Life, as you’ve probably already discovered, is an interesting little proposition.  One of ups, downs, ins, outs and goofy little quirks we as Christians call trials.  I, unlike many ministers (and Christians in general), am very thankful that Jesus told us that tribulations would come.  Otherwise, there would have been many times in my life that I would have felt like some sort of misfit Christian.  The good news is my name isn’t Rudolph (You know the red nosed reindeer) and God isn’t shipping me off to the island of misfit toys.  (Sorry, just a feeble attempt at humor.)

This summer I was blessed to be able to take my family with me as I went to minister in Sacramento, California.  There is nothing like an extensive, lengthy road trip to build the character of a family as it pertains to their relationships with each other.  We spend two weeks in a van traveling from Tulsa through Phoenix and all over the state of California.  It was truly a blast!

On the way back from Sacramento we toured Yosemite Park, the next day we went to Six Flags Magic Mountain and then on to Ventura Beach the next day.  The beach was supposed to be a short two hour stop. WRONG!! My wife, Shelly and the boys loved the beach!  My two youngest sons had never been to an oceanside beach before and so we ended up staying all day.  Shelly was in heaven; she was the biggest kid of the group.  It was about 3 p.m. when she and the boys realized that we hadn’t eaten.  So we piled into the car and drove about a mile to Taco Bell.  As I placed my order, I knew we were going to be there a while.  The gentleman taking my order was speaking in the worst broken English I had heard the entire trip.  After several attempts to order he asked me to pull forward and he would take my order at the window.  There I found out that not only did we have a communication problem, (or problemo) but we also had a computer problem.  Ten minutes later we had enough of our food that we decided to eat in the parking lot and wait for the rest of our food.