Greetings from central Louisiana. I am in DeRidder for two more nights before I get to fly back to my beloved wife, son, daughter, and Rochester Church. I hope that when my plane arrives at Detroit on Friday night and the shuttle gets me to my car, that it will start. After a week outside in single digit temps with wind chills down around 20-30 below, all I can do is pray and turn the key. 

Tonight I am told that some soldiers from Fort Polk will be in attendance tonight for their first visit to the church. The leaders asked me to give a talk they heard me give last week to the teens in Jennings. It is on courage. Of course, my first thought is "how in the world do I give a talk on courage to people who have just done one or two tours of Iraq?" I could tell them of the time I marched right in and returned some shoes at Payless regardless of the "all sales final" sign, or the time when I was in the 7th grade and took a test on evolution and wrote on the bottom of the page "You know all this is rubbish, don’t you?" Something tells me that won’t make them swoon with awe at my chutzpah and the singular density of my spine. 

I have tried not to mention the weather here when I call home. Somehow it seems that bringing up 70 degree and sunny weather isn’t fair to those back home. And they’d make me pay for it, too.

Greg England has a good post (www.gregengland.com) about a racially charged case and how it has played out unjustly. There are lots of comments one could make about such things. I think of the two Border Patrol agents who were put in prison, one of whom was beaten over the weekend. Just yesterday the Inspector General of Homeland Security told a Senate panel that his inspectors lied to them and to the court when they said they were rogue agents, that they wanted to shoot Mexicans, etc. Where are the calls for prosecution for those lying agents who put these two men in prison? Why are transcripts of the trial still not available half a year after the trial is over? Why was the prosecutor caught in a lie about how he found about who had been shot, and yet no one is calling for his head? Maybe we shouldn’t expect justice down here but it still hurts when we see things like this.

Pete Grant, the minister/tattoo artist at Sacred Ink (www.sacredink.patrickmead.net) has lost his mother in law. He wrote a very good column called "This Too Shall Pass" that all should read. Pass on your condolences and assurances of prayer, too.

I didn’t win the big prize in the photo competition at Finding Direction (www.deeandrews.net). This is, of course, a terrible miscarriage of justice. It is difficult to bear this well and keep one’s upper lip stiff, but I shall endeavor to persevere knowing that, for suffering like this, surely a crown is waiting for me on the other side.

Further updates as needed. Thanks for visiting. I will start a new series on "Hidden People" in a day or two. I can assure you, it won’t be what you expect….