Way Down South

In an hour Annette and I are leaving for South America again. We have three objectives for our time there:

1. To lead three workshops at a youth leaders convention in Argentina...one on marriage and two on the foundations of youth ministry.
   
2. Annette hopes to crank out a first draft of her new book.
3. To work as liaisons between our partner church in Argentina and Northland Church from Orlando as they work together to serve the community in northern Buenos Aires.
   

We'll try to publish stories and photos here if anything interesting happens. If you are the praying type, we'd love it if you would help support us that way. And for everyone who reads this blog...thanks for caring enough to keep up with us.

Our Kids

People think we don't have any kids but we do...and all over the Americas. Here is the group of college students that get together every weekend at our apartment in Orlando (Annette in black at right - click image for biggie size).

The nice thing about these kids is we don't have to pay for their college tuition :-) Another great thing about them is that they make us feel liked. A month ago, we had just come back from a trip and they showed up and just hung out with us. This week they brought us a vase full of flowers. They even clean up after themselves. More reasons that we love youth work so much.

On a completely different note, click here to take a look at the latest stuff that Annette has published on Pre-Text, her ideas blog. She's been doing research for her new book so if you read the more recent quotes you'll get a feel for the topic of the book.

How It Turned Out

Two days ago we returned from the marathon youth leaders training we were doing in South and Central America. We asked for your prayers and - though things turned out differently that we had planned - the feedback from those who participated in our workshops was positive. And although it's not the most important measure of our effectiveness, the fact that our workshops were totally packed made us feel like people actually want to be there...plus it was great for the ego :-)

We will be in Orlando for another few weeks before we leave again to do more youth ministry seminars. This time in Argentina. While we're there, Annette will be take a few days to focus on writing a new book...one that she's been itching to work on for years.

In case you're wondering whatever came of my stupid fainting spell on the airplane and the dozen medical tests they did on me, click here for the rest of the story.

Video of Annette Teaching in Guatemala

Annette and I were doing a workshop entitled "Tools for Cultivating Dynamic Youth Ministry". Since I'd never gotten any video of us teaching, I stepped back, pulled out our tiny little digital camera and caught 30 seconds of Annette's teaching (in Spanish).

What you can't see is the screen on which is projected images and animations we created to help visually represent the content that the group was interacting with.

Heart Healthy...Brain Present

After 12 medical tests the doctors in Chile say my heart and other organs are healthy. So in the end, no one knows why I blacked out on the plane but - to my great relief - the CT scan of my head showed the presence of a brain.

After what happened on our last flight, I was a bit anxious about the all-night flight from Chile. But this morning we arrived without incident in Miami at 5:00 a.m. One nice coincidence was that the American Airlines stewardess who took care me when I passed out was also on the flight back. We got to thank her and let her know it wasn't, as feared, a heart attack or stroke.

Tomorrow we leave for Guatemala where we'll be doing three seminars for youth leaders. If you're one of those who pray, we'd appreciate your prayers for our workshops...that they won't just be informative, but transformative.