Happy New Year!

We hope you had a Merry Christmas. We certainly did. And all our travels have gone very smoothly so far, except for the usual temporary loss of luggage coming up from Roatán. But that’s ancient history.

We flew from balmy Tampa up to chilly Ohio on December 23 and had a wonderful time with Mildred’s parents and some of her extended family. We spent much of Christmas day at her brother’s house. We had a sumptuous feast, lots of kids and grandkids, and the biggest pile of presents I’ve ever seen anywhere except on a TV or movie screen!

[Show as slideshow]

Mildred’s parents have a new pastor who is very enthusiastic about missions. He loves how supportive the congregation is of missions and is praying that their love will excel still more (Philippians 1:1:9) through more personal participation in missions such as going on short term trips. Since he gave me the option of delivering the message Sunday after Christmas, I took advantage of the opportunity to share some of my passion for winning the lost. As I thought about the shepherds’ response to the good news they heard on that first Christmas, it seemed appropriate to think about how we should respond too. They were so excited that they just had to tell people about it.

As I prepared the message, I became more and more convicted by my own lack of passion for the lost. When Jesus called Andrew and Peter, He said that if they would follow Him, He would make them better husbands and fathers, right? No! He offered to make them fishers of men. Not that He won’t make us better people when we follow Him, but that is only part of what Jesus wants to do in and through us. I like how Charles Spurgeon put it: “We are like the fishes, making sin to be our element; and the good Lord comes, and with the Gospel net He takes us, and He delivers us from the life and love of sin. But He has not wrought for us all that He can do, nor all that we should wish Him to do, when He has done this; for it is another and a higher miracle to make us who were fish to become fishers—to make the saved ones saviors—to make the convert into a converter—the receiver of the Gospel into an imparter of that same Gospel to other people. I think I may say to every person whom I am addressing—If you are saved yourself, the work is but half done until you are employed to bring others to Christ. You are as yet but half formed in the image of your Lord. You have not attained to the full development of the Christ-life in you unless you have commenced in some feeble way to tell to others of the grace of God.”

John MacArthur told about a man named Luigi Toreszio. Luigi was found dead in his house one day with almost no creature comforts. But stashed away in his house were 246 exquisite violins. He had been collecting them all his life and the best of them all was crammed in the bottom of a rickety dresser. In his devotion to that magnificent violin, he had robbed the world of it’s beautiful music. Luigi wasn’t the first to do that either. I read that the greatest Stradivarius of all was 147 years old the first time it was played. Someone had stashed it away for all those years. How many of us are tragically like old Luigi Toreszio – so wrapped up in our love for our church and for the Word of God that the world never gets to hear our music?

Well, ’nuff sermonizing. Back to the vacation. We spent our 34th anniversary (December 29) driving from Ohio to Iowa to see my mom and my sister and family. What a fun time that was, as you can probably tell from the pictures. Mildred and I are both blessed with fantastic families. Mom is 81 years old and still lives on her own, but she does have a couple of people who come in to help her with medications and household chores from time to time as well as receiving Meals On Wheels for her lunch.

[Show as slideshow]

On New Year’s Day, we had the roads mostly to ourselves for the drive back to Ohio. Mildred’s parents had generously loaned us their mini-van for the Iowa trip. So we left Iowa at about 5 AM and got to the farm in Ohio about 4 PM. Then Mildred’s parents took us to a hotel at the Columbus airport so we would have an easier time making our 5:30 AM flight on Friday the 2nd. Those were two pretty early starts for a vacation! Getting up early doesn’t normally bother me like it does Mildred, but I got bronchitis along the way and neither one of us have been getting more than about one hour of sleep at a time. Once we got back here to Tampa, a doctor friend fit me in to her day and got me on antibiotics and cough suppressants, so I should be on the way to feeling better and we can all get some sleep. Needless to say, I pretty much just laid around today. I sure hope I can go to church tomorrow.

So, the vacation is nearing its inevitable conclusion. We are scheduled to return to Honduras next Wednesday. Sadly, we will not have been able to see nearly all the people we would have liked to have seen. But we sure had a good time with those we did see.