Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Wow. It hasn’t really even occurred to me that today is New Year’s Eve. I spent all day driving and packing a U-Haul (moving my stuff from storage on the Coast up to my sister’s home in North Mississippi). As I was driving tonight I saw fireworks and lots of VERY busy fireworks stands and I thought about where I was and what I was doing this time last year.

What great memories! I was at the AIM Base near Matamoros, Mexico with the other World Racers. We built nice bonfire and Josh set off a couple of his Percussion Bombs (mortar round explosives! I can’t believe I brought those things across the border in a rental car!!). Bubbly Grape Juice flowed freely and we all celebrated embarking on a great adventure.

Looking back on that time, I feel like- even though we didn’t really know what lay ahead of us- that I knew more about what to expect for the year than I do right now. At least then I basically knew what I was doing for the next 11 months. Right now…I don’t know what I’m doing the day after tomorrow.

Right now I’m still on track to complete my International Mission Board Application for the January 22 deadline. Assuming everything goes as planned I will be invited for a 3 day interview in April and will probably be offered a 2-3 year assignment shortly afterwards (God willing.) I will leave in August for the assignment.

In the meantime I’m planning to go to Eastern Europe in March and come back just in time for the April interview. I want to get a taste of countries other than Ukraine before the interviews. I’m also planning to join some friends near the end of March for an International World Changers project in Athens Greece.

I might pick up some “Camp Pastor” jobs in the summer and I’d like to do some hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

Some goals for the New Year:

Work on intimacy with Christ, Regain my sexy World Race weight while adding some muscles to my now 43 year old bod. Become a better hiker/climber/kayaker. Organize a year’s worth of pictures and maybe write a book. Yes…these are tough things to accomplish. But, I really don’t have anything else to do right now.

Give Me Liberty or . . . .

Mississippi State 10- University of Central Florida 3
You can wrap this one in Maroon and White!



The road trip is over. Stik (my best friend) and I left last Thursday and spent a night at our friend Susan's parents home in Aberdeen. Susan and I go way back. She works for the North American Mission Board. She's prettier now than when I met her when she was 18!




Anyway...Stik and I drove on up to Memphis on Friday and got to Beale Street just in time for the Liberty Bowl Parade.












We ate Ribs and Pulled Pork at the Rum Boogie Cafe- home to a mighty fine collection of guitars!















The Liberty Bowl later that day was packed with a record crowd of 63800+ fans- most of them wearing Maroon and ringing cowbells!
































I saw my special friends Jency and Tyler- theirs was the first wedding I ever performed and Jency is/was one of my all time favorite students from my first youth group in Aberdeen a lot of years ago. They both work at MSU now.

Therapy Revisited

Camping at my friends 1000 acre farm has been as much a part of Christmas for me for the past 10 years or so as anything.

When I was the youth guy at Bayou View
Baptist Church I accumulated what must be the largest collection of camping gear of any church in Mississippi. Back in the day there were NO facilities at the Farm. I guess I can take credit for a whole generation of kids getting to go potty in the woods for the first time. Maybe some of them will go on to The World Race. They'll be well equipped to do "the squat" and use whatever paper they have in their pocket to take care of business.

Over the years the campout has evolved along with the development of the farm. Now there's a barn and living quarters and bathrooms and electricity. The kids can stay up half the night playing Cranium around well-lit tables. Some things remain the same though- tent city, hayrides, Snipe Hunting, paintball, a bonfire big enough to make a Texas A & M Grad. homesick and jeep and 4-wheeler riding.

And like most other years it seems like my Jeep is never as ready to go as I think it is. It started overheating this morning. It went dead while I was attempting to climb up the old levee.

It's alittle embarrassing to tell you the truth but that's what it's like owning a Jeep!

The best part of the campout- last night as well as every year- is spending time with friends. The other stuff is icing on the cake- being outdoors, sleeping under the stars (it was pretty mild but humid last night- I have awoke before with frost and ice on one side and steam from the campfire on the other side!)

I've been pretty bored since returning home from The
World Race. I've missed my fellow racers more
than I thought I would.

Nights like last night (and tomorrow night's get-together with the college kids) make me glad to be home though.

Now. I need to replace the thermostat on the Jeep and figure out why my lights go out instead of dimming when I click that little switch on the floor. Guess I have some therapy sessions to look forward to.

Therapy

Therapeutic- it means "curative"; of or pertaining to the healing of disease. All the other definitions I looked at basically say the same thing.

So I'm launching my "blogspot" in lieu of my beloved World Race blogsite that I suppose I can't keep using forever now that I'm no longer a World Racer! I've been encouraged by family and friends to do so.

Blogging is therapeutic. It's pretty much journaling which is a great spiritual discipline among other things. I've never been a great journal-er. I've tried. I don't like to write . . . on paper that is. It cramps my hands and my penmanship is so bad I can't even read my own writing.

But here I am. I'll try to keep this up at least a couple times a week. I do have LOTS of thoughts these days. I'm trying hard to process the past year. I haven't stayed anywhere (family or friends) for more than 2 days since returning "home"- whatever and wherever that is!

I have a great family and any of them would be happy to have me live with them. I'm welcome for however long I need a place to stay with any of them. The thing is: I don't want to stay with any of them. Hope that doesn't sound too harsh. It has nothing to do with any of them- I just need a place to be "my" home and I need some alone time. I have an offer to "cabin sit" in Alabama near one of my favorite Wilderness Areas sometime after the New Year. I'm pretty sure I'll take the guy up on that offer for about a month. If we weren't heading into Winter I think I would go to Amicalola State Park in Georgia and just start heading North on The Appalachian Trail and quit when I get tired- kinda like Forrest Gump, "I'm through walkin' now."

I remember thinking a bunch of times during The World Race that I would love to go "home" (there's that word again) and just work on my old Jeep. I like tinkering and even though my brother-in-law did a lot of cool work on it while I was gone it's still an "old jeep", which means there's always something to be done. That's therapeutic for me. Except when I bang my hands and break things and start cussing while I'm working on it. I'm not sure that's all that therapeutic. Maybe it is.