Man I’m getting old. Just got back from a 12 day trip to Nicaragua and I’m beat. Almost flawless trip except getting caught stuck at customs in Houston with a student and having to send the rest of the team without us. Fortunately 2 hours later we boarded a flight and now I’m home. I’ll post some more about this tomorrow.

Things are going great in Nicaragua. We are in the rainy season for sure. It’s been dumping rain for much of our time here. Ministry has been amazing. We’ve been building and playing with kids from the orphanage. Today I preached at the church. Everyone is doing well but we have a few sick girls. Fortunately there are two nurses here. My boys are having a great time with their “friends” which is what they call any Nicaraguan boy. There is a trampoline here and I think they’ve been on it for at least 6 hours a day rain or shine.

Tomorrow morning we’re going to Nicaragua.  26 of us from the church are heading down to work at an orphanage.  We decided to take our whole family (all 3 kids) on the trip.  We’re pretty excited and scared all at the same time.  I think reguardless of how it goes though we’re going to be glad we decided to do it.  I like hearing my 3 year old say "We’re going to Nicaragua" tomorrow. 

Peace,  won’t be blogging until the begining of July.

A couple of weeks ago in Cambodia I stood in front of a tree that had a sign on it that said "this is where  the soldiers killed children"   a pretty somber place.   Four days later I stood in a field where we were putting up swingsets and teeter totters for 300 children.  The interesting thing was that these were the children of the former soldiers who were responsible for places like the Killing Fields.  Even more interesting was that the village of 90 families were mostly all believers.  So let me say it like this: Cambodia is a country that is  less than 1% Christian…..the Christians I interacted with are all former solidiers who were responsible for killing thousands of people…… and now God is allowing their village to be blessed by other Christians…….. my response is "Weird".  God sometimes makes "Bad Guys" "Good Guys"

Living in a beach town is pretty sweet. Today after work all of us youth ministry guys ended up in the water surfing. I can’t explain to the non surfer what its like to be in the water after a long day of work so I won’t even try. The water right now is super warm. It’s a good life.

Here’s the first of a series of announcement videos for our summer youth group.  Thanks to Jon for putting it together.

This has been a busy couple of weeks. My trip to Cambodia was amazing. I was lucky to be helping lead the most organized trip of young adults I have ever been around. They took everything seriously and spent a lot of time prepping for ministry. I’ll probably never forget the 11 hour bus ride that involved 15 people from the team learning how to make balloon animals. That was sureal.

Coming back was strange because I flew directly to meet my D.Min cohort in Portland. Those 15 people are very important to me now. We spent 3 days interacting, growing in relationships and working with the tough subject of the future of the church. I was blessed to be able to sit and listen to so much of their wisdom.

Now I’m back and I’m just loving my family. Monday is a beach day for us so no big plans. The rest of the week should be a bit busy though as we are packing the bags again for a trip to Nicaragua. Fortunately my whole family is going on this one.

More later but I’m home after traveling through these airports: San Diego, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Phenom Phen, Hong Kong and Portland. Glad to be hoem.

I’m not a huge lover of airports but this one is cool.  Lot’s of free internet terminals lot’s of shopping. Its cool (which is nice after the last week) and I just saw someone walk by with a starbucks cup. I’m off in search of that and to call home.