My summer included spending many hours in the recording studio doing lectures for the new version of our On Line theology classes. The ones I did a dozen years ago have gone through several format changes from the original tape with a lot of loss of quality. But I waited for the curriculum change to redo them. Teaching a camera in a dark studio is hugely draining, so I am glad it’s all done. Now I am deep in the redesign of the courses themselves. It is another very time consuming, detail intensive job with few satisfactions in the process. Glad it is nearing completion. Then I do two more courses in the fall and another (possibly three) in the spring. I don’t look to that with joy 🙁

A highlight of the summer was Sherry’s Mother’s memorial in Rison Arkansas at the end of July. I put pictures on my Facebook page. The gathering was all of Sherry’s family including her siblings and spouses, living uncle and aunt along with extended family, our three children and three of four grandchildren. We missed Sam and Nicole, who was just back from her honor band trip to Europe and didn’t feel like more travel. The graveside memorial with internment following was special because of the closeness of the whole family.

I did take some major satisfaction when Michael in all his barely four year old wisdom latched onto grandpa! Evenings in the pool were much fun and our final breakfast at Anne’s Country Cafe was full of laughter around Arkansas breakfast food. I think this will be the last such gathering unless it were to happen with Nicole or Joy getting married – and that’s still a few years away.

I did Derick and Vanessa’s wedding last night. Always fun do do weddings with some super special ones – August 10, 1991, July 3, 1993, May 11, 1996 to mention some. But this one will be challenging since both are divorced with six children between them. So relations with ex-spouses and blending families will take much godly wisdom – though watching the kids play last night gives a very visible hope!

Other summer highlights included the Bible Project planning retreat. It is amazing to me how that project has exploded. Being invited to the Calvary Chapel Pastor’s Congress still amazes me. Their history is anti-seminary (cemetery) so having me come as a plenary speaker and doing two workshops speaks of major change. We did the Daniel series at Grace which was super challenging. I had to delve deeply into hard stuff including the Seventy sevens and life lessons from the book. We are in Philippians now and that’s simple by comparison.

Sherry, Cyndee and I leave for Alaska on Tuesday. I’ll be teaching the cohort class along with Dan Jarrell at Changepoint all day Wednesday. Thursday I will teach at Alaska Christian College and then we will do a drift boat excursion in hopes of seeing wildlife including a bear for Cyndee. Friday will be fishing on the Prince William Sound. Saturday we’ll drive to Fairbanks via Denali to see North Pole and such, returning Tuesday and coming to Portland on Wednesday.

I will fly to Nashville on Thursday to do Erik Burnell’s wedding to Haley. It will be good to see all the Burnell’s there. Joel will be here for the fall to establish his residency. He’ll do a Bonhoeffer class at Western. To finalize our travel, Sherry and I will go to Kansas City to hang with Donn, Susan, Lizzie and Micheal before fall term begins.

I just realized that the comments section went away on my blog, apparently when the whole thing was hacked. I enjoy the comments and wondered why there were so few. Answer: there are only a few pages where they are possible. I think i have them turned on now so it’s possible to leave a reply but still have no idea why there is a big comments block on some pages, “Sermons I Have Preached,” “Marriage Divorce Resources” “Women in Leadership” for example, but only a “leave reply” on new posts and no possibility on older ones. Sigh!!