Take Pictures
I have very few pictures of how big I was at over 270 pounds. However, I have a ton of pictures since. Most of them no one will ever see, but it is a huge encouragement to me to go back and look at the steps that got me to where I am now.

Measure Yourself
There are all kinds of methods for measuring your progress. Many of them may be just fine for some people. But here is what worked for me.

Weighing yourself only gives part of the picture of what is happening in your body. Once you start exercising you may actually gain a bit of weight while you build muscle to replace the fat. If you only depended on your scale to tell you something is happening then you could be easily discouraged.

I initially took body measurements from several points, but settled on just taking a measurements at my neck, upper arm, chest, waist, hips, thigh and calf. I took each of these measurements once a week and recorded them on a 3X5 card. I also put the date and my weight on the card. I was able to get 5 or 6 columns of measurements on a card so that I could see how I was doing over a long period of time. I also rubber banded these cards together so that when I filled up a card and put it with the rest I could see how far I had progressed. I noted on the card what my total number of inches and pounds I had lost since I started. After almost 6 years I still have those cards that I can look at for encouragement.

Some weeks my weight would go up even though my measurement went down. I was never discouraged by that. If I looked smaller I didn’t really care if I gained 2 lbs. Muscle is denser. A pound of muscle takes up less room in your clothes than a pound of fat.

Weigh Yourself
While measuring will give you a better understanding of what is truly happening, don’t we really want to talk about pounds? We like to say that we lost 5 lbs. No one really cares or understands when you say you lost a total of 3″ from 7 different points on your body.

This is where I deviated greatly from most suggestions. You can take my route, or stay with the conventional wisdom. My way worked for me, it may not for you. However, if you have never been successful at this before doing it the traditional way, then maybe it is time for you to look at alternative suggestions.

I weighed myself every day. I weighed myself every night. I weighed myself sometimes 3 or 4 times a day. Conventional programs tell you to only weigh once a week. But for me I wanted to know where I stood today compared to yesterday. I was challenged by that number and rarely discouraged. If I was up a pound (or three) in a 24-hour period I would chalk it up to “water weight.” If I was down it was because “I worked hard for it.” Now that I have a scale with tenths of a pound on it, I get even more obsessive in seeing what I can make those numbers do from day to day.

Although I weighed myself daily, I only wrote down my weight once a week on measuring days. This gave me a better chance of being down between one permanent accounting and the next. The daily weights were temporary and just helped me see if I was generally on track. Also, by doing this, I knew that Thursday my weight was always the highest for the week. I would avoid measuring or recording my weight on Thursday. More on why in a later post.

Accept Encouragement
My wife was a saint during all of this. When someone said that they noticed I had lost a little weight, I would gloat to my wife about it. While I am writing about it now, I did not want to make a big deal about losing weight at the time. It was a personal issue to me. I was not losing weight for other people, I was getting in shape so that I could serve the Lord better. But if anyone happened to notice and say something about it, I was thrilled! Outside I would answer questions and thank them for their kindness, but inside I was beaming with the knowledge that I had worked hard and it was paying off.

My wife had to listen to me drivel on and on about how someone noticed. Or that I could do a certain stretch that I had never done before. She had to listen to a play-by-play accounting of everything that was happening to me. It was helpful to have someone I could talk to about it.

Ignore the Naysayers
Along with the encouragement, there were also plenty of people who were standing around to throw cold water on me and my progress. My poor wife got to hear all about that too.

I carved out a time to make exercise part of my life. I realize my schedule is more flexible than most people’s, but I think they could make time if they really wanted to. You don’t need 3 hours a day to exercise. If you will look for opportunities to walk 15 minutes more than you do currently, then you are headed the right direction.

By the time I got 6 months into my change of lifestyle I was exercising 4 to 7 days a week. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I was seeing results in a changed body. I had less heartburn. I could stay awake during church. I didn’t seem to have as many aches and pains. I wasn’t getting sick. I wanted more of those types of results.

But then the comments started. “Men are able to lose weight easier than women.” “You just have a faster metabolism than I do.” “Are you sick?” “You are making the rest of us look bad.” And they kept coming. Sometimes they were intended in jest, but they were not helpful. I never tried to refute the discouraging remarks. If someone really wanted to get their life turned around, I was there to help, but I really started to retreat from even talking about anything I was doing food or exercise-wise. There were too many people who were either jealous or didn’t want things to change.

When I was asked what I was doing to get the results I was getting, I told them that I was just exercising. (Early on, I changed very few eating habits). Often they would tell me how they were too old or that they preferred to diet instead of exercise. I wanted to turn it back around on them and ask them who was getting better results, but I refrained.

It may be true that men lose weight easier than women, but I did not see any of them working as hard as I did. I did not see them walking in the neighborhood drenched in sweat. When I later joined an exercise group at a local park I noticed that many of the people in the group were showing up every day, but not physically engaged. They were going through the motion, but were not putting forth the effort to make the exercise work for them. I only remember 1 lady who ever lost weight in that group. It wasn’t because the teacher was doing a poor job (I lost over 50 lbs. under her), but it was because the students were not putting out the effort that it took to get the results they said they wanted.

You cannot get in shape without effort. However, let me encourage you that you don’t have to spend 20 hours a week in exercise. If you are at a constant weight now and you change nothing in your eating habits, but add walking 30 minutes a day to your routine, you will lose weight. It is a matter of using more energy (calories) than you consume. If that 30 minutes a day has to be scaled back to 10 minutes, you will still lose weight, just at a slower pace.

What Exercises? What Food?
I will talk about that in my next post. Thanks for the comments here and at Facebook. Also thank you for the personal messages that this has been helpful and encouraging. While I have talked about many of my activities in the past on the blog, I have never shared everything. It seemed too personal at the time. However it is helping to encourage me to ramp up my effort and stop hiding behind a couple of recent injuries. I will find a way to work around these issues and get back in the shape that will help me effectively do the ministry the Lord has called me to.

Have you read part 1?

I have often been asked what I did to lose weight and get in shape. Much to the disappointment of many who ask, I have to tell them what they don’t want to hear. It takes work!

Because I have struggled in the last 2 years to keep my weight in check and to stay physically active, I thought it would be good encouragement to myself to go through my initial motivations to lose weight and what I did then to get me to where I needed to be. (And where I need to get back to).

Motivation
When we first arrived in Mexico in August of 2004 I realized that I was very unhealthy. My weight had gotten over 270 lbs. that year (photo). I was spiritually convicted by the fact that, as a missionary, I was doing an important job that would be a poor reflection of my Lord with the body I currently had. While I know there are Bible verses I could have used to say why someone should take care of their body physically, for me it was a matter of knowing that I would die an early death and not be able to serve God long term with the way I was living.

Besides the physical aspect of my condition, there was also a spiritual problem I was facing. There was a need in my life to become more spiritually focused. You are probably thinking to yourself that I could not be too far off the mark if I had spent all my adult life in ministry and had just moved to the foreign field as a missionary. But anyone who travels constantly (which I had done for 10 years up to that point) knows the struggle one faces when they have no daily routine. When do you read your Bible? When do you pray? It becomes so easy to say that you will do it later in the day. But sometimes many days, or even weeks, go by and you realize that you have been drifting spiritually. That is where I was.

I needed to get some focus back in my spiritual, as well as my physical, life.

Beginnings
Not having done much exercise in the recent years, I figured a good place to start was walking around the block and searching for help on the Internet. I read that you should combine aerobic exercise with some weight training for a healthy routine. I bought a barbell, a few pounds of weights and a jump-rope. I don’t remember where I got all my information, but I started with jumping rope and lifting light weights. I got started with a jump-rope, a few weights and a neighborhood I could walk in. It was October 2004 when I got serious about all of this.

Goals
When I got started I was down to 264. I had lost 10 lbs. during the move and was eating better since we were eating at home and no longer traveling constantly. I had a goal to get down to the weight I was when we got married 10 years before. I don’t know why I remember that I weighed 227 at our wedding, but that became my target. Secretly however, I would have loved to get down to 200. I hadn’t weighed that little since high school.

I had had goals before, but they were always a weight associated with a date. It had never worked. Maybe it works for some people, but for me I would see that I was not going to reach my goal in the time I wanted, so I would just give up. I needed a different plan.

Instead of focusing on the 37 lbs. that I needed to lose to reach the goal,  I focused on smaller numbers with absolutely no time restrictions. At first I thought that if I could lose 2 lbs. I would only need to lose 35 more. But that still seemed like a big number after I got rid of those 2 lbs. I then switched my focus again to an even smaller number. If I lost just 2 more pounds then I would be at 160. If I can lose 2 lbs. then I could easily lose 3 for my next step.

By that time I had totally ignored any long term goal and started focusing only on the mini-steps that would push me the right direction. My focus was losing 2 lbs. then 3 lbs. for a total of 5 pound chunks. Then I would go back to the 2 lbs. again. I alternated between 2 pound and 3 pound goals for several months.

When I finally did reach 227 I knew there was no way I was going to stop there.

Spiritually
Things were coming back into focus for me spiritually too. I was able to settle into a routine that allowed me to carve out time every day to read my Bible and pray. At that point it was not a matter of whether I could spend time with the Lord, it became a matter of whether I would spend time with Him. I had the time and the place set aside; I simply needed to be obedient.

Discipline in one area of my life reflected discipline in other areas. If I was motivated to exercise then I would use that encouragement to help me discipline myself spiritually. Most of the time they went hand in hand with no extra motivation needed. But sometimes I had to tell myself that it was not fair to my spirit if I was willing to exercise my body but not read my Bible. Then there were times I felt lazy and wanted to just read my Bible and ignore my body (that happened less often). I would encourage myself that they were both important.

Continued
I had hoped to get this all out in one post, but I can see that it would be so long as to discourage you from reading it. I don’t know how many parts it will take to tell the whole story, but doing it this way allows me to cover more ground and gives me a reason to sit at the keyboard and add some words to the space I am paying for every month anyway.

Part 2 is now available.
Part 3
Part 4

The purpose of this article is to share with you about why I am raising money through friends and individuals as opposed to going to our normal supporters.

By informing you about this trip through Facebook, Twitter (both accounts) and other outlets (blogs and email), I will have more individuals praying for this trip than I normally would by sending a prayer letter once every 2 months. There are thousands of people who could potentially read my prayer letter and pray for the event; however, I believe you, my on-line friends, can stay better informed by my regular updates. While I don’t want to make everything I write over the next 2 months be about the event, I do want to keep it before you.

There are two ways I can help connect you to this event. One is through information. The more of it you have, the more you will know how to pray for me and the team leading up to Deaf Nation World Expo and the events of July 18-23.

The second way to help you pray for the event is to give you an opportunity to financially support our evangelistic efforts. A (tax-deductible) donation of $20 can help focus your intensity in prayer.

Maybe you would like to participate in an evangelistic outreach such as being able to pass out tracts and witness to 50,000 Deaf. You may not have the skills or the time away from work to reach out to the Deaf community from around the world in this way, but you have $50 you could give towards the trip. God has given me both the skill and time for this ministry, I simply need the financial backing for this to be possible.

Please check out my post at dpeach.com to see how you can donate, or click the ChipIn widget above to donate on-line with a debit or credit card.

I will post here and in other venues about the trip as the weeks progress. Please join me in prayer and finances to make this trip an eternal reward for both of us. Together we can see Deaf come to Christ.

There was a missionary to Togo, West Africa in the service. She is a nurse who works with a hospital in Togo as well as many other hospitals through her mission agency as a leadership counselor. I refer to her several times in the message.

I wanted to put this up here because a friend recently asked me how a church can be a blessing to their missionaries. This is just a small part of what I want to tell her, but it is a good introduction to what I have to say. Maybe I will write a series of posts and share the ideas I have with you as I share them with her.

Mary:

• Focused on the most important–worshiping God (Christ). Luke 10:38-42
• Faithful in trials. John 11:21-40
• Forsook her greatest possession. Mark 14:3

Judas:

• Criticized intimate worship. Mark 14:4
• Complained about God’s work. Mark 14:4. 5
• Confided with wicked people. Mark 14:10, 11

What struck me is that while many look at missionaries and think that we are willing to give up many things to go live on a foreign field, most of us don’t see that as a hardship. However, we struggle with giving up some things. Maybe your struggle is the thought of giving up regular electricity, or moving away from family. We do give up those things, but personally my struggles are in giving up things of even lesser value.

I don’t think I fall into the category of a Judas, but I am not sure I am a Mary either. Sure, I am willing to give up some comforts to be a missionary, but am I willing to forsake what I see as materialistically important? I am not sure I am there yet.

As a missionary, if you feel guilty about putting money into an account for retirement then you are showing you are dependent on the donor and not on God. As a donor, if you are angered by missionaries putting money into savings, then you are demonstrating that you are giving to the missionary and not to God.

Our giving and receiving should be vertical; from me to God, or from God to me. Giving should not be horizontal; from giver to receiver. As soon as the donor thinks that he is giving to the missionary as opposed to giving to God then he starts to feel like he should control how the money is used. When a missionary begins to think that the money he has comes from individuals and not from God, then he becomes dependent on people and not on God.

Keep your giving and receiving vertical and not horizontal. By doing this then you don’t allow bad attitudes to creep in.

I understand that, as a donor, I want to know that my money is properly used, but if I feel God wants me to give it, I should give. Then whatever happens to the money is no longer in my control. It is up to God to take care of His money. As a receiver I should be very careful of how I use the money given, but not because I am concerned about what people think of how I use the money. I should be careful to be accountable to God for how I use His money.

He sent me an email last week asking if I would pay for one of his church members to come to the US so he could go to Bible college. Because, according to Beny, “he can be used of the Lord if he gets trained in the US.”

That there is my biggest issue with churches in one country becoming dependent on another country. Beny thinks that the US has some corner on the market of spirituality. And that if his church member can come to the US he can get trained in the right way to do ministry. I also know that Beny may just be playing me as a scam artist and thinks I will eventually give in and send thousands of dollars. Well, that will never happen.

Unfortunately I think it is the US missionary mindset that has propagated that mentality. There are too many missionaries who carry an attitude of superiority over the national churches and people. All pastors should feel responsible to work towards a higher level of maturity in regards to the Bible than where his people may be. But when he portrays to his people that one has to go to a certain Bible college in a certain country to get properly trained in the ministry, I think he is stepping into the realm of Romanism; the idea that one church in one place has sole authority over what you can and can’t understand.

I will still receive calls from Beny. In fact, he called again today. I told him I would do some looking around to see if we can find a Bible college in India his church member can attend. He was thankful for any help and begged me to continue to pray for him. Which I am glad to do.

When we arrived at the church a man met us at the door and noted that we were visitors. He looked on his paper to find out where the Sunday School classes were for our kids. He then grabbed a couple of people walking by and had them walk us to the different classrooms. He also suggested an adult class for my wife and I to attend.

Because the church is in the town where we went to Bible college, there were a few people there whom we knew. I don’t think this had anything to do with the reception we felt as visitors. Everyone was friendly and kind. But not the gushy kind that makes you think someone paid them to be that way. It is just the way they were.

After church we were invited to a short reception in an area that they set up for welcoming visitors. The pastor and a few of the church staff members met us there. We were the only visitors that day, but they were prepared with enough homemade muffins and drinks for probably 10 visitors. We had a good talk with the pastor and no one seemed like they were in a hurry to leave; however, they also did not try to monopolize our time and make us stay.

When we left they gave us each a coffee cup and a friendly smile.

That was not the end though. The next night, Monday, a couple from the church stopped by the house with a loaf of homemade pumpkin bread. They stayed just long enough to thank us for visiting the church and extend an invitation to return.

We felt special.

Contrast that with another church we visited several weeks ago. It was a similar situation in that I had previously met the pastor. We were in his town without a meeting for that Sunday morning service. It was a good opportunity to just stop by.

The reception at the church was cold. The only person who came up to us other than to shake our hand briefly and walk off was the visiting preacher. He came over and chatted and acted interested in us. If the pastor came by before Sunday School or church, I don’t really remember it.

After church we hung around a short time just so that the crowd could thin and I could thank the pastor for teaching a class I was in a couple of months before. He acted like he was in a hurry and did not have time to chit-chat at the back of the church even though there was no one waiting to speak with him.

The church, while full of visitors that day, felt dead. They had a special push to bring visitors to hear the guest speaker. I think there were 20 or more visitors for that service, but none of us were made to feel welcome by the church as a whole. I would hope that those who brought friends did a better job in thanking their friends for being there.

Of course I don’t expect that church to visit in my home since I live about 10 hours away, but I doubt they would have visited if I lived 2 blocks away. It just seemed like they were not interested in adding anyone new to their congregation.

I spoke with a friend who had also visited in that church and he felt the same thing.

Two churches, two very different atmospheres. What are you and your church doing to make visitors feel like they are welcome?

As soon as we got home we started preparing for the coming week. I had a seminary class I was taking and really was not well prepared for it. By Tuesday afternoon I started feeling like my head was back in the game. Fortunately my teacher is one of these wise, practical scholars. He did not expect us to memorize everything he taught. He is more interested in us getting the information on paper so that we can access the material in the future. For my tests this week we had to write a couple of long papers (took me close to 6 hours Thursday night). These papers were “open Bible” essays. As long as we knew how to dig in the Bible and intelligently explain what we had learned, he was satisfied. I don’t know my grade yet, but I feel like I did well and learned much.

We will be there for 3 nights. I am the guest speaker this year. Since I have been gone a year (we left a week after camp last year) then I get to be the special guest. I am still doing basically the same things I did last year except I didn’t have to do as much of the planning. Can’t get much better than that. Well, it could. I could be given special napping privileges while everyone else is outside playing in the sun. But, alas, I get to help run the games too.

So, while I have now committed to being a better blogger, I step away from the Internet for a few days. Look forward to some pictures this weekend.

We talked about prayer letters, how to write them, and what the importance of the prayer letter is. We had a pastor come and share with us what he expects from missionaries. The neat thing about his time with us was that he used to be a missionary. He was able to say “I understand you. I know what you are going through. But here is what a pastor expects from you and here is why you should comply.” It was really beneficial. We also had sessions taught by our bookkeeper about how to keep the proper paperwork in order. She shared with us the new tax rules for 2009.

Some of the more spiritual lessons were on overcoming anger and depression. These sessions were taught by a medical doctor. While he did concede that sometimes depression can be a medical condition, he taught us from the perspective that it is often a spiritual problem that results from a loss of hope in the future. He used Psalm 42 as his basis. However, when he talked about anger he simply stated that anger was wrong and wicked.

There were a couple of sessions about holiness and forgiveness towards others.

I taught a few sessions on technology and why to use it in the ministry. I did not get into the “how” as much as I was trying to explain what tools were available. I focused on open source offerings talking about compatibility within OpenOffice.org and compatibility in general. I was asked to run most of the presentations through my computer. We popped in CDs and USB drives that were loaded with PowerPoint presentations as well as various media. My Linux machine was seen in good light as there were very few issues with something not looking quite like the presenter expected. Mostly they were small formatting issues that the general audience did not even notice. I was glad to show them that they could save hundreds of dollars in software by looking at open source tools. Two of the missionaries are considering investigating Linux more thoroughly.

One evening in the conference we went to a lake and had a big picnic. We played on a Sea-Doo and pontoon boat.

There were new and old missionaries at the training school. I think there were 13 or 14 couples represented. Four of the couples are new missionaries who have not spent a term on the field yet. The rest of us were either home temporarily or returning to the field after an extended stay at home. It was good to interact and share with one another.

Great week, but busy.

Bro. and Mrs. Hartsfield came to Odessa, Texas to take charge of our Christian school at the beginning of the 1980-81 school year. They moved to Odessa from Little Rock, Arkansas with their 3 children. Bro. Hartsfield is now 70 and I turn 40 this year. He has been a part of my life for 75% of my time on this earth. The Hartsfields have had more direct influence at different times on me than they do now, but the indirect influence has continued for these many years, and will continue into the future.

I can’t say that they are perfect people since I know human nature and the Bible would say otherwise. But, they have been consistently faithful to their beliefs and have instilled a deep seated desire in me to do the same. Bro. Hartsfield has always been a disciplined and consistent man, and while that may not have transfered into my life completely, it has been a joy to see someone who essentially is the same man I met 30 years ago.

Recently I heard a sermon based on the book of Third John in the Bible. The pastor mentioned a character I have never really studied. But as he talked about Demetrius I immediately thought of Bro. Hartsfield. The verse is 3 John 12: “Demetrius hath good report of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, and we also bear record; and ye know that our record is true.”

Demetrius was well spoken of by men. Bro. Hartsfield has a great personal testimony. Today in Mr. Ramirez’s shoe repair shop I mentioned the retirement party to the owner, who I knew to be an acquaintance of Bro. Hartsfield’s. Mr. Ramirez said some incredibly kind words about Bro. H. Every person that Bro. Harsfield met in business or personally became a quick friend. Bro. H. conducts himself in a way that causes you to want to get to know him personally. He has always been well spoken of by men.

Then the Bible says that Demetrius had a good report from the truth itself. According to God’s Word Demetrius lived a holy and right life. Anyone who knows Bro. Hartsfield knows that just being in his presence causes others to think twice about their actions. Not because Bro. H. is going to preach at them, but because they know that if it is an activity in which he would not participate, then it is because the activity probably violates the Bible or a Biblical principle in some way. While Bro. H. does plenty of preaching, he is not one to raise his voice or lose his temper. He is one of the most fun men to be around because you know that in his presence is an opportunity to have clean comedy, games and activities.

Thirdly it says of Demetrius that the apostles spoke well of him. These were men who had been in the presence of Jesus Christ himself. They knew perfection and they still spoke highly of Demetrius. While I have seen people say horrible things about our school and turn away from the teachings of the Bible, I have not met anyone who would speak to the fact that Bro. H. and his wife were not genuine people. The people who know him best, his family and co-workers, also speak highly of him.

I will miss seeing the Hartsfields on a regular basis, but I know that the impact they have had on the lives of the many students who have passed through the school is tremendous. I am just thankful that I can be here for the retirement party and take part in this special event. It is great to be able to honour a family that has been such a blessing to so many.

There is one unique thing about him and his ministry. For some reason he tends to attract retarded people and folks with mental handicaps. I am not being mean, that is just a fact. He currently works a second job outside of the church driving a bus for the adult special ed program in the city.

At least 10% of the congregation this morning were mentally handicapped people. This attraction is not because he seeks out the handicapped; he gets just as frustrated with them as anyone else. While he loves people in general, he has not made an effort to build a special needs congregation.

But they are attracted to him. It is humorous to see how this works.

I was pondering all that while listening to him preach today. Then the startling realization hit:

What does that say about me?

The book is titled Mentoring and Modeling: Developing the Next Generation by Dr. Mark Rasmussen and Dr. John Goetsch. I am not sure exactly how I would define mentoring, so I had no prejudice as to what the book should contain.

Not until I got 2/3 rds. of the way through the book did I start to understand what the authors meant by that word. Their definition could easily be called “a good teacher.”

I thought the book was well written. It was very practical towards the end of the book. They moved from theoretical teaching to practical application. It was in the practical application section of the book that it became clear as to what was meant by being a mentor. They gave great tips on how a teacher could change their attitude and actions in the classroom to help their students move forward.

There were a couple of things I did not like about the book, both of which could probably be helped by having a professional editor look over the material. There seemed to be an inconsistency in the layout of the book. Sometimes the authors had some long quotes that apparently were supposed to be block quotes in the book. They ended up just being paragraphs that looked like the authors’ own words. It was hard to know where the quote ended and the writers were speaking again.

The book lacked the chapter titles at the top of the pages. While this is certainly not necessary, it is helpful in a book like this. The chapters dealt with specific principles. Looking up at the top of the page to get a reminder of which principle you are studying each time you picked up the book would have been helpful.

I was impressed with the authors’ general style. As I said, I knew Dr. Goetsch several years ago, but had never read anything by him. He (along with Dr. Rasmussen) is a great writer.

The book itself had some good reminders for teachers on how to engage their students and pull them into the lesson. It also talked about how teachers should look for teaching moments. With practise these moments can be found all around you.

This was definitely a book for teachers. I read the book because it was offered to me, but if I had picked it up looking for tips on being a good mentor, I am not sure I would have found what I was looking for. While I agree that teachers should be mentors, this book seemed to be specifically for teachers in a classroom. I don’t have a clear definition in my head as to what I think a mentor should be, but certainly a mentor is not limited to 4 walls and a chalkboard.

I have started to see the difference between books that go through a large publishing company and one that is put together by a smaller outfit. If this had been run through a larger organization it probably would have something about teachers in the title and the formatting would have been more consistent. In the notes I wrote about the book as I read it, I jotted this down: Well written, poorly presented. I don’t think I can improve on that simple statement for this book.

Dr. Goetsch is a great preacher and writer. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future. I just hope that the production quality improves.

Mentoring and Modeling, Dr. Mark Rasmussen and Dr. John Goetsch, Revival Books, 2000, 192 pages.

Wednesday
We rescheduled a meeting a couple of weeks ago and were needing a place to pass a couple of days in Pennsylvania. I called Dave, a college friend, who pastors in the area we wanted to be in to see if he had a missionary house/apartment at his church. We had trouble making the connection. When I finally got in touch with him and confirmed that he had a place we could crash for a few days we were only 15 minutes from the church. Dave has been at the church for 9 years as the pastor. He allowed us a chance to put up our display table and let me preach his Wednesday night service.

Sunday AM
Knowing that I would be in Michigan for a couple of other meetings I called a friend from college who pastors near one of my scheduled meetings. Unfortunately Mike was going to be gone the weekend we had free, but he allowed us to be in his church and present our work. Mike has only been at this church about 9 months. We will be seeing him later this week as we drive back through the area headed south.

Sunday PM
One of the meetings in Michigan we were most excited about was with our friend Bruce. He has been in this church about 6 years but we got to know him best when he was an associate pastor in Florida. Bruce’s wife and my wife were suite-mates in college. Bruce and I had several classes together and many mutual friends. It was great sitting and talking with him and his family after church tonight. We ate some great pizza and reminisced for a couple of hours.

There was a time in our ministry when we seldom ran into guys from our college days who were pastoring churches. I guess as they get older they move from being youth pastors and associate pastors into the driver’s seat. I am excited as I think about the many more meetings we will have in the future with former college friends.