I'm an irresponsible missionary! I had my monthly river trip all planned. I organized a wonderful team of seven people that would go with me. I had coordinated with the villages that we would preach in. All the brethren in these villages were excited about my arrival. Then, the night before our departure we all sat down to go over the last details of our trip and I announced with a big smile: "I'm not going!" "You guys will do fine without me."

The last two months have just been too full and and there is still a lot left on the calender. To a certain extent I've been neglecting my family. My family is more important to me than the ministry and I want them to know it. I don't care about a dynamic ministry reaching lots of spiritually needy people if I, in the end, lose my family. There are too many preachers who have tremendous ministries and their family is a disaster. I'm not going down that road.

The team (5 believers from our Tarapoto assembly, 1 from Trujillo, and 1 from Bolivia) went along without me and did a great job of preaching, teaching and encouraging the brethren in the villages. They are back now and all the reports are excellent. Here at home we had four wonderful days of "just us". It was awesome! We haven't been "just us" for months. Amy and I went out on a date every day for four days. We all did home-school together. We had a ping-pong tournament. We played football. We watched movies. We ate ice-cream. We played Stratego. It might have been the greatest 4 days of the year..... Maybe it wasn't so irresponsible to drop out of the river trip :)