When I look back on the decade that just past, I am amazed at how many significant events happened in my life.
- My wife and I took all of our foreign mission trips in the 2010’s. She headed out first, going to Haiti with a medical mission team just six weeks after the devastating earthquake there. She called me in the middle of my Sunday sermon to tell me about the work she was doing. We both went to Haiti later that year, took a team from our church in 2011 and returned one more time in 2016. She and I did another trip to Kenya in 2013 and Madagascar in 2015. (You can read about these trips elsewhere on this blog.)
- Our two daughters graduated from college in 2010 and 2013, and our son graduated from the seminary in 2013. I had the privilege of ordaining him at our church, my top moment when I was thinking back over thirty years of ministry.
- All three of our children got married in the past decade. Our son married in 2012, and our two daughters both married in 2014. I got to be there at ground zero to lead them in their vows to one another.
- All six of our grandchildren were born in the 2010’s: three granddaughters and three grandsons. (We had all six together this past Christmas, all under the age of six! No, we could not get them all to sit still for a group picture.)
- At church, which was a big part of the decade, we housed the homeless with Family Promise, danced and sang in Vacation Bible School, closed our preschool after twenty-four good years of ministry, and partnered with local churches from other cultures who use our facilities each week.
- Oh, and of course it was the decade of Sam, our Florida Brown Dog. He had his own memoir here.
It was anything but a dull decade! My family tripled in size, we remodeled our home, and I learned a lot with Child Evangelism Fellowship and Stephen Ministry. I wonder what the ’20’s will bring?
