Rite of Passage: Money matters
I was very fortunate to have a grandfather who believed in teaching me about money. As far back as I can remember, he was talking about tithing, investments and savings. Granddad was a hog farmer, and one day, he came to me and asked if I wanted to go into business with him. I was 5 years old, and one of his sows had just had a litter of pigs. I could choose any one out of the litter as my own. I would have to raise it and take care...
Rite of Passage: Character is not an award
“And the award goes to …” Earlier today, I attended my second assembly at Titus the Honorable’s school. The first one was exciting; it was his Christmas program, and halfway through, a kid on the front row threw up. The Christmas miracle was that in an auditorium packed with people, no one else followed suit. For today’s assembly, we got an invitation from the school principal. She told us Titus had been chosen to receive a character...
Rite of Passage: Taming The Cell Phone Beast
Life was much easier when Apple and Blackberry were only pies. I was training a group of adults whose job is to mentor parents. One of the subjects in which they wanted more training was how to help parents manage their children’s cell phones. Cell phones are being given to children at younger and younger ages; pretty soon, someone will invent a cell phone in the shape of a pacifier. Since cell phones are fairly new, we are just...
Rite of passage: Foods that would choke a moose
Last week, I was thinking out loud about you and me coming together and creating a cookbook with our favorite recipes, and I was overwhelmed by the response. I had people as far as Hungary asking if they could submit one of their favorite recipes. I have been thinking about the categories we should include in our book. If I had my way, it would contain the basic four food groups: dessert, dessert, dessert and meats. But I had better...
Rite of Passage: The Greatest Medicine
It was our second day in Budapest. Our team had spent the first day getting over jet lag and acquainting ourselves with our new surroundings. This morning, we were to start working with a group of church planters about an hour south of the city. Our teams always travel with a 75-pound public address system nicknamed “Barney” since its original case sported the same color of purple as Barney the dinosaur. We had taken a train to this...
Rite of passage: The best-laid plans
Our Christmas and New Year’s Day can best be summed up with the words of Robert Burns in his poem, “To a Mouse”: “The best-laid plans of Mice and Men go oft awry.” I think the mice made out better than we did. Our family had planned to gather on Christmas Eve, enjoy a meal, open presents and have our family photo taken. We seldom have all of our family in one room at the same time, but Erin, my daughter-in-love, had orchestrated this...
