OK, that’s my broken collarbone, actually, not broken, but separated from the joint where it’s supposed to be (that’s the little circle on top of my shoulder to the left side). I did it, believe it or not, teaching my kids how to safely ride a 250 CC motocross trail bike up a steep hill. Did fine the first two times, then got confident and busted it at 90% up the hill when the tires got into a deeply eroded rut on the hill. Ugh! Pray for my recovery. The doctor said just to live with the bone out of joint as the surgery might create arthritis later and the need for another surgery.

It is slowing me down, but i will be back, just a bit more subdued for a while. You gotta live before you die. :-)

My collarbone permanently blasted out of joint.

I have never met an excellent family that got that way accidently.  Sometimes I hear someone say how “lucky” someone is to have the husband or orderly children that they have.  There’s no luck to it.  Strong marriages come to those who want it and order their lives around it.  You sacrifice time, energy and money. You cut out TV and busyness.  You make daily choices to die to yourself and put each other first.  YOu hold your tongue.  You work through your emotions and choose to live in grace and forgiveness.  You control your words so that you only speak what is edifying.  You rebuke yourself for whining or complaining and determine each day to be a positive, engaged person adding value to your family.  That’s how it happens.  Everyone can have a strong marriage if they will pay the price.

Well, only a day from our departure from sunny Jamaica Sherry tripped going down a small set of stairs (really small…like two steps).  Splatted face first on the tile floor and had a “blunt force trauma” to her nose and broke her big toe.  Crutches for a month and a cast.

We are to leave for South Africa in about four days so this will make travel to there…interesting.

  I want to talk a bit about a concept I got from Dr. Donald Joy while working on my doctorate at Asbury. He says that we are all a trampoline and we need lots of relationships as springs to hold us up. When we move to a new place we lose all our springs and if we take our family with us, the family unit feels a real strain because the relationship work of support done formerly by dozens of people is now borne only by the family members who went with you.

In general the first order of business when you move to a new place is to rebuild the trampoline of relationships. You will need four kinds of relationships: (1) Casual relationships (nothing too deep, just people you know and say hi to on a daily basis) (2) Nuclear Family: the closest bonds in your life (3) Extended family (even if they are not blood kin you need old people like grandmas and mothers and also aunts and uncle types). You need a brother or a sister, a really satisfying same-sex friendship (4) Work relationships: people you gear up with to accomplish important things. We have moved four times as a family to an entirely new country/place.

This one insight has helped us get established in each location so we had a healthy relational web to support us in our ministry there. HOpe this is helpful to you.

Ok, so this is not the most hospitable way to treat a tourist, but the bus from Athens LITERALLY dropped us and our luggage off in the middle of a three way intersection and drove off (entire operation took about 60 seconds).  Thank you Samsonite for the wonderful four wheeled luggage we just purchased.  Without it, I really don’t know how we would have handled the bags.  Those are amazing suitcases.  You leave them standing upright and can even put another 50 lb bag on top of the roller one (i know cause we did it) and it will still roll smoothly.  The girls are seasoned travelers and handled things so well.

Well, happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.  I woke this day with the thought, “Nobody is an expert on parenthood.  I don’t care who they are or what they think they know, ALL of us are working this out a day at a time.”  Sometimes we have things going well.  Other days we have “both fingers crossed” hoping that things will not run off the rails.  

Elementary age children, actually, I think you can become an expert at parenting.  But then…. there come teen age years when the personality in the child blossoms and their own ability to act is greatly empowered and you just have to have faith that the good stuff you put in them as a child will keep them from crossing lines of authority with you. You really cannot make a teenager obey you.  You have many tactics and ways to try to influence them to obey, but really, they choose to obey or not. 

That’s why you really need to watch my “parenting your young elephant video.”

My family and I moved to Northern Thailand just after New Years.  I
left behind a sizeable personal staff of very competent people.  At one
time I had three people on staff totally dedicated to helping with my work
plus others to help as driver, etc.  In Thailand I have a few friends but
no staff at all.  Sherry and I have spent the last three weeks moving
things from  a container, buying a vehicle, ordering LPG, water and ice
deliveries and dealing with different licensing issues, all without
knowing Thai.

Then this week the sink began to fall off the wall and the shower tap got
snapped off and began pouring water.  I really don’t know anything about
plumbing, but everyone I tried to call wasn’t able to come so there I was
up to my ankles in water having to do something I knew nothing about.

Which raises an interesting point about personal growth. The first
essential ingredient in growth is incompetence.  We face a challenge we
are unprepared to handle and have nowhere to turn for help but to  dive in
and try to deal with it ourselves.

Nathan found the turnoff valve on the street outside our house and shut
down the water.  I went to the hardware to get replacement parts and once
I saw that they were threaded I realized that behind the exterior putty
aound that broken faucet were threads.  I could confidently take a wrench
to the outer works without fear of simply snapping the PVC pipe off.  The
lady at the counter helpfully handed me teflon tape for drip free
connection.  In the end, I fixed the broken tap in the shower perfectly,
and totally dismantled the fallen sink as well.  In the end, I was proud
of the quality of the work and developed a new (and necessary) competence
now that I am our family’s handyman.  In short, I grew because I overcame
my incompetence and fear and closed the gap with new learning.

Don’t be afraid of doing things you don’t know how to do.  That’s where
the growth lies.  Perhaps more importantly, don’t hesitate to assign your
leaders to handle responsibilities they are not “competent” to do by
training.  Experience is the best teacher.  Send them to school by
challenging them in new areas.

We are on family vacation starting today and the place where we are has little internet access so please be patient in expecting a response from us.  We will try to get to the town and check mail every other day.  Thanks for understanding.

Chuck and Sherry

Chuck and i love to do pre-marital counseling. We feel the Lord has taught us a lot about what to do and what NOT to do in order to build a great marriage. We want to invest into those lives that the Lord has put in our paths. We believe the Lord has put you in our lives for a purpose. Our marriage is the greatest and most important/significant earthly relationship we have! We must build it INTENTIONALLY……daily! Thank you for allowing us to pass on to you some of these nuggets of wealth the Lord has taught us over the years….

Number 1 of four marriage builders is….ENCOURAGE

We must be each others minister of encouragement……lets start our discussion by sharing some of the things we do to encourage our partner on a daily basis……

one of the things chuck and i do is….we call it…..our first encounter….. everytime we see each other for the first time after being apart we make sure it is a postive encounter. Whether it is when we first wake up in the am, whether we have parted just to drop the kids to school and back in 5 minutes or whether we have been apart for an 8 hour or more day, we make sure when we greet each other that it is a positive greeting. We may ourself have had an awful day…someone may have seen us when we dropped the kids off and gave us some really bad news or “jumped all over us” for something, we may have had a dream that our partner cheated on us(ever do that? :O) ….regardless of what has happened bad to us in that time we were apart we intentionally prepare ourself to greet our partner positively….then when the moment is “right” unload…but becareful not to make your partner the blame of why you are feeling so bad.

what is something you do to encourage your partner on a daily basis…..