God's Gift of a Home

Both Bonnie and I have been rootless for most of our adult lives. I (Mark) have lived in several apartments since college and have always been happy to be a renter and let the landlord worry about the property. During her years as an elementary school teacher, Bonnie rented a house from her mother and was satisfied with that arrangement. When we married in 1999, neither of us was thinking of ultimately owning a house of our own. We didn’t want the responsibility of a house in the U.S. while stationed overseas and leaving it to the mercy of renters. It was nice having no responsibilities here while we were serving the Lord in Cameroon.

However, over the past ten years, people have told us of the benefits of accruing equity in a home and not throwing money away on rent that we would never see again. Also, we needed to consider where we would end up upon retirement. Finally, having a home would provide our girls a place to pin their affections when they were in college and beyond.

The Catalyst

We first seriously considered home ownership during our 2004-2005 furlough when several of our Wycliffe compatriots with whom we’d served in Cameroon bought homes while we were on a trip through the U.S. Mortgage rates were at their lowest point, and the time seemed ripe to take action. However, lethargy kicked in, we didn’t act quickly enough, and then the time was gone and we had to return to Africa. When we returned to the U.S. in July 2008, and the bottom soon fell out of the housing market, the possibility of owning our very own home became real to us again, but, as before, we didn’t do much more than pray about it. I distinctly remember telling God that we were interested in getting a house but probably wouldn’t take action unless He threw one at us. We left the issue in His hands and went on with our business of raising our support level and finding help for our daughter, Theresa, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome the previous April.

Then, on Monday, September 21, Susan came over to return something she had borrowed earlier. We shared a duplex apartment with Susan and her husband, Dennis, who are Wycliffe missionaries. In casual conversation, she mentioned that she and her husband were house hunting and had two prospects that they were undecided about. We talked with her at length about how they had launched themselves into the house-hunting business, and she spoke very positively about their realtor, an MK (“missionary kid”) named Van who had his own business nearby. We asked if we could go with them to see the houses they were considering, and they were happy to oblige.

The next day, we drove around Duncanville looking at some of the homes in the two neighborhoods they were considering. One, Winona Gardens, was a quiet area where several Wycliffe retirees were living. The other, the Greene, was a private community with a home owners association that paid for a central area where one could swim in a pool, play tennis, or walk on a trail. They had a contract with a ten-day escape clause on a home in the Winona Gardens area, but they were leaning towards a home they had put a bid on in the Greene because they liked the sense of community there. After driving around and looking at some of the homes that they had considered, they drove us to their realtor’s residence and introduced us to him. Van turned out to be a tall, soft-spoken young gentleman who was instantly likeable and happy to introduce us to the joys of house hunting. He got on his computer immediately and plugged in our minimum and maximum prices, our search area, and other key information, and we promptly started receiving sale information via email. Also, before we even returned to our place, he took us on a quick tour of four homes that he knew were available, including the house at the Greene that Dennis and Susan had bid on. That was the only house that captured our attention, but, after mulling them over for a few days, none of those homes really held our interest.

This is It!

Everything changed on Friday the 25th. In the morning, a new listing on Fairlawn Drive popped up in our Inbox that looked intriguing, so we called Van and had him meet us at the house that afternoon. It was a two-story three-bedroom light gray brick structure set back from the road in a beautiful neighborhood that was around 1860 sq. ft. and going for a shade less than our upper price limit. The house had been built in 2002 and was in foreclosure. It had a big living room/dining room area with a very large kitchen, a large master bedroom and bath, and two decent bedrooms upstairs for the girls. The yard was large but had been neglected and would need work. There wasn’t much closet space, and the carpet would have to be entirely replaced. However, it really rang our bells.

In the middle of our inspection, I was walking in the driveway thinking of possibilities, and I noticed a familiar-looking man across the street mowing his front lawn. It turned out to be a man I had worked with on several occasions whenever I was home on furlough, a former pilot for the Papua New Guinea branch of SIL currently working in International Management. I hadn’t realized that he lived on that particular street. Having him and his wife living across the street from our potential future home confirmed my opinion of the place.

Somewhere we heard or read that the house had been devalued substantially, and we sensed that it would be snapped up very quickly, so by late afternoon, we told Van that we would accept the bid as offered by the bank. The selling realtor had a daughter that worked there, so we were able to get word to the bank immediately, and, after the daughter placed a call to Houston, we were notified at 7:00 in the evening that the bank had accepted our bid. We couldn’t believe it! Things were moving faster than we had anticipated.

Flip-flop

On Saturday morning, when we checked our email, another listing was in our box, a four-bedroom 1800 sq. ft. house on Tampico Circle. The picture of the exterior looked wholly uninteresting, but we decided to have a look later in the day. In the morning, at my mother-in-law’s request, we all met at the Fairlawn house and walked through it again, noticing things we had missed the first time like the hole in the ceiling above the laundry room and the fact that the front door had been kicked in at some point. The house still looked good, but we were beginning to get concerned about little things: no guest bathroom (other than a sink to wash your hands), no coat closet, and only three bedrooms. We were kind of hoping for a room we could turn into an office. Still, we were feeling positive about the place, and Bonnie’s mother approved of it. From there we drove past the Tampico residence to view it from the outside, and it looked pretty much like the picture, but we noticed that the lawn was St. Augustine grass and very well maintained. We hadn’t intended to bother our realtor over the weekend, but he was willing to show us the place in the afternoon, so we all gathered there again later in the day and viewed the interior.

Almost the moment we walked in the door we realized that it was a better house. It had a distinct entryway with coat closet, two main living areas, four good-sized bedrooms, a nice kitchen, a vaulted ceiling over the central living room with brick fireplace, and a shed in the back. The lawn was lovingly maintained in both yards with no dead trees or debris to remove. The best part was that the seller had made an agreement with the previous buyers (who backed out at the last minute) to sell them the living room set, the dining room set, the refrigerator, the master bed, the riding lawn mower, and gardening equipment for a pittance beyond the asking price for the house. The place was on the market for our upper limit, but we knew that the seller would accept less because this was the previous prospective buyer’s offer.

Again making a decision on the spot, we asked Van to break the contract (not yet 24 hours old) with the bank that owned the Fairlawn residence and establish a contract with the owner of the Tampico house. Fortunately, we were only out $50 on the first place. A few days later, we had the seller’s signature on the contract, and the lender began processing the paperwork for the new place. (We offered the same amount that the earlier people had offered, including the original offer for the extra furnishings, but we did not include a 10-day escape clause. We wanted the seller to feel like she had a more promising offer this time.) We found out later that the previous buyers on the Tampico house were none other than our neighbors in the duplex! They had not only planted the seed that got us started, they practically handed us one of their choices. Because they still had the inspection report and were happy to share it with us, we didn’t even need to have the place inspected. They laid the groundwork; we just followed in their wake.

The Loan

Backing up a bit, when we had first met with Van, we had no idea if we were even eligible for a loan. Neither Bonnie nor I had taken out a loan on anything other than a car that Bonnie paid off quickly when she was single. We paid the full amount of our credit card purchases every month. We had never been in debt, but we couldn’t provide proof that we were a good credit risk. Given today’s credit-averse climate, we really didn’t know if we had a chance.

We asked Van for a recommendation of a lending agency, and he steered us to PrimeLending and a man named T. J. He and T. J. had worked together on real estate for years. Van liked T. J. because he offered a good, fair lending rate, and he and his organization worked hard to meet closing deadlines with a minimum of delays. So, not knowing where else to go, we gave T. J. a call and set up a meeting for the morning after our decision on the Fairlawn residence.

T. J. worked out of an office in Midlothian, an easy drive from Dallas. When we met him, he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and he made a point of bragging about his paperless office. He had a great, easygoing manner, and he made us feel comfortable about the whole process. We had with us the documents that he had requested concerning our financial background (which he promptly scanned), and, doing a quick check on our credit, he determined that we were pre-qualified for a loan. He calculated a mortgage that beat our current rent, so it sounded good to us. (All of this was based upon the Fairlawn residence; it had to be revised after we had switched to Tampico.)

After our initial meeting with T. J., we spoke with him occasionally on the phone, but we did not see him again until closing. Instead, about a week prior, we received an email from Alicia, the Sr. Loan Officer at PrimeLending, wanting to know how we received our income. I emailed her a letter explaining the process whereby members of Wycliffe received their financial support, and that satisfied her for a few days. Then we received another message from her stating that the “underwriter” wanted assurance of a fixed income and that we would be staying in the U.S. Since we do not receive a fixed income, and since we were planning on returning to Africa next July, we felt like our loan was hanging by a thread. Alicia required a word from our supervisor, so we politely asked our Personal Administrator (a former translator from Papua New Guinea) to write her something, and he did. After two more days of silence and much prayer, we received a message from Alicia with one word in the subject line: “Approval”. We made it!

Almost. It was late Friday afternoon on the 16th, and the one thing holding up the process was our lack of homeowner’s insurance. We had probed for a cost estimate online with our bank, but we had taken no further action because neither Van nor T. J. had prompted us to do so. I immediately got on the phone to our bank and, after half an hour of bargaining for a good policy, got that taken care of. Unfortunately, it missed the desk of Melissa, the escrow officer at Reunion Title, by 10 minutes, but she would have it first thing Monday morning. We figured that our closing date had been pushed to Wednesday, but we were happy to have the loan.

Closing

Van called us on Monday morning with the news that closing would most likely be on schedule (i.e. the next day) and that we needed to set a time for it. We picked 9:00am and got directions to Melissa’s office. We also arranged for the down payment and closing costs to be wired to Reunion Title’s bank, and that went with a minimum of hassle. (It was sobering to see our savings account shrink dramatically, but this was the reason we were saving in the first place.) T. J. got hold of us later in the day and confirmed that closing would be as scheduled.

On Tuesday morning, Bonnie and I got in the car and drove down to Cedar Hill, a town just south of Duncanville, to a cute old homestead on one of the principle streets in town. We drove right past it because we didn’t notice that the parking area entrance was before the house – I was expecting a multi-story glass-and-steel structure. Once we figured it out, we walked inside to be greeted by a pleasant receptionist and directed to a room on the right. Sunlight streamed through the windows into a room that could have been used as a formal dining room. A young woman with a cheerful face and straight blond hair walked in and introduced herself as Melissa. She was ready to go right to work with the signing. She sat down in the center of the oval table with her back to the window, and Bonnie and I sat on her left. She passed a whole series of documents to us for our signature, and we spent over half an hour reading through them (more or less) and signing our names where indicated. At one point in the proceedings, T. J. walked in and joined us. Once we had finished signing the last document, the secretary took them and photocopied the lot so that we would have copies for our records. T. J. and Melissa then congratulated us on our new home, and our part of the process was over. The seller still had to come in and sign her place away, and that was scheduled for 2:00pm. That, too, went smoothly (although we weren’t there for it – we never actually met the previous owner), and the seller left the key and a garage door opener for us to pick up the following day. The house on Tampico was now officially ours!!

From the planting of an idea to pursue home ownership to the actual closing on a home was exactly one month. Our final annual mortgage rate came out to less than T. J.’s initial Good Faith Estimate, and the monthly payments ended up being slightly less that what we were paying on rent at our Sunset Acres residence. The inspection report revealed an out-of-code situation with the wiring, and we spent a substantial amount to get it taken care of, but that was the only thing that needed doing prior to our moving in and taking up residence. (The house at 1010 Fairlawn would have required complete replacement of the carpets, a major repair to a hole in the ceiling over the laundry room, painting of the bedroom walls, and dead tree removal in the back yard – a much more costly investment than what we ended up with.) We have been told that home buying almost never goes this smoothly, and we truly believe that God’s hand was upon the entire process. As of this date (November 9), our former neighbors in the duplex are no closer to closing on a house then they were when they walked away from the one we bought. Their role in the process was essential, and we are praying that the Lord will lead them to the right place in the fullness of time.

Books Again, and a Documentary

Well, now that I’ve gotten TV out of my system, I can go back to making random observations and cluttering up my blog with trivia. It’s probably time for a book check. Here’s what I’m currently reading:

Dombey and Son – Charles Dickens
The Way I See It – Temple Grandin
Inventing America – Garry Wills
Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals – Tony Attwood
The Dad in the Mirror – Patrick Morley & David Delk

You may notice that the last three were listed previously; I’m pretty much stalled on them. The top book I had started and put down several months back, and I’m finding it easier to read this time around. (I set a personal goal early in life that I would read every Dickens novel before I died. After I finish this one, I’ve got three to go.) The next book on the list was mailed to me by a good friend in California, and I’m finding it easier reading than the Attwood book. (Both cover roughly similar territory.) In between this entry and the last, I completed the following:

The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
The Full Cupboard of Life - Alexander McCall Smith

Steinbeck was wonderful. The Grapes of Wrath used rough language and had a powerful, heavy message to relate. (A little too heavy - he stranded his main characters in an unsurvivable situation by the end of the novel without resolving it.) Cannery Row's language was smoother (while still coming across as rough), more polished, more compact, and much funnier. Reading the two together gave real insight into how Steinbeck's talent improved over time. I could write much more about Cannery Row, but I'll leave that for another entry. I also need to say more about Smith's Botswana novels. Another day.

I spent every evening of the past week enjoying the Ken Burns documentary America’s National Parks: Our Best Idea on PBS. Parts were slow, and he over-used much of the best movie footage taken at the parks, but it was overall a thorough and fascinating presentation of the U.S. park system, how it came about, and what it means for us as citizens of the U.S. Burns can do no wrong.

My Love Affair with TV - Part 3

Belief in the unconscious is pretty much accepted by most, if not all, psychologists. All that we see and hear is retained somewhere in our brains, even if we are not aware of it. Furthermore, this background material has an effect upon our moods, our attitudes, and our behavior. You are probably familiar with the computer term GIGO (“garbage in, garbage out”). If we flood our minds with ungodly stuff, it will drag us down. On the flip side, if we look at and listen to things that display God’s beauty, holiness, and truth, we will be affected in a positive way. This is not to say that we lose our ability to choose, like the lawyers who argue that the boy who killed his parents was driven to it by listening to heavy metal music. We remain ultimately responsible for our actions. However, our actions and motivations will certainly be influenced by our environment.

We are right to be wary of pornography and godless programming. And there is good to be found in shows like NCIS: the strong leadership values of Gibbs; the joy and enthusiasm of Abby; the positive display of teamwork in the pursuit of truth and justice. But, this show (and pretty much all the rest of what TV has to offer) is not about seeking after God and serving Him. I would not wish to model my life after any of the characters. It’s exciting, it’s unusual, it’s intellectually stimulating – but is it good for me?

If the Christian’s goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ (see Eph. 4:13), then what we do with our leisure time is important. I would do better by turning off the TV and reading a devotional or spending time doing Scripture memorization (something I’ve gotten back to after many years of neglect). Or attending a course on “Love Languages” that is being offered at my church tonight and for the next seven consecutive Tuesdays (what my wife and I will actually be doing). We won’t even be home when NCIS airs. However, there’s the matter of the VCR……..

My Love Affair with TV - Part 2

Following up on my previous entry, I want to analyze me viewing habits and what they say about me and my walk with the Lord. What I was intending to write three days ago has evolved as I’ve given it more thought, and this entry is different from what I had been intending to write.

Looking superficially at my choice of TV shows, it appears that I favor science fiction, crime dramas, and programs with a leaning towards God. Star Trek and its children have always been judged as popular because they offer a future of hope for the human race. (On earth, war, disease, and poverty have been eliminated, and mankind is reaching out to citizens of other planets to spread the benefits of “federation” – the Pax Terra as it were). Crime dramas are a depiction of good triumphing over evil. Even the modern-day Puritan theologian J. I. Packer has expressed his preference for murder mysteries because of their mental stimulation and their satisfying way of bringing justice to bear on human evil. (I apologize for having no reference for that – I read it in one of his many books a long time ago.) And I do find it interesting to see what Hollywood makes of God and Christianity. I found that Little House on the Prairie (the first few years), Touched by an Angel, and even Joan of Arcadia (on occasion) had real merit in a medium that flaunts sin and secular humanism. At the very least, they made faith in God relevant in an age when He is denied and ignored. [Although, in true Hollywood fashion, this God either (1) exists in our past, (2) sends angels to deliver us from our messes, or (3) appears Himself in various tangible guises and sends us on improbable assignments.]

I can justify my TV viewing easily enough. A good friend of mine once told me that entertainment is acceptable if (a) there is no profanity used or overt sexuality portrayed and (b) the depiction of good and evil is accurate (in other words, there is no Macbeth situation where “fair is foul and foul is fair”). This is a more liberal approach that would allow the watching of all manner of Hollywood product, and the man who shared this is a Bible translator and a person whom I have great respect for. I sense that many Christians would agree with him. It certainly allows us a broad range of shows to watch. Also, by watching some TV and select movies, we keep an ear to the culture around us so that our words will be relevant. In one of his essays, Charles Colson related how he used his knowledge of the Woody Allen movie Crimes and Misdemeanors to launch a discussion on sin and salvation with an unsaved friend. Someone once wrote an article for the Christianity Today publication Books and Culture that was entitled “Two Cheers for TV” where the author argued that TV can provide the glue to hold a culture together, like when we all participate in national tragedy (the Kennedy assassination, the Challenger explosion, September 11) or national triumph (Neil Armstrong’s setting foot on the moon; the inauguration of a president). TV helps to give us a sense of national identity.

And then there is the Bible. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2a); “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 15). These verses, and others similar, were not written with television in mind, but they certainly can be applied to how we spend our leisure time. I know that, when I was hooked on China Beach, I loved that show. I went out of my way to make sure I didn’t miss a single episode, and I was often saddened when an episode reached its conclusion.

We are not neutral observers in this world; what we gaze upon with our eyes affects us.

To be continued...

My Love Affair with TV

My interest in television viewing has waxed and waned over time. When I was growing up, I probably watched at least two hours of TV a day. This increased when I fell in love with Star Trek in the early 70’s and found reruns on a syndicated station. My mother actually allowed me to take my dinner downstairs and watch Star Trek on the basement television while the rest of my family had dinner in the kitchen. She told me later that she thought it was good to stimulate my imagination, but I question her wisdom to this day. I also watched many other shows – I won’t list them here.

College cured me of television – I watched nothing at all for four years. Then, when I moved to California, I brought with me a portable black and white that I used exclusively to watch reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati until it burned out. After that, nothing for another two or three years.

While attending Fuller Seminary, I visited my mother over Christmas in 1988 and saw a portion of China Beach. It was enough to hook me on the series. (To this day, I consider it one of the best shows to ever grace television.) I also caught bits and pieces of Thirty Something and Twin Peaks because my apartment mate watched those shows. Oddly enough, I studiously avoided Star Trek: The Next Generation, although I’ve since made up for lost time.

Joining Wycliffe and traveling first to France and then to Cameroon separated me from television once again, and I’m sure I didn’t miss anything important. In fact, I was blessed to have completely missed the O.J. Simpson trial and the Monica Lewinski scandal – one of the benefits of serving overseas! When on furlough in 1996 and serving in California, I tried to watch Star Trek: Voyager, but it didn’t take. (As with Star Trek TNG, I have since made up for lost time through the magic of DVD’s.)

Marriage changed my viewing habits. Bonnie and I would watch Touched by an Angel on the PAX network during the first year of our marriage. She was also a big fan of JAG, so we watched that as well. Later, while serving in Cameroon with my wife and kids in the early years of this decade, my wife’s sister would mail to us recordings of JAG, so we were able to keep up with that even though out of the U.S. When NCIS first appeared, we got videos of that as well. We still watch it. Bonnie’s mother also sent us recordings of Joan of Arcadia, an extremely interesting, very well acted show with some controversial theology. We stopped viewing that after two years. (We don’t even know if a third year aired, nor do we care.) Through our upstairs neighbors, we were able to watch all of Voyager and most of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on their DVD collections. It was fun while it lasted.

Once back in the U.S. in July of last year, we tuned into NCIS, Numbers, and The Mentalist, as well as network news, mainly for the weather. We also got our fill of the Beijing Olympics. With the help of a local library, I have enjoyed watching several Ken and Ric Burns documentaries (The Civil War, New York, and various biopics; I’m currently nearing the end of Baseball). Also, their complete collection of NCIS has helped us to fill in the years we were in Cameroon.

To be continued…

Water lilies

My family and I visited the Dallas Arboretum while it was still $1 per person (i.e. before August ran out), and Christina insisted that I take a picture of the water lilies presented here. Turned out to be one of my better pictures. Enjoy!

Getting the hang of this

Well, I've added a banner picture. It's a sequence of stitched shots taken at Kribi on the coast of Cameroon in June 2007. I hope it adds a little pizzaz to this rag.

Spent some time this morning reflecting upon Psalm 139 and the Lordship of Christ. God knows us so well, how can we think that we can hide from Him or run off and do our own thing? His patience with His children is beyond comprehension. Reading "you perceive my thoughts from afar" (v. 2b) made me think of the "idiot chatter" mentioned a few posts down. What must the idiot chatter of 6.6 billion minds sound like to the Most High? White noise? Can you imagine for one minute what it must be like to BE God?

Better quit while I'm ahead :-)

Blogging

A blog is a curious thing. It resembles a diary, but diaries are normally private matters not for public consumption. There is a desire on the part of the blogger to make his or her thoughts known to the wider world, perhaps based upon a need for popularity or recognition. This is (or should be) balanced with the humility of knowing that said thoughts might not be particularly interesting or, worse, might be offensive to some reader out there who stumbles upon them. Is a blogger who publishes whatever happens to be on his mind being courageous, insensitive, or boorish, like a guy who buttonholes you at a cocktail party and blabs on and on about baseball stats or hog futures or something else you couldn’t care less about?

This is what I’m up against at the moment. I should probably rename this “The Reluctant Blogger”. Oh well…. With an audience of about four, I’m not too worried.

Happiness

I just read an essay from the August 23 issue of The Dallas Morning News (Points section) that my mother-in-law had left lying around our living room. In it, Tim Kreider, a cartoonist, writes about how happiness seems to be best apprehended in retrospect. Here is a quote: “… during the time I was actually focused on drawing, I wasn’t conscious of feeling ‘happy,’ or of feeling anything at all. I was in the closest approximation to happiness that we can consistently achieve by any kind of deliberate effort: the condition of absorption. My senses were so integrated that, on those occasions when I had to re-draw something entirely, I often found that I would spontaneously recall the same measure of music or line of dialog I’d been listening to when I’d drawn it the first time; the memory had become inextricably encoded in the line. It is this state that rock-climbers and pinball players and libertines are all seeking: an absorption in the immediate so intense and complete that the idiot chatter of your brains shuts up for once and you temporarily lose yourself, to your relief. I suspect there is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness. Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect.”

I have always believed that “the pursuit of happiness” enshrined in our Declaration of Independence is a false pursuit. Happiness is indeed a byproduct of living in the manner that God intended for you to live: doing what you’re called to do, being who you’re called to be, and, above all, directing your attention off of yourself and onto God and your neighbor. Mr. Kreider approaches the subject from a secular standpoint and gets most of the way there, but I would refine his thoughts by adding that, when you live for God and His Kingdom, you will truly be happy. However, living a life of praise and gratitude brings our past happiness to the present and enables us to enjoy the riches of God’s goodness now. When I have a thankful heart, I am truly happy, just as I am when I am absorbed in my work of administration (or lost in creating a prayer letter, or whatever).

By the way, I love the line about “idiot chatter.” Mr. Kreider nailed that right on the head. Idle hands lead to foolish thinking, at least for me.

Asperger's Syndrome

I attended a DANISH meeting with my wife last night. (DANISH stands for Dallas Aspergers Network for Information, Support, and Help. We meet on the fourth Thursday evening of the month, and we have an email chat room of sorts.) You never know from month to month what the composition of a meeting is going to be. The early meetings we attended were mostly parents of children with Asperger’s Syndrome. Lately, Asperger’s adults have predominated. Their perspective is unusual and gives us insight into what Theresa may be like as an adult.
Our daughter, Theresa, was diagnosed with Asperger’s in April 2008, forcing us to return to the U.S. from Cameroon the following July. We are home in Dallas on a two-year furlough trying to understand and help our daughter as well as raise our support level up to what we need to return to Cameroon. My wife and I serve there with Wycliffe Bible Translators. My particular role is as office manager for the Cameroon Branch of SIL International. (Wycliffe and SIL are partner organizations whose goal is to translate the Word of God into the heart languages of all the world’s people. For more info, please consult our web site.)

Psychologists are unsure of what causes people to be born with Autistic Spectrum Disorders like Asperger’s Syndrome, but genetic and environmental factors are both suspected. I lean toward genetics because I see traces of Asperger’s both in my life and in my wife’s life. I won’t speak for her, but I’ll probably be getting back to this in future blogs. I love learning new things about myself, and the discovery of Asperger’s in my daughter has given me insight into my own behaviors, both childhood and current.

I’m concerned at the moment with a fire raging in the foothills above La Cañada, California. My friend, Will Duquette, posted some photos of the fire on his blog. I don’t suspect he’ll be burned out, but his all-wood house is vulnerable. Prayers for the folks of La Cañada and La Crescenta are welcome.

Books I'm reading

Just to start things off, I thought I would list a small collection of books that I am currently somewhere in the middle of. I'm an eclectic reader, and I usually read several books from different genres at one time so that, if one genre bores me, I just jump to another. Here they are:

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Inventing America - Garry Wills
Asperger's Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals - Tony Attwood
The Explosive Child - Ross W. Greene
The Dad in the Mirror - Patrick Morley & David Delk
A Poke in the Ribs - Jack Popjes
(and I've probably left one or two out...)

I'm not reading any magazines at the moment, although my two favorites are Smithsonian and Books & Culture (published by Christianity Today, which I also read from time to time)

OK, why the above selection of books? The first is a classic, and I try to get a classic in now and then. (This is my first Steinbeck novel.) The next one is more along the lines of political theory, and it's tough sledding. The next three have to do with my oldest daughter and how to best parent her. The last is a collection of inspiring essays by a member of Wycliffe Canada. Of all of these books, I'm enjoying Grapes of Wrath and The Explosive Child the most.

Welcome to my blog!

Well, I have finally taken the plunge and started my own blog. I have no idea where this will lead, but I suppose that most blogs start off the same way. I hope that whoever reads this is intriqued, blessed, or otherwise entertained. Feedback is most welcome!