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Help give food and water in His name for earthquake victims – Global Aid Network has 1 million meals on the ground in Haiti: http://htxt.it/eMfQ

Global Aid Network – www.GainUsa.org – is Campus Crusade’s humanitarian arm.

This morning I heard a report from one of our national staff members in Haiti:  He was not in Haiti when the quake happened, yet was in Miami for a training conference.  His wife and children were at home when it hit.  Only yesterday did he finally learn that his family was safe!

Others of our staff have not been located or heard from in Haiti.  In total there are approximately 20 full time missionaries with Campus Crusade in Haiti.  Your prayers are greatly appreciated.

L.D. “Babby” Hand, Jr., certainly the greatest father in the world, went to be with the Lord September 27, 2009.  I can’t begin to describe the deep levels of impact Dad has had in my life and walk with the Lord.  He was a quiet man.  His words were few but if you caught him at the right time the communication you received was priceless!  He had a special way to assess a situation with wisdom.  When he told you what he thought, it was quality, sage advice – never overexaggerated opinion.  Yet, due to his quiet ways, he often could catch you off guard with his witty sense of humor.  His laugh and his smile are engraved in my memory.  Hopefully this post will capture a scant portion of some moments of his dry wit – read on below.

The funeral was extremely God honoring and humbling.  Dad never liked any extra attention, but it was a very accurate celebration of his life.  He met Jesus in a personal way about 20 years or so ago. Basically we’ve been celebrating with him ever since then here on earth, now we celebrate him being fully in God’s presence.  My father had always been a church attender and perhaps had a meaningful salvation experience early on in life.  But about 20 years ago – roughly the same time my life changed as a student in college – I began to notice many distinct changes in my Dad’s life.  God’s powerful love seemed to flow through him.  And he began to serve the Lord – in many ways totally behind the scenes.  He volunteered at the state prison nearby – working with Prison Fellowship Ministries to coordinate Bible Studies.  For many years he coordinated the Project Angel Tree program for our county – providing Christmas presents for the children of prison inmates who would not get to spend Christmas with their fathers.

My brother Hollis spoke at the service – following up a great message from two different pastors – and really put an incredible cap on the whole service.  It was a wonderful tribute – just perfect for illustrating how Dad had a strong faithfulness to us that we never doubted.

For the full text of Hollis’ tribute, click here to download the text file. But here are a few choice excerpts.  My slight edits are in [brackets]:

“[Dad] always persevered through adversity through faith and hard work. He was very fortunate to not struggle with materialism as so many men do. He did not care at all if our house was relatively older and smaller than most of our neighbors. . . . He had no problem at all with driving older, rusted cars rather than buy one he couldn’t afford. I remember being very upset with him when I was about 14 or 15 years old and we had only one car in our family, an old Chevrolet Nova – [no air conditioning] – with almost 200,000 miles on it. [But now]  how proud I am now of how disciplined he was with our family finances!”

“     Dad’s own legacy is that he loved the Lord with all his heart, and to his family he showed unconditional love and commitment that honored God. His life and ministry to others are evidence of Christ’s overflowing love that lived in his heart. As it is written in God’s word:

Love is patient, love is kind it does not envy, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13,1-8, NIV

Anyone who knew my Dad would agree that you could easily substitute his name in place of the word  “love” in this passage.  Dad showed his love for David and me in the most excellent of ways: he was always telling us how proud he was of us, and he always wanted to spend time with us.  David and I enjoyed spending time in his office with him when he was president of the Hand Trading Company. We went with him to the Albany airport when we were young to watch the airplanes land and take off, and Dad renewed his pilot’s license so he could take the whole family on an airplane ride in order to celebrate David’s 6th birthday. We went to see air shows to see air force jets and other military aircraft perform. We would build model airplanes and rockets together, and then go to my granddaddy’s farm to shoot the rockets into the air in a field and watch them parachute down. Some of those rockets are still on the mantle of the fireplace in the den of mom’s house, as a reminder of his legacy of love for his sons.”

As I reported a little over two weeks ago, my father hasn’t been doing so well.

He went back in the hospital about 4 days ago.  I’m in Pelham with he and Mom now.  We’re taking turns at the hospital.

Dad’s condition from his dementia has slowly declined over the last few weeks.  Additionally, just after he was admitted to the hosptial a few new issues have cropped up, including:  some sort of upper GI problem or small ucler, an infection causing bleeding in the urinary tract – most likely caused by prostate irritation, and even hiccups that simply will not go away!

The infection and the other problems have left him too weak to walk, and his mental and verbal abilities have really tanked.  At times he is hallucinating, we think.  It is really hard to tell what he is thinking or feeling at times.

This morning, however, Dad did perk up a bit and actually had a very brief “conversation” with his doctor.  I think Dad basically told him he wanted to “get out of here.”  The rest of today he has been quite restful, thankfully.

We’ll keep you posted.  The doctor indicated it’ll be at least 2 or 3 more days before his infection is under control.

Following Jesus is a response to His lavish grace and love. It involves repentance, which is also a response to His great initiatives of kindness and love.

Often the closer I get to Jesus the more I see I need Him.  The more I see I’m so prone to sin.  I’m pondering and wanting to understand more of the stark contrast between wordly and godly sorrow.  Here’s the quote from a Bible commentary which really gripped me:

The sorrow of carnal men about worldly objects, loss of fortune, fame, or friends; which, being separated from the fear and love of God, and faith in his providence and mercy, frequently drinks up their spirits, breaks their proud, rebellious hearts, or drives them to lay desperate hands on themselves.

Btw, I was looking at 2 Corinth 7:10 on Blue Letter Bible.  this is where I found the commentary.

What’s of further interest is that BLB has a MOBILE VERSION – sweet on a cell phone browser.  Check it out here:  http://mobile.blb.org/

Our chance encounter with the President’s arrival at Tri-Cities airport for a quick visit last week.  Obama was breezing through for one of his town hall type meetings at the local Kroger there.  Surprisingly he did not have time to receive an invitation to Avery’s 10yr birthday party, which we celebrated that same night.

Video during our patient wait of his arrival:

And the big plane did arrive!

The motorcade rushed past us – just 100 feet away.  At least we got a wave:

See a few more snapshots here on our Facebook album.

Hard to believe she’s in double digits. We celebrated with a small party last week.

For her present, we gave her 2 tickets to the Barter Theater in Abingdon to see the musical – Wizard of Oz.  She loved it!  . . . And she chose me to be her guest and escort!

Right now Shannon and I are at the training event with about 5,500 other Campus Crusade for Christ staff.  So far it has been a major encouragement.  The training and input we’re receiving is just top notch – it’s just what the Lord knew we needed. THANKS so much for helping us be here and for supporting us in prayer.

Dr. Tim Keller spoke two times on the centrality of the gospel. Here are just a few application notes I put in my journal:

1. Rejoice that your names are written – enscribed – (past tense) in heaven. Rejoice in the past reality of what Jesus has done for which guarantees the current reality of new life and future reality of heaven.  Luke 10:20
2. Because of the nature of the gospel, I am a messanger.
3. The difference between our message (message of the gospel) and others is that ours is not merely just good advice for the spiritual. The gospel is historical news of God coming to earth to seek us out.
4. Eph. 3:10 “His workmanship” means that, because of His imputed righteousness, I am an artistic work of Jesus – declaring and displaying the beauty and mystery of Redemption to a broken world.

Please download and listen (for free) Dr. Keller’s two talks. I pray the Lord will use them in your life:

1.  The Gospel in You

2.  Messangers

Listen and share other audio messages from our training conference here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/movements-everywhere

Dr. Keller pictured speaking here:

We use HelloTxt to publish our status updates simultaneously to LinkedIN, Twitter and Facebook.  Usually we update status sparingly and somewhat sporadically.  So if you’re concerned that you’ll be following our hourly postings of our thoughts on the weather or the stray cat next door, then no worries – we don’t do that.

Stay Updated on our Status via HelloTxt ::  http://hellotxt.com/user/dhand

Or subscribe to the RSS Feed here: http://hellotxt.com/user/dhand/feed

For more details on status updates and why we’re “doing the social network thing,” see our recent post Social Networking Reshapes World.

How to see what people are saying on Twitter without using Twitter:

1. Go to twitturly.com, search.twitter.com OR (my top pick) tweetgrid.com.  Now just type in a search term.  For example, want to see if any people have posted anything on Twitter regarding “home school” – just type it in and – Bingo!  See the results pop up in real time.  You’re seeing what people are posting on Twitter regarding this topic at this very second.
   
2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed of a particular Twitter user.  You can use online services such as Google Reader (which works with your Gmail acct) to do this or just subscribe to it using Internet Explorer or some other web browser.  I use Flock and love it!
   

Once you have subscribed to the RSS Feed, then you really don’t have to bother with Twitter.  Just follow the RSS updates.

More details . . .

Maybe you’re not ever going to jump on the Twitter Bandwagon. As for me, I’ve jumped on – I’m not addicted but I like it – and after a brief learning curve have found that Twitter actually has definitely improved my communication in the online world.

So, you may not even really know what Twitter is. Don’t feel bad.  It is newer than Facebook and it can be a little hard to understand.  Let me just say however, if you have a mobile phone which can send/receive text messages – better yet, if you have a mobile phone with web access – then Twitter will probably become much more powerful and useful to you!

The beauty of it is that a Twitter update – called a “tweet” – is a simple status update message posted by anyone with a Twitter account and it MUST be simple text; NO MORE than 140 characters.  Talk about getting to the point! Some people call it micro blogging.

See an excellent explanation of Twitter here on Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
According to them, in February 2009 Twitter had a monthly growth of 1382%, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228%

Here’s why VP of Global Campus says Twitter works for him:  http://www.onleadingwell.com/2009/07/10/why-twitter-works-for-me/

Anyway, big news media outlets such as FoxNews and CNN now post breaking news updates on their Twitter Feeds.  Ah, now there’s another term I’d like to zero in on:

Let’s say you don’t give a rip about Twitter but you’re interested in hearing the latest updates from FoxNews, ESPN, Apple Computers or even . . . David Hand!

All you have to do is go to Twitter, search for the person, company or service you’re interested in and then find their page.  On the page you should notice a little RSS Feed icon =  .  This is the key to retrieving the Twitter updates coming from this particular person or company.

Also, I haven’t tested it, but Tweetbeep.com has an email service especially for Twitter Feeds.  They can send you an email once an hour if there the feed has been updated.

Joey and Michele Womble

“A Few Small Fish” is the title of a music CD just released by a good friend of ours – Michele Womble. Joey Womble (husband of Michele) and I were good friends at Georgia Tech and we’ve kept in touch over the years. The Lord called Joey and I into His Service at about the same time. He led Joey to a frigid place – Novosibirsk, Siberia – to help build and strengthen the church there. He and Michele and their family have been there about 17 cumulative years now.

After Shannon and I listened to the songs, here is what I wrote:

The first song – A Few Small Fish – captures what I feel sometimes in ministry:
“And sometimes the work seems long – and sometimes it seems so hard . . . and I can’t see how what I am – could ever go very far – could make a difference for You

But You fed the masses with broken bread and a few small fish – You’re still feeding the masses – with broken bread”

It’s the idea that Jesus IS the bread that is so core to “doing” anything for others (and for Him). He’s not waiting on me to deliver a miracle; just wants me to believe in Him as the miracle and take faith steps to deliver The Miracle.

“Hard to Enter” is a good song to – helps me preach the gospel to myself – very needed reminder.

You can download music clips from her album here: http://michelewomble.com/music.html