amazing emotion in this video. broke me down. i don’t know how anyone can sit back and do nothing. we can all do something.

nice work, ty, on this video. love ya, dude.

two future iPad owners. they DO give them away at apple camp don’t they??

another favorite family pastime: sitting at the lunchtable making plans for our next Disney World trip. particularly appropriate given @MikeHaman’s message this morning @hpc.

@brianjedwards doing one of our family’s favorite passtimes. at the expense of @gregg1ep00

@joshuaohlerking and @1shannon - two of my favorite people on this planet. had to sneak the hidden-camera style shot cuz they tend to hide from the poppa-rot-Z.

A few years ago I learned a lesson about trusting God.

My wife found a lump in her neck. She told me about it at the beginning of a scheduled two-week stay in Africa. I was immediately very… ok, I’ll say it… worried about her. When she told me about it, I was on the phone with her in the airport in Johannesburg on a layover on my way to Harare, Zimbabwe - checking on Children’s Cup operations there in the aftermath of their nation’s worst cyclone (what they call a hurricane there). I was heading into a little over a week of travel across Zimbabwe, giving me sporadic access to communications with her. She had just given birth to lincoln, our third child, so the gaps between times I could talk to her seemed to last forever. Not only did I want to keep up with our new baby, but now we were facing her health issue. this wasn’t a time to be apart - normally we’d have pulled closer together all the more.

Then I did it. The second morning of the trip, I left my wedding ring in the wicker basket on the nightstand at the place we stayed the night. And this was a place in the middle of nowhere - just a halfway spot on the long road to where we were going to check on the Children’s Cup projects. What’s worse, I didn’t notice I had left it until we were a few hours down the road - a full day’s drive was ahead of us, and given the way things work in zimbabwe, you just don’t want to be on the highway after dark. So turning around to go back and hope the ring hadn’t already been removed was risking a lot. Put that together with the growing fear in my heart about the woman my love for whom that ring is a symbol, and you can imagine the emotions I was feeling.

Dave Van Rensburg (I really love this guy) was our host on this mission, and he turned us around and we went back. I prayed and prayed. as we drove, both concerns wrapped themselves together in my heart - the health scare with Vicki and the loss of my wedding ring. I was beginning to be really messed up inside.

Well, when we finally bounced around the corner of the dirt road heading into the place we had stayed - literally way out in the back part of nowhere - I saw a young man standing in the clearing in front of the huts. He was standing there smiling, as though he’d been expecting us …and holding something in the palm of his right hand he stretched out to me.

It was my ring.

Remember, this is the middle of NoWhere-ville, Zimbabwe. And these people had a lot of nothing. These were poor people and the ring is made of gold. But there he stood, offering my ring back to me.

I was at this point overwhelmed with relief. I asked him his name - I wanted to know more about this young man who had done such a kind and selfless thing for me.

“My name is Trust,” the young man said.

For real. His name was actually “Trust.”

I just about started bawling right there standing on the orange Zimbabwe dirt. God spoke to me clearly at that instant - as clearly as anything I’ve ever heard. He reminded me that He could be trusted to take care of the things that matter to me, whether it is an impossible recovery of a gold ring in the Zimbabwean lowveld, or the uncertainty of a lump in my wife’s neck - He’s more than able to handle it.

That’s not the end of the story, though. A few weeks later, Vicki did have to have surgery to remove the lump. I held onto her hand as she was rolled off into surgery, and I looked at my left ring finger and God reminded me that He could be trusted with this, too.

Everything went perfect with the surgery and the biopsy was clear and she’s fine today (and i do mean, “fine”). Today we’ve got five kids and God continues to bless us and I need reminders a lot, but this lesson is one He often points me back to.

God can be TRUSTed.

Just got this report from my sister who is a missionary in Swaziland. my nephew levi has been really sick for about a month, and many of you have been praying for him lately. Check this out:

Hey, I just spoke with the pediatrician in Nelspruit who cared for Levi. All test results came back normal. No indication of anything wrong at all. The doctor was kind of perplexed until I told him thousands of people began praying for Levi on Wednesday. His reply was a convinced, “Yes, miracles do happen.” So, there you have it. I’m still sort of in shock over it all. To see Levi transform from being miserable to being perfectly normal in such a short amount of time—I know I’ve witnessed a miracle. The Lord heard people’s prayers and answered. It’s a beautiful thing. God is awesome. Please, can we let folks know about this? Thank you for asking people to pray. I’m really touched by all of this. Love you, Susan

on the set of the next chat.live. this one with @tweeze, @blusk1 and @vickelly on students reaching students. http://healingplacechurch.org/online

extreme faith. kawabunga dude! @hpc vbs closeout party night!

perk of the family. I love my daughter sharing stuff with me!