb’s for now helping take care of their pets. I hope they’ll move over here soon.

This morning I had the Comcast guy come out and get the internet and cable TV hooked up. I had them transfer our service over from our house. Sure is good to be back in the saddle with a decent connection. The hotel’s “high speed” internet was a joke. It taught me more about patience for sure!

We have this place for about 6 weeks. Not sure what we’ll do after that. I reckon the Father has that figured out too!

A, J and I went to Alpharetta yesterday for the UNITE meeting for that part of the city.


I made a brief presentation about what we do in the international community and made a plea for the churches to get involved and perhaps host some block parties in their area. We’ll see how it goes. I enjoyed spending time with some of my best buddies, in particular Chip Sweeney from Perimeter Church.

We go back to the very beginning of our ministries here in Atlanta. He sure has been a good friend to me!

The biggest new yesterday was that Ashley was accepted to Perimeter College!


Excellent! I think that will give her a great initial experience with the University system. She’ll have to register for her classes soon. What a mission field!

Last night we went to see Indiana Jones.  It was fun.  I still liked Iron Man better!

I’ll admit it. I was stressed out yesterday. All that moving stuff. . . where are we going. . . ay caramba!

I went to Walmart and bought a bunch of plastic storage boxes so we could move the stuff over to my sister in law Ann’s house.

Then I got a phone call from Kathy, “Did you hear the news about FBC Mountain Park?”

“Nope,” I replied.

“Well just this morning the missionaries living in their mission house went back to Japan! Debbie called and let me know we can stay over there!”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t believe the timing.

“Yep. Give Debbie a call at the church.” (Debbie Lamb is the receptionist for FBC Mountain Park and the wonderful hostess for our family at HER house!)

Sure enough, at 5am the house was ready for us to move to. Jesse and I packed up the van with most of our stuff and we moved a first load in! God is so super cool! I always dig it when the timing is so EXACT!

We’ll be able to stay over there till July 7th. We may have to move back to the hotel for a few weeks. The house is reserved for 4 weeks in July/August. Then again, maybe our house will be finished by July 7th! LORD, please answer that prayer!

I didn’t move my computer stuff to the new house till tomorrow since I’ll have to set up internet and stuff over there.

Jesse and I went to the UNITE meeting for lunch. I made a short presentation about working at the missions hosting block parties in October. The group was very receptive. I’ll make a similar presentation in Alpharetta tomorrow to another group of the UNITE folks.

This evening I went over to Iglesia Bautista Belen. That is Dr. Carlos Salaverria’s church.

He’s one of my favorite pastors. Jesse is having sessions talking with one of their deacons Luis who is also a counselor. J had about 2 hours with him this evening. He seemed to enjoy it.

I had a good time sitting in on the Spanish Bible study that Carlos led. I understood about 95% of what he was saying, so I was pretty happy about that. I am the first missionary that their church supports. I think that’s way cool. I’ll be speaking to the youth (probably in English!) at their mission conference in August.

In case you’re wondering . . .it’s a LOT easier to understand what people are saying than to GENERATE the language. But what I’ve learned over the years is that if you’re willing to try and even if you make a lot of mistakes, you learn a LOT faster if you just get out there and do it. The reason people say that kids learn so much faster than grown ups isn’t because kids are magically so much more adept at language learning, kids just jump in and go for it.

Have you noticed that I haven’t really grown up?

Kathy and I have been married for over 21 years now. She made the comment to me last year, “21 years?! We’re going to have act like grown ups soon.”

We looked at each other and just broke out laughing! Yeah! Like that’s gonna happen!

Here’s to all the Peter Pans in the world!

Love you guys!

Our housing situation is really weird. The hotel said we don’t have the room we’ve been staying in for the last five weeks because someone else had a reservation for the weekend. Today they said, “We’re 100% full, you can come back next week.” I’m looking at them like they’re on crack. We’ve been here for 5 weeks and now they think we’ve just got some place else to stay?! Good grief. We may try and get an apartment around here, but even that is a huge hassle. Turn on utilities, transfer stuff, get furniture. . . . not like I don’t have enough stress in my life.

I took a group from Briarcliff Baptist Church on a visit to the International Village this afternoon.


I gave them a quick briefing on our work at the missions then took them on a tour of Asian Square and Carneceria #1.

They saw Asia and Central America up close and personal in an hour. They couldn’t believe the diversity of where we work!

J and I went to help Bill Hickey get some stuff for the mission where he’s living. Our ministry also helps him with marta passes and phone stuff. He’s been a huge help to us. I’m glad we can help him too.

We went to check on the mission at Azalea. We had fun helping Famedha learn how to juggle. Jesse was pretty good!

A partner of mine brought over about ten used computers. I’ll have some of the guys at the mission that are interested in working on computers take a look at them.

Had a fantastic storm tonight. I thought some of the cloud formations were just incredible!

Weird too because some of the clouds looked green.

These formations are called “mammatus.”

They’re associated with very strong storms.

After the storm, a beautiful sunset. That’ll preach!

Love you guys!