We Are Here

We got to the guest house in Addis about 2 hours ago. We spent the night in Dubbai, which was nice and all of the traveling went well. it was definitely long. the only thing that went wrong was that my laptop quit working after the long flight. i don't know if it got …

You Know Your Church Is Loving Well When...

HPCC has certainly not "arrived." But in the midst of tragedy this week, something happened that reassured us that we are doing a few things well. I think that one way you know that your church is loving well is when people in the neighborhood call for help when there …

Couple of Updates Before We Leave

After looking at the ultrasound today, the nurse, Beth & I concluded that we're gonna have a baby girl. It was a lot of fun. We took the boys in there and we were all nervously excited, as we saw the strange pictures on the TV. It was an awesome memory for us. I guess …

We Cut the Cord & We Liked It

My childhood TV experience consisted of NBC, CBS, ABC & PBS (which was only clear at night). I always envied those who had cable. When I stayed in a hotel, I would overdose on ESPN Sports Center. But then I would return to reality. I was the kid who never understood …

Book Review: "The God I Don't Understand."

I had never heard of Christopher Wright until I saw this book at Barnes & Noble. It looked very interesting, but I didn't buy it quickly. Instead, I researched him online and discovered that he's somewhat of a disciple of John Stott - whom I have a lot of respect for. …

I was reminded again of why I hate sin

His arm cocked back all the way and he threw the ball as hard as he could at his little boy...

This weekend I witnessed something that traumatized me. I haven't felt what I felt in a long time - if ever. Honestly, I've had to talk it through with someone who could …

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

In the days that James wrote this, there were two important things happening:
1. Unwanted …

We Passed

Our adoption was approved in an Ethiopian court this morning. Shurabe (shur-ah-bee) Eden Jennings is officially our daughter. We’ll probably leave on July 11 to travel to Ethiopia, but that date will be confirmed in a couple of days.
We are relieved, thankful & …

"Don't Do It"

We watched a hilarious video this morning, in honor of fathers. If you want to see it again (or for the first time) here ya go...
Don't Do It

The Big Fish

I took Levi, my 5 year old, on a little camping trip this weekend. I've been trying to be more intentional about spending one-on-one time with my boys. After our trip, I'm even more convinced that this is an important thing. There is something about getting away and …

Chosen

In about an hour I'll be preaching on "adoption" and Ephesians 1. One of the issues that arises from Ephesians 1 is the idea of predestination. Taken to its extreme, the idea is that God chooses who will love Him and who won't. We just live-out what He has already …

Time

I got to spend an entire day with my boys yesterday. Making a way to spend entire days with them sometimes is important. It helps me know them more and understand my wife better too.

My two favorite quotes of the day were:

Levi, "I hope Canon (1 year old friend) …

Your Adoption Story

On Sunday I'm going to tell two stories:

Story #1: Our adoption story (incomplete as it may be). God has done some amazing things in our lives over the past few months related to our adoption efforts, and I am going share just a few of those with you. My prayer is …

Dreams

Last night I woke-up three times, after three dreams.

Dream #1: I met Eden (the little girl we are adopting from Ethiopia) and she had some physical problems that were going to need more medical attention than we thought. But I was really glad to meet her. And she …

Forgiveness

I had the privilege of being part of a pretty powerful morning. We hit the theme of Forgiveness this morning. Jesus says, "If you forgive others, God will forgive you; if you don't forgive others, God won't forgive you" (my paraphrase of Matthew 6:14). We also had some …

Did not pass court

We found out this morning that we did not pass court in Ethiopia. There is an Ethiopian Govt. agency - I think called the Ministry of Woman's Affairs - that has to write a letter on our behalf for us to pass court. This did not happen. We aren't sure if it wasn't …

A Picture of my Sermon

There is a website that creates a word-picture of any submitted text. Here's what I mean:
I pasted the text of the sermon that I'll be preaching into a box on the website. Then it made the words that I used the most, the biggest. The fewer times I used a word, the …

Our Capacity to Love

Cole is playing baseball this year and we are having a good time. It's all first graders and a coach pitches to his own team. I'm our designated pitcher. Tonight Cole was up & after he missed the first pitch, I reminded him to step towards me. As the catcher was getting …

Getting Older

I had a good friend ask me to go to the hospital today in order to visit her good friend (whom I had met but didn't know well). My friend had to work today.

I got to spend over 30 minutes visiting with an 84 year-old lady, who is full of life. She's going to be in …

Does Jesus Ride in Mini Vans?

They nurture, love, take kids to the doctor, work... and they often are seen in mini vans*. Lots of moms work really hard and are very busy. It comes with the territory. When we recently found out that we were expecting again, and we were in the middle of a busy day, I …