We’re into our house and my back can tell the difference!

It took us just under 5 months to get back into our place.  It really looks beautiful and not even a slight smoke smell!  If I NEVER smell smoke again it’ll be too soon.

Yesterday, I did my briefings with my two teams in town:  Broadus Baptist Church, VA and FBC Powell, TN.  They are both great teams and doing a terrific job.


After I got all the teams started, I went back to the mission house to move the rest of our stuff out and give the house a thorough cleaning.  I think it really looks nice.  It was such a blessing to be able to stay there as a whole family!  The timing really was perfect as our house was finished just as we needed to move out.

We all slept in the Pitty Pat Court house.  Kathy on some old mattresses that her mom had and Jesse and I on air mattresses.  I talked to the insurance guy a second ago and he made it sound like we’d be able to get the new beds soon.  PTL!

This morning I went over to Walmart to pick up some filters for our AC units and some odds and end for the missions.

I took Miles and Bill Hickey out for lunch.  They’re working on the exterior of our house.  It was due a cleaning and needed to be resealed.  I did the house by myself last time.  Miles and Bill need the money so I decided to hire them to help instead.

Ashley is still in Texas. 

My niece Olivia got married on my birthday–the 12th.  They had a great time! 

Monday Ashley made a presentation to the ladies at my Dad’s church–The Worship Place.  I know she did a terrific job!  Check out the video that Ashley did for fund raising.  http://whirlwindmissions.org/fund_raising.php.

I’m at my office in Doraville now.  I still don’t have internet at my house.  Nor TV.  I’m missing out on the Tour de France and I’m not happy about it.  C’est la vie.

Please keep praying for Jesse.  The doctor changed his meds but he still seems tired all the time.

Also pray for John Miller, the husband of Sandy Miller one of the managers I work with.  He’s in the hospital at Piedmont right now and not doing well.

Love you guys!

Holy moley!  50!

In the morning I spent most of my time cleaning the mission house.  Scrubbed tubs and toilets.  Teaching me humility, I reckon.

The afternoon I went to Mattress Firm to do the shopping for the beds and furniture for our house.  That was a job I was dreading but it wasn’t too hard.  I sent an email to our insurance guy so hopefully we’ll get a check so we can actually go and buy the stuff.

Last night my air mattress went dead so I slept on the  couch.  It was comfortable as I rode into my birthday!

I’m writing this on Sunday morning.  We’ll go to church in a little while.  I’m watching the Tour de France right now.  Then I’ll start breaking down my office stuff and moving it to our house.

I may not have access to the internet for the next couple of days.

Next week is the last of the summer teams!  We’ve had a great time this summer with some very enthusiastic teams.

Pray for us as we get everything back together at our Pitty Pat Court house!

Thank you guys for loving and praying for us!

I had an early morning today!  Got up around 6am and took Ashley to the airport.  She’s flying to Austin to spend a couple of weeks with my parents.

My niece Olivia is getting married tomorrow, which is also my 50th birthday!

Ashley just gets more beautiful every day!

From the airport I went to the North American Mission Board where I did my seminar called the “5 Levels of Engagement.” 

I talk to the missionary candidates about how to raise up volunteers. The new missionaries were great!

We had over 1,000 volunteers this week serving in 32 locations!  Today I also worked with FBC Venice, FL.  We hosted a block party at Huntington Station.  It was also the opening of their pool.  The team was very enthusiastic and they really helped the kids have a great time!

Today we started moving back into our house!  It doesn’t seem real.  We’ve been out of our house since February 19th–over four months now.  We still need to get the beds squared away.  Those were all destroyed in the fire.

Love you guys!

Spent most of the morning lining up the locations for my three teams coming next week.  It’s our final week for teams during the summer.  We’ll still have some weekend events with out of town teams.

I have a team from Virginia in town tomorrow.  They’ll be doing a backyard Bible club at a brand new mission off of Roswell Road in the morning then helping me with a block party in the afternoon.  I checked on the supplies for the event and went by Party City to pick up more balloons.

The afternoon I covered five different missions checking on the teams.  Everything seemed to go GREAT!  We’ve had over 40 kids accept Christ this week.  And that’s just the numbers that people walked up and told me.  My guess is that out of the 32 locations we covered probably around 100 people became Christians this week!

Here is one of the kids sharing the Evangecube! It’s a great way to share your faith.

This evening I was back at Perimeter Church to talk to students as the went by the booth we had.  Seems like the teams really had a fantastic time at the missions.  I heard some powerful testimony of kids getting saved!  PTL.

I got home around 8:30pm.  Kathy went to the airport to pick up Ashley.  She’ll be leaving tomorrow morning to go to Texas to visit with my parents and talk to supporters.  She’s also going to the wedding for my niece, Olivia.  She’ll be gone about ten days.

Just got word from the Palmers that their upstairs neighbors had their apartment broken into.  Of course that’ll make anyone uncomfortable.  Apparently, the guy climbed up their patio fence and broke into the window. Pray for the safety of our missionaries!

Had a great day with my teams from Gold Rush today.  The students are so motivated!  I know that at least 20 kids accepted Christ this afternoon!

We had to change a couple of locations yesterday.  One of the kids that was saved lived in the new complex!  God had that all figured out for sure!

Our house is pretty close to getting done.  They told me that they didn’t have in the budget to paint my room which is the whole basement area.  We’ll see!  They turned the power on in the house so that’s real progress.  They had the carpet in yesterday and the guys were staining the doors today.  Stupid.  Hope they don’t get the stain right in new carpet.  It doesn’t want to come out–that’s why they call it “stain!”

If all goes well we’ll move back in on Saturday.  Please pray that the inspector will come on Thursday or Friday to give the final OK.

Got back home about 8:30pm after spending time at Perimeter manning our Whirlwind booth.  Matt Johns, my partner working at the Corners apartments came to help.  Good to spend time with him.

Kathy and Jesse were both asleep when I got home.  They must be pretty tired!

Kathy has been riding her bike for around 15 miles the last couple of days.

On the way home I crossed the Chattahoochee River.  Fog forms over the river because the water is cooler than the land.  It looked like a river of cloud. This phenomenon is called “advection fog.”

Did you know that clouds are fog up in the air?

I had a great day working with my teams from Gold Rush today!  There are close to 1,000 students attending one of the largest Youth Conferences in America.  About 40 churches participate and ALL of the kids get involved with missions!

It was great to see them working in the field.

We had to reschedule a couple of the locations.  Part of the gig I reckon.

This evening I went out to Perimeter to man our display for Whirlwind Missions. 




It was fun to see many of my best friends, especially Chip Sweeney who I’ve been working with for nearly 10 years.  Chip and I started out together doing missions in this area. 

He’s a dear friend and a great missionary! And so is Caroline his daughter!

One of my favorite teams is in town this week:  Youth Outreach United.  You might remember that Ashley worked with them for a year before Whirlwind snatched her away!

They are covering nine sites this week.  I went by two of our new locations to check on them.  They were at Highland at Sutton Place and Highland North.

I went by the house this morning to check on the painting and plumbing going on this week.  House is coming along. 

All the painting is finished now.

Carpet will go in next.  Please pray that the inspection will get done this week!

I dropped  off my bike at Tucker’s Bikeways this morning to get it tuned up and the front tire fixed.  I’m sure it’ll work great when I get it back!

Love you guys!

Had a fun day today.  Started out watching the Tour de France.

I’m really looking forward to them getting into the mountain Stages.

Pastor Bob Bochat did a good job at the Bridge service of FBC Mountain Park.  He preached on God’s faithfulness to us even in the hard times.  Do you ever think that God sends bad things to you, or causes bad things to happen?  I don’t.

Went for a four mile run this afternoon.  Beautiful time of the year, right after it had finished raining.Check out the mammatus clouds.

Notice the trails coming down from the bottom of the clouds. These are called virga. They’re made of up droplets of rain or ice that dry before they hit the ground.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon creating a new display for Whirlwind Missions.  I’ve gone with very large pictures and very little text. It’s on a black trifold.  I think it looks pretty good!

Got a call from Ashley.  She made it to Florida safely.  She’s enjoying the beach with Miles and his family.

Biggest week of the year starts tomorrow.  I’ve already had a wrinkle.  I received an email a few minutes ago concerning one of the locations where we were going to put a team.  They’ve had some shootings over there in the last month so the leadership didn’t want to put a team there.  Probably a good idea.

In the places where I have work it’s NEVER completely safe.  I have a hard time looking someone in the eye and telling them that there could never be a problem there.  I work with the cops a lot.  There are problems with most of the properties where I have work, if not all.  If there weren’t problems, I wouldn’t be there!

Kathy and I had a relaxing day Saturday with lots of bike riding! I ran up the hills and biked down over 7 miles.

On my way to the mountain I saw this big turtle in the middle of the road.  Parked the car and moved it to the side.  Big one!

Stone Mountain is such a beautiful place.

Check out the size of this leaf!

We’re also getting organized to be ready to move out of the mission house and back into OUR house. . . we hope!  It’s almost done!  We may have to spend a few days in the hotel.

Tour de France started Saturday!  I love virtually riding a bike through some of the most beautiful countryside in the world!  The race is hosted by Versus TV.  Live in the mornings around 8:00am, expanded coverage in the evenings around 8pm.

Tonight we had a party at our house to celebrate the 4th and my 50th birthday.  We had her brother Bill and Deborah and her daughter and boyfriend. 

Kathy’s brother Paul and his son Luke (they brought the Bearded Dragon lizard from Australia. 


We’ll be taking care of “Larry” while they’re out of town next week.

Kathy had both of her sisters over:  Ann & Ruth.  It was great to visit with David Sullivan, Ruth’s husband.

Miles and Ashley and Jesse also made it a hit!

We ate fried chicken and enjoyed vegetables.

Later we played some 20 Questions games, trying to guess an object.

We even shot off some fireworks!