China and S. Korea Trip

For the past 2 weeks, Christine, I, and 30 other students from around the world converged on China and South Korea.  While there are literally hundreds of experiences to share from our trip, I will only share the highlights in this blog.  The rest will inevitably come out during future sermons and teachings…lol. The Church [...]

Tornadoes, Snow Days, and Jet Lag

On Friday, our kids were sent home early from school in order to prepare for the predicted onslaught of tornadic activity. We had a hunch when Jim Cantori (the famous storm chaser from the Weather Channel) arrived in Lexington (15 miles north of here), that our day was about to get very interesting.  Many of you may not realize [...]

Returning from my Writing Cave

Well, for the past 45 days, I have been writing, writing, and oh yeah, writing a bit more.  Needless to say, it has been challenging to blog about such a topic.  At any rate if you would like to read a 25 page paper on one verse (2 Timothy 2:2), and/or if you would like to read the first [...]

Quick Update

As you can probably tell from my lack of posts the last couple of weeks, life has gotten quite intense around here.  For the months of Nov. and Dec. we are solely reading and writing…a ton! Unless something unusual happens, I won’t be blogging until after I see you at Christmas.  I hope you are able to [...]

What’s your Command Philosophy?

You may be thinking, “What’s a Command Philosophy?”  If you have been following my previous posts, you may recall that my leadership class is led by a former Drill Sergeant for the Marines, Dr. Russell West.  His entire approach to leading this class is called Reflexive Leadership.  He has one objective–to make us uncomfortable and to frustrate us in order to see [...]

Not your typical dinner conversation

Have you ever felt like a lightweight?  I’m not talking on the bathroom scale…I’m talking about when you spend time with a person and you just know that you are in the presence of a spiritual giant? Tonight we had Totok (pictured left–from Indonesia) and Upal (on right–from Sri Lanka) over for dinner.  As you know, I like to [...]

Bobblehead Brad Prayer

Sometimes we just get a little off track…

California Trip… Amazing Race Style

Can you guess where this picture was taken?  Note the background. For the first 11 days of October our cohort of 7 joined with 8 international students (they are going through this doctorate program over a five-year period–so they only come to the states once a year for 6 intense weeks each year) in an adventure throughout [...]

One of my Assignments

I have debated if I should post my class writings on this blog.  To this point my answer has been, “no chance,” mainly because I know that many of you are more proficient in writing and since I haven’t gotten my grades back from the first 3 classes, I don’t want 1,000 editors correcting my phrases and thus [...]

Hardships of life…A bigger Perspective

Warning:  This is not a pleasant post.  Stop reading if you want to stay in the dark regarding the extent that evil men are willing to go to gain wealth and power in this world. Last week, I had lunch with Aihia (pronounced A-I…He is pictured just in front of my left shoulder in the second row).  [...]