Came home yesterday with a scratchy throat.

Mowed the yard, perhaps in retrospect not the best plan.

Felt bad all day long.  Laying around trying to rest.

Headache and weak.

Pray, please.

This morning  I was supposed to have a meeting with my computer partners at ReBoot.  They help us refurbish old computers to outfit the missions and families that need computers.  Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out so we had to reschedule for next week.

I went by Clarkston to drop off the two new Kinyarwanda Bibles I had for my partner Terry Earl and to see the Wonderful Wednesday program at Clarkston International Bible Church.

Then Jesse and I went over to Clarkston Community Center to say hello to my partner Cathy Palmer and to bring her some more yarn from one of my partners at NAMB.

We then met up with Ian North to eat lunch and debrief all the missions conferences that we worked at this weekend.  He’s also putting out his first news letter this month.  Busy!

My other assignment today was to pick up a new video camcorder that could shoot in HD.  After research I decided on the Sony MHS-PM1.  It’s a tiny guy with a big heart!  Shoot 1080i true highdef video and has a 5 mp sensor.  I picked it up at the Sony Style store at Lenox Square for about $170 which I thought was a great price!  I want to do a lot more with video and I think that it being so portable (it’s about the size of a box of cigarrettes) will enable me to do that. Always great to get a little extra money from my tax returns!

I liked some of the displays at the mall! Cool!

Not sure if you watch the Story Tim videos, hope you do.  I think they’re all really funny or interesting! Here’s a sad story about a car wreck I covered.

After picking up the camera, J and I went over to the Borders bookstore across the street from the Mall.  I think it’s the best bookstore in the city!

Then over to Best Buy to pick up a 8GB  storage card for the new camera.  Only $40!  Amazing how storage cards have gone WAY down in price.

Also went to check on the kids at Azalea.   We have a new kid at the mission named Tambir.  He’s from Bangladesh and speaks almost no English.  SO, I went around trying to teach the kids some of the Bengali phrases that I know.  They got a HUGE kick out of it!  The children I work with are very similar to MKs, we’ve both grown up around multiple languages.  I think we’re wired to pick up other languages faster than most people. The kids jumped right in with the “Asalaam alekums” and the “kamon asens” the “balos” and the “ajamai.”  It’s always fun to learn new things!

Came home and spent about two hours mowing my yard.  My throat was bothering me this afternoon.  Kinda scratchy.  After all that dust today, feel pretty weak.  Pray that I keep my strength up!

Also pray for the people suffering with the new strain of flu.

Had a terrific meeting with my partners from Dunwoody, Barry and Tom along with the director of our mission at Huntington Ridge Eduardo and Sheila Zamora.  She fixed us a delicious lunch of shrimp and rice as we talked about missions in the area.

The Zamoras are really doing a fantastic job at Huntington Ridge–a very difficult assignment.

We had a very powerful prayer time where we prayed specifically for our brother Barry and the challenges he’s facing with his business right now.  Isn’t it tough for everybody?  Pray for Barry and Tom–they’ve been great supporters of our ministry!

Went over to my office to check on the mail and see how my other partners are doing.  Our pastor at FBC Doraville moved to Tampa.  We don’t have a regular person preaching there right now.  Now sure who is supposed to fill in this Sunday.  Pray for that transition.

I can hear Kathy coughing.  Pray that she’ll feel better.

It’s newsletter time.  Finished the layout for this month’s issue and went over to the mission at Azalea to let the kids help me with the stickers.

They enjoy all the cool stamps and helping Mr. Tim!  I bought them doughnuts.

I had them make like the doughnuts were glasses.  I thought it was pretty funny.  Of course I’m easily amused!

Came home and ran 4 miles.  Beautiful weather for running!

When I got home, the kids had most of the newsletters done!  Praise the Lord!  Ashley dropped them off at the Post Office this evening.

And now. . . for your edification . . . Stoooory Tim! From my days shooting news. DRUG BUST!

Today I’ve been working on my newsletter.  And resting.  I didn’t realize just how tired I was.  Sure was glad I didn’t have any pressing appointments this morning!

I was outside this morning when I got a call from Kathy.  She was working with the refugee babies in Clarkston and needed me to come help get a window open in her room.  I knew that that old church building had probably been painted at least ten times over the years.  They normally don’t ever open the windows, they just paint over them.  I got all my tools together and went to check on the situation.  Sure enough a lot of paint!  Unfortunately, to get to the outside frame to break the seal you had to open up the storm windows.  And you couldn’t open the storm windows unless the painted shut windows could open!  So no go.  Bahd luck.

Plan B!  There’s a door into the room that leads to the outside.  We were able to block that door open and they had a little security fence so that the babies couldn’t get out.  Voila!  The solution!  Glad that worked out ok.

I took the girls (Ashley was out of class by that time) over to Madina to eat some roast goat.

Actually the girls got Chicken Chop Chop.  J and I feasted on the Oromo platter.  It’s always fun to have the whole family together!

I dropped the girls back at their car and Jesse and I went over to Staples to pick up the supplies I needed for the newsletter and over to the Post Office to pick up, you guessed it! Stamps!

They told me that the stamps were going up to .44c in May.  They also explained to me that there’s a law now that the PO cannot increase the stamps except once a year.  That’s why they started the Forever stamps.

My plants are doing better outside.  I thought I’d killed my beautiful beugonia.  Starting to come back!

Had a nice rest this afternoon!  I’ll put the finishing touches on my newsletter tomorrow morning, then take the envelopes to the mission tomorrow to get some help from the kids!

Great day!

Ashley and I made a road trip up to Foothills Community Church nestled in the N. Georgia Mountains in Marble Hill.

This church gave us a very warm welcome and made us feel right at home. I really enjoyed sharing our ministry with this terrific congregation.

They even had a baptist today!

We came home and had a brief rest.  Then Kathy and I went over to Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Snellville to support the newest members on our team, Ian and Ruthie North.

They did a fantastic job of sharing their ministry with the congregation.

I’ve had a partnership with this mission minded church since 1996!

It’s good to be home tonight.  I’m pooped!

Here are some images from my friends in Michigan!


Beautiful sunset to end up the day!

And here. . . for your viewing pleasure! Stoooory Tim! One of the weirdest and stinkiest stories I ever covered!

Just got back from the airport from Detroit where I spoke at the state convention of the Woman’s Missionary Union.  I taught two classes and preached this afternoon.

It’s about 10:30 pm now.  I need to crash out so I can be ready to go preach tomorrow morning Foothills Community Church in N. Georgia.  It’ll take about 2 hours to get there.

Glad to be home! It’s my sweet wife Kathy’s birthday today!

I’ll post pictures from my trip tomorrow.  Fun time!

I went to the Georgia Baptist Convention building this morning.

There was a meeting with the Mission Service Corps Missionaries from the North American Mission Board there.  I had four people from my team at the meeting:  Bennett Ekandem, Ruthie North, Rebecca Hampton and Keith Harrell.

Is was great to see them as well as meet some of the other folks on our team.


The guys at the GBC made the statement that I recruit about 25% of all the missionaries appointed in Georgia.  I thought that was pretty cool.
I saw this moth in the parking lot. Cool!

After the meeting we had a lunch time together and then Bennett and Ruthie and I met up with Ashley and Jesse at First Baptist Atlanta.  My partner Derrick Posten had picked up the majority of the supplies from the local Kroger.

I say the majority because they didn’t have it all.  That surprised me.  This was the first time we used this Kroger.  I hope they get the rest of the order right!

Ashley and Jesse picked up the grills that we had cleaned yesterday over to the church so we had all the equipment in one place.  Lots of stuff!

I took Ruthie, Ashley and Jesse over to the mall to enjoy some fellowship as well as go to the book store and Best Buy to continue my search for new video equipment. I thought this was a cool display!

We went over to Azalea to check on the kids at the mission.  I wanted to make sure that Miguel had handed out the last of the sandwiches that were donated from FBC Mountain Park.  It was all gone!  Lots of happy, well fed folks!

Then to the FBC Doraville to check on things at my office.  Thursday is my day to check on my plants.  Also collected a couple of bills.  Received the official notification that Ian and Ruthie North had been appointed.  AMEN!

We enjoyed hanging out with the kids at Huntington Creek.  Ashley and Ruthie did an art project, while Jesse, Eric (Ian’s younger brother) and I entertained them by jamming on the guitars and maracas.  Groovy!



Ian got home a little later and we took them all out for BBQ at Pig N Chick.  Excellent fellowship and pulled pork!

Jesse and I went over to Best Buy to take his computer in for repair.  It had some hardware issues with the hard drive.  He had gotten pretty much all the info off of the drives.  The tech guy said he could replace the drives in a few minutes, so we waited for that to happen.  He replaced them with new 150GB Seagate hard drives.  J was really happy with that.    Now he’s upstairs loadingon the software on his computer and getting it running again.  PTL!  Our ministry depends on Jesse’s great work with computers.  When he goes down, we all slow way, way down.

Fortunately, I’m able to keep up with my blog, email and the like, but the web site updates pretty much stop.

We came home from Best Buy in some of the worst weather imaginable.  Kathy got stuck out at Stone Mountain.  She’d been riding her bike.  We went to get her with tremendous hail, lightning and torrential rain blasting us.  Some of the scariest driving I’ve ever done.  I was really afraid that my windshield was going to get smashed.  Glad to be back home!  Kathy was soaked, but safe.  Amen!

I’m still getting ready to go to the big conference in Detroit tomorrow.  I have to be at the airport around 8am tomorrow morning.  That means I’ll get a really bad night’s sleep this evening.  I have a tendency to wake up a lot when I know I have to be somewhere early.  C’est la vie, baby.

I’m looking forward to the conference.

Be praying for me as I travel.  Also for the seventeen Outreach Events we’ll host this weekend!\

And now. . . Stoooory Tim! Where I recount adventures in Mexico!

Last night, J let me know that he was feeling what seemed like a bone sticking out of his gum line.  So this morning we went over to see the oral surgeon. Dr. Tucker made it sound like it wasn’t anything to worry about.  I reckon if he ain’t worried we shouldn’t be!

We’re working on upgrading some of our video gear.  We’ve heard some good things about some of these little cameras that actually shoot HD.  Ever heard of the Flip cam?  Cost about $150.  My Sony Handicam has been a real workhorse, but it doesn’t work with many computers.  Fortunately, my Sony VAIO can use it.

Then over to Ian North’s house. 

We shared with him what we found out about the cameras.  We’ll do more research before we buy anything.  Jesse also worked on Ian’s computer.  He had about 50 programs running in the background.  He just has dialup for internet at the mission.  It’s brutally slow.  When everyone had dialup, web developers built sites that loaded quickly.  NOW, there’s so much flash animation/video/audio going on that with dialup a lot of sites just take forever to load.

We also took over an amp for Ian’s brother Eric to use his guitar with.

Today we worked on prep for Impact Atlanta this weekend. 

Jesse and I went through all the grills that we have, cleaned them out and left them to dry over night. 

Ashley and J will load them over to First Baptist Atlanta tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll be speaking at a conference at the George Baptist Convention building.


Went to Azalea to check on the kids and make sure that Sayid’s computer was still working.  It was!  He’d been working on his math prep for the CRCT test.  Good job Jesse!

Came home and ran 4 miles.  Felt better than the other day.  Sure is beautiful weather to run in.  I love that it stays light so long.

Now my usual email/blog/pix!

Getting ready to speak at a conference in Michigan this Fri/Saturday.  Looking forward to it.  Be praying for that and for the 16 communities where we’ll have outreach on Saturday!

This morning J and I started out towards Clarkston when we got a phone call from Debbie Lamb, my partner from First Baptist Mountain Park.  She had nearly 100 Subway sandwiches for us!  They had had a big reception for Richard King, their youth director who has been at the church for 25 years!  We swung by the church to pick up about half of the sandwiches.  I called my partner Bennett Ekandem in Clarkston to pick up the rest of them. THANKS FBC Mountain Park for ALL you generosity!

We then went to FBC Doraville to put the sandwiches in the refrigerator and pick up our partner Bayo from Nigeria.  He’s a great guy.  We always enjoy hanging out with him.  We also picked up another computer to take over to Sayid’s house.

We met with Ian, Ruthie and Lesa (Ian’s sister) along with Jason Sullivan.

It was great to have some fellowship!  After lunch we went over to the North’s house to work on transferring video to his hard drive. No luck so far.

J and Bayo and I went to Azalea to help set up Sayid’s computer.

Then to Willow Branch to let Jesse teach his guitar classes with Rapha and Aziz. It was fun to listen to the children practice their music. They enjoyed the sandwiches from FBC Mountain Park!

I had a good meeting with Cathy Palmer and Kelly to talk about the Refugee Sewing Society.

Then back home to knock out email and computer stuff!

Good day!

Spooky Stoooory Tim from Savannah, GA–the most haunted city in America.

Always fun to hang out with my son!

This morning I went to Walmart to pick up some yarn for my partner Cathy Palmer and her Refugee Sewing Society.

It was great to see all the beautiful pieces they have going!

We ate lunch at Madina with Bennett Ekandem, my favorite partner!  It was fun to catch up and talk about what’s going on in Clarkston.

Then over to Huntington Station to pick up the PA system that I left for them to use.  I got some sad news from them.  The bank had foreclosed on them last week.  That means that the management there will be out of a job. Not good.  I have a partner running the mission at that location.  We’ve been working there for about seven years.  My prayer is that the new owner will see the worth of us working there. It’s always delicate when new owners are in the mix.  Pray for the continuation of the ministry!

Went to Walmart to pick up some supplies for the missions and then over to Azalea to check on the kids.  They don’t have any homework since this week they’ll be doing testing.  Mustak had a crash on his bike and smashed his nose and scraped up his arm.  Ouch!

I took some powdered donuts to the mission. Can you tell?

The kids were enjoying flying kites.  I’ll probably take them over a couple of new ones soon.

Came home and ran 2 miles.  I normally do 4 miles.  But my knees were killing me!  Yesterday, I spent about 3 1/2 hours standing up in front of my booth at the mission fair at FBC Atlanta.  I think it’s harder to just stand for that long than it is to actually RUN for an hour!  Weird, huh?

We had the matress guys set up Kathy’s new bed this evening.  I’m sure she’ll enjoy it!

Got my final flight information for my trip up to Detroit this weekend.  I’ll be speaking at a conference there on Friday evening and Saturday.

And now: Stoooory Tim! Where paramedics encourage a man to “Just keep breathing!”