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…..

FIRST…let me begin by apologizing for not being active on this site for way too long….the blog below on cooperate was started in April…..i got the first 3 paragraphs done and then something else got my attention and i have been spinning in circles ever since….I AM SO SORRY and will do my best to become more regular at posting here. Thank you each for your patience and thank you in advance for jumping in and adding to this discussion…MUCH LOVE…sherry #2 of the Four Marriage Builders…… COOPERATE….Dont you love that word? :O) Chuck and i are both leaders. Chuck and i are both very strong-willed. Chuck and i are both stubborn…..really…:O) Cooperating can be a very hard task for me sometimes. I see details when i look at the “big picture” of something…..lots of details….. Chuck normally just sees the big picture. He sees it well and does really well at moving forward into that picture but a lot of the times he misses most of the details! This can drive me CRAZY!!! i can be very picky….really…:O) (this can drive chuck CRAZY…..REALLY :O) I just returned from the USA 4 days ago. The first week of mine and Chuck’s separation i kind of got into a “funk”. I get really lonely for Chuck and my companionship when we are apart. if i don’t hear from him everyday i start feeling sorry for myself and frustrated with him that he “didn’t care enough to contact me”. In these days of computers and internet talking to one another and even “seeing” one another every day can be a reality instead of just a dream or wish. Well, my funk started with being alone…apart from my best friend and pretty much constant companion. In addition to this, i had gone to PA to relieve my mom of taking care of my dad for a few weeks to give her a much needed break. My dad, at this period of his life, behaves in a way that makes him the most ungrateful, complaining, self absorbed person i have ever been around. Between these two situations in my life i was feeling quite discouraged….”DISCOURAGED PEOPLE BEHAVE POORLY”….how true this is…. Sad to say, when the phone rang….i was not the chipper, positive person i should have been on the other end….I did not practice our ‘rule” of “first encounters” i shared about in the first of the 4 builders…..instead…. i found myself in a competitive spirit with my partner. I knew Chuck had a mountain of work to do. (We have just moved from Manila to Thailand…this has been MAJOR…..) on top of our move, Chuck has been to Manila and back to carry on office with The Edge Radio Staff, to New Zealand for a week long INTENSIVE board meeting…to America and back for a 10 mission conference that has events practically every day plus the jet lag that goes along with travel to opposite sides of the earth….then home to be a “singe parent” for a couple weeks with 3 very active girls, also hosting dear friends for close to a week, and then the need to produce donor relation materials, newsletter, prepare for our annual radio conference, preparation for media camp in chiang rai, financial reports of our own family plus emerge ministry for the last year for tax purposes, etc. etc. On top of that he was trying to please me and finish some work that was undone in the house we just moved into…..buying and laying new grass, registering our car, buying some items that have not yet been purchased etc etc. As Chuck would tell me what he had done, instead of stopping to praise and celebrate his mamoth accomplishments…i went on to remind him of the next details that needed to get done….I WAS NOT COOPERATING… I should have PRAISED Chuck and thanked him for all he had done. (Later i could have found a positive way to ask him to add to his list …..:O) since i wasnt there to help…and i am sure he would have been happy to do it for me) I also could have asked him how i could help him from my end….there was some internet tasks that i could have done from my end to help lighten his very hectic schedule….i wouldnt have even had to ask, i could have done them coz i knew that he could use my help on these but i was being stubborn coz my feelings were hurt….:O) The opposite of COOPERATE is to COMPETE….. I looked up the word compete and some of the descriptions of this word were: to wrestle, struggle, spar, clash, attempt to better, attempt to outdo, pit against, lock horns, fight , oppose, enter the lists, ha! that was me….i was entering the lists…constantly….no wonder Chuck got exasperated with me…no wonder he didn’t want to call me anymore. Can you blame him? When we do marriage counseling Chuck always give a mental picture of two oxens turning toward one another and butting heads as a image of competing….there is no way you can get anything of worth done like this…. how often do we do this in our marriages?? if we would just learn to cooperate with one another how much more pleasant it would be to work side by side celebrating all the accomplishments of each other and what we were able to do as a team. And when distance keeps us from working side by side we are to stand on the “sidelines” and cheer for the great accomplishments that our partner has made and encourage him/her to want to carry on. This is team work! WE ARE A TEAM…..too often we forget that… the other mental picture Chuck gives of cooperation is both oxens yoked together moving forward…have you ever seen how much work one oxen can get done? imagine two yoked together tackling the same mission. How much greater (and quicker) we will get our undertaking done. Today, determine in your heart to be a team!!! We are one! Would love to hear from each of you ways you have learned to cooperate with each other…struggles you have in competing, anything that deals with particular topic! I LOVE YOU! Sherry

Well, today I have completed 49 orbits around the Sun.  I’m not sure really why we measure our lives by that fact.  It is mostly used to judge us as “too young” or “too old” to be included in certain things.  As a child it mattered because there were generally privileges coming “when you are ten” that you couldn’t wait to get.  I guess it was a form of affirmation that your value was increasing and your personal liberty was growing.

Liberty is so important to the human soul. So is affirmation of worth.  So here’s to birthdays and what they mean in all our lives.  I start my next orbit grateful for the friendship circle that God has gathered around me.  I have soooooo many quality friends and family members.  Sherry is the perfect wife for me.  She understands me so well.  My children are all I could ever dream of them to be.  I love the work I have been called to do and the many Asian young men and women that have become our children as well.  All of this from the Father.  

Well, time to start my next orbit.  Gotta get to it.

Sherry got this shot as Brooke and I were leaving one village to continue exploring the mountain region for other tribal settlements.  It was a really special, slow family day, a good balance to the active travel schedule  we often keep.

Thanks for the prayer support for the girls’ trip to Laos.  It is a closed country so the trek was a bit sensitive.  They said that they could immediately see the difference in a village if even one person was a believer.  Without that little light villages were harsh in spirit and faces were stern and fixed.  One village they visited was the poorest, but the people had all come to faith and were so full of joy and hospitality.  Julia’s group took the trip on foot hiking mountain trails despite the leeches constantly attacking their legs.  Jessica and Brooke’s group took boats up the river interceding for another section of the country.