Jet Lag is a Downer

I jumped back in to going to the office right after returning home and today it has caught up with me big-time.

I've been melancholy today and very tired.

I'm very thankful Brian is preaching this weekend, so I can bounce back. I'm excited about preaching next week, though. I'm fired up about the last American Idols message.

Post Trip Mind Dump

Not having a laptop for 15 days (perhaps the longest I’ve been without a computer since 1986) AND having ongoing insights and leadings from the Holy Spirit caused me to write pages of lists (usually in the end pages of the books I read while away).

I’m going to get them down here for myself; they may not be relevant to anyone but me.

1. 1. Finalize 2008 Reading List
2. Post Daily Checklist
3. Get staff bdays on calendar
4. Summarize and put in front of me:
5. 7 Practices points
6. Comm. for a Change points
7. Leadership Challenge points
8. Good to Great points
9. Chase the Lion points
10. C4 points
11. Making Vision Stick points
12. OK to be boss points
13. Get missionary bdays on calendar
14. Review 100 Tasks
15. Call GO Team Meeting
16. Write a book on sending (start in Fall)
17. Read/research Pirolo (2 day getaway) 1 day to pray, 1 day to map out ch.
18. Finalize 100 Life Goals
19. Mission Trip Follow-up
20. Contact Jim Akins
21. Write sermon
22. Map out Paradise Found series
23. Set goals for Lead Pastor Role
24. Hear from God
25. Pray
26. Bible
27. Read
28. Lead the Staff
29. Read
30. Manage every day. (15–5s)
31. Preach the Word
32. Listen to my sermons
33. Listen to iPod sermons
34. Get ahead
35. Cast C4 Vision
36. Get 4Runner back
37. Have Katie make hang-up quotes for office

Partial 2008 Reading List

1. Seven Practices of Effective Ministry
2. Communicating for a Change
3. The Leadership Challenge
4. It’s Okay to be the Boss
5. In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day
6. Puritan Books
7. Sex & the Supremacy of Christ
8. Magnify Your Vision for the Small Church
9. Go Big
10. Grace Walk

Books I Read in 2007 (Partial)

1. Making Vision Stick
2. Simple Church

Days 8-11

We are home now, just still suffering from a little jet lag. Our days feel like nights and nights feel like days.

I apologize for not giving daily updates for the last few days of our trip; once the conference started, we were up at 6:00am and going till 11:30pm, with every minute filled with preparations for the day, prayer, serving, or encouraging workers, and there was NO time for posting.

Katie and I had the privilege of serving about 20 field workers who came to consider the needs and potential for going into the country we were praying for.

It was during this three days that the value of all of our preparation and our purpose for coming became very evident.

I’ll unpack these more as my jetlag goes away, but here are the major lessions I believe God wanted to teach me through this trip and to share with our body:
prayer,
sending,
the sovereignty of God,
the urgency of our Mission (here and abroad),
and
willingness to surrender our dreams to those of our Lord’s (including patiently waiting for His timing not ours).

I want to thank all of you who prayed for us every day, sent comments to my blog (I treasured any word from you guys!), and followed our journey.

Peachtree, I’m also so grateful you guys gave me time away and the church supported our trip. We were able to greatly encourage our friend our church supports, and I am so eager to share with you guys how I believe God wants us to step up our role in missions.

Katie and I will plan a night for debriefing with all of you as soon as we get back to normal.

Thank you so much for praying for us!

Day 7

Heard we missed a great snow! Wow, that's hard to believe with the way the weather is over here.
conference starts 24 hrs from right now and we have up today all split up to work on a million (actually about 30) last minute tasks.

It takes forever to get simple things done because of the language barrier and because of the lack of resources we take for granted.

After what we've gone through to get some color handouts printers, I will not complain again about our copier at church.

We have had some incredible prayer times for the conference and much of the conference is going to be prayer for a country so we are expecting great things from God to raise up workers.

Katie and I have really started missing our little ones -- we've been looking at the photos we brought a lot.

Abbie and Ben, if you're reading this, we miss you and hope you had fun in the snow!

We'll be home soon!

P. S. Please pray ewith us for the conference togive attendeesdirection for their next step

Love, D

Day 6

sitting in a hotel lobby in Asia posting to you from my iPod

Flew from north Thailand today to the south . Took 2hr taxi ride to conference location
have been preparing conference handouts all day
I know we have been a huge help to our friend because she says so repeatedly.
will write more later when I have a bigger keyboard

Love to all,
D

Day 5

We're on the run today so I don't have much time to write. We're packing up (it's 8pm now) to fly back down south first thing in the morning to get ready for the conference. We've done lots of errand running, letter writing, and logistic planning today.

Also, we've had a GREAT time catching up with our friend.

BTW, we also squeezed in an elephant ride today for my birthday!

50/50

Peachtree will be five years old this April. From day one, 10% of our congregational giving has been designated for missions.

While I was in seminary, Robertson McQuilkin (author of The Great Omission, former president of Columbia International University, and champion for overseas missions) challenged us future pastors to shoot for as a life goal 50% of our church's budgets to go to missions.

Certainly the needs of the unreached in the 10/40 Window are great, and it has been my experience that one of the greatest obstacles to the Gospel advancing is the support needed for missionaries who desire to Go.

Why not? We are the most blessed Christians on earth. What if we sacrificed our niceties so that the called may go.

Now, I am not against us investing in ministry here (I am called to be a church planter in North America!)

And as our student pastor, Brian Bolden, says, "Doesn't matter if your lost in China or Villa Rica...you're still lost"

I guess there's two ways to look at it...We can send more money for the Mission overseas by:
1) spending less here and/or
2) giving more

What if, in Year 6-10, we asked the Lord to allow us to increase our missions giving by 1% of the budget every year (or 2% or more?)

Year Percent toward Overseas Missions
6 11
7 12
8 13
9 14
10 15

I like it!

Day 4

3:00pm here in Thailand. 3:00am Monday morning to most of you.

We've had a great day today praying for a country and for the conference. Katie and I have been privileged to help our friend prepare for conference, and I'm working alone right now to get my session down on paper.

Last night, we went to the "Sunday Walking Market" and saw tons of crafts and other things for sale by Thai people. It was a blast to see all the night life.

We ate several exotic foods including "mangoes and sticky rice", and several other things our friend would buy samples of and feed to us. My stomach is holding up well, though my lips are still burning from lunch today. I kept drinking up all the water on the table and my face was flushed.

I have a missionary heart, but not a stomach to match.

I've been having lots of time alone with the Lord, and Katie and I are both having our passion for Peachtree being a strategic sending church rekindled.

Hope all is wonderful there. Miss all of you!

2008 Praises/Highlights/Blessings

Katie and I have had a tradition that started in our second year of marriage of consciously tracking the blessings of each year.

They can be small or huge things, whatever we want to thank God for. When we're conscientious about it, we usually fill up about two pages on the fridge of things we are thankful for that happened during the year.

This year, I'm going to track them on my electronic fridge (right here on my blog). If you want to see them all, I'm labeling these posts Praise.

First, here's a few from the end of 2007:

1. 5 day cruise Mobile to Mexico in December
2. Our GG leaders James & Bryony Hite and all our GG friends
3. $25,000 Jesus' Bday offering! Able to bless some missionaries we support, set aside money for a baptistry, and bank 2 months of salary for new staff member Andy Whitworth!
4. Andy Whitworth on staff!
5. Great time with family over Christmas
6. iPod Touch - love listening to sermon podcasts and the Bible while walking
7. Peachtree at Blackstock - building is completed and 2008 will be all about ministry! Yeah God!

Now, things I'm grateful so far in 2008:

1. Abbie Reid - 93 sight words out of 100! Smart girl!
2. One month completed of my new health habit. - I walk 45 minutes about five mornings a week: Goal: 10,000 steps a day!
3. Privilege of going (with Katie!) to Thailand to encourage a missionary friend and share at a conference
4. Mom & Dad keeping Abbie and Ben so we can go to Thailand
5. Inspired by...The Bible Experience: Complete Bible - bought this with Christmas money, and it is Really good!
6. Peachtree Staff - competent to handle everything while I'm away
7. Peachtree Church - I am so grateful for my family at Peachtree. It is my privilege to be your pastor. We are a blessed people!
8. Jesus! - The more I get to know Him, the more I see His wisdom and beauty and power to accomplish just what He wants. Lord, I surrender to you!
9. Katie - my life would not be near as sweet without my precious life Partner
10. Ben Reid - can't leave him out...my best buddy. His fourth year (2008) is going to be FUN for daddy!

Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights...

Thank you, Lord, for all your perfect gifts!

Day 3

Today is Sunday, actually Sunday night here. We got to go to our friend's church and heard a great message on Grace and the righteousness of God being given to us by Christ.

After church, we went out for Thai food, and drove around some more.

We met with some of our friend's team to pray for the upcoming conference.

We may go out to a night market tonight.

The people are all very friendly, and there are people everywhere!

Our friend's apartment is really nice, and Katie and I have both been surprised at how modern everything is. The grocery/department store last night rivalled Wal-Mart in its diversity of products.

Tomorrow we get going in earnest on conference preparations.

Pray for us! We're missing Abbie & Ben.

Prayer Request

Since we announced this trip last Sunday, Katie and I have been asked to lead a session for potential missionaries on how to relate to sending churches. I'm very excited about that. This is an area of passion me (sending well); would you pray that we would have something very meaningful to share?

One Night in Bangkok

After arriving in Bangkok at 8:30 pm Thai time, we very smoothly went through customs, got our luggage and caught a taxi to our hotel. I told Katie it seemed easier than doing the same thing in Dallas, TX.

The taxi ride has been our biggest adventure so far; since the price is regulated by the government, you make more profit by doing more runs, so we had a SPEEDY ride, and let's just say if you think I'm a side-seat driver in West GA, you wouldn't believe how many times I put on the brakes in the back seat.

Motor scooters and riding in the back of a truck are very popular here. We even saw an entire family (mother, father, kid) on scooter.

We checked in about 10pm, slept through the night, and I woke up about 4:30am.

We've had a great breakfast and spent a lot of time talking this morning about missions, including what we think the Lord has planned for us here and what He wants to do at Peachtree in 2008.

It is 11:30 am Sat now here (I think it's 11:30pm Fri night in Atlanta), and we're getting ready to go to the airport to fly on to meet our friend. It will be so great to see her after two years. We are bringing greetings from all of you.

I'm writing this from the business center in the hotel, and hope to post some pictures at our next stop.

Thank you, Peachtree, for all your prayers this week. Hope you guys have a GREAT Sunday, and we are praying for you!

P.S. What does that song "One Night in Bangkok" mean?

Arrived Safely

Flight to Tokyo was fine. 14 hours is a long time, but the Boeing 777 we were on had cool TV screens in front of each seat which had movies, TV shows, video games, and tracked on our flight on a map of the world. We were over Wisconsin, Minnesota, Canada, Alaska, the Bering Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and Philippines, on our way to Japan. Cloud cover the whole way, but we could see the ground as we were landing in Japan. I was surprised by how rural it looked. I thought it would be very densely populated everywhere.

Also, we were VERY blessed by God in that only Katie and I were assigned to the three seats in our row, so she had a window, I had an aisle, and we had a seat between us to stretch out a little more.

The Lord really does provide in the smallest detail, becasue we were both dreading the long flight, and it turned out to be fine.

For those of you who were wondering, I didn't make Katie talk about 2008 goals the whole trip...only half of it ;>)

2 hour layover (2:30 pm Tokyo time) in Tokyo was just the right amount of time to get over to connecting flight.

We both slept five of the six hours of the second flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. That was a BLESSING as well.

Jesus at the Center

God has been doing some awesome things in mine and Katie's heart (it's cool how often He brings us to the same focus independently). We've both been dwelling on REALLY having Jesus at the center of our lives, and I am preached on it this Sunday and it resonated with many people.

I'm excited to see what Jesus wants to do this year at Peachtree.

The Asia Connection

Katie and I are leaving for Thailand this Thursday for 10 days to encourage a missionary friend Peachtree sends. We will be helping prepare for and conduct a conference for potential long-term workers in the 10/40 Window. I will be keeping our church posted through my blog. Please pray for our prayer requests below. We will be gone Thu, Jan 10 – Mon, Jan 21.

How to Pray:

Please pray for:

- Safety during our travel

- Abbie & Ben while we’re away

- Practical ways to support and encourage workers in Thailand

- Victory in spiritual warfare

- Conference we are assisting with for prospective workers

- Unreached people groups in Central Asia

- Opportunities to share the Gospel

- Clear direction from God for friends of ours regarding their next assignment

- Jesus will be made known among the nations