Well, here I am three days after getting home from San Antonio and I still have yet to catch up on sleep.  Let me give you a short run down of how my Friday went through the weekend.

Friday – we woke up in San Antonio and we were at Sea World by 10:30 A.M.  We hung out at the park until 4:00 P.M.  We left the park by 4:15, and we were on 1604 heading East to I-35 by 4:30.  At 5:30, we were still in San Antonio on the North side of town on I-35.  We stopped in San Marcos for dinner, and we left dinner at 6:40 P.M.  As we left Round Rock and headed towards Belton I started to notice something different about the van I was driving.  I was driving the church’s 15 passenger van that we took with us on the trip and I was hauling the trailer.  The van started vibrating really badly.  So badly that the images in my mirrors were distorted.  I’d had this happen twice before in my life and I recognized the feeling.  I called to the other vehicles following me and I told them I was going to pull over and check the tires, because I suspected that I had a flat tire (possibly on the trailer).  We pulled our caravan off on the side of the highway on a side street near Jarrell, Texas and we inspected the tires.  All the tires looked ok, so we decided to keep going down the highway just being extra careful.  We got about 3 minutes down the highway and the next thing I knew, the tread was coming off the front drivers side tire and we were in the center lane.  Fortunately I’d been in two vans prior to this occasion where we’d blown the tread off the tires.  Once when I was in high school, and once as an intern.  I’m grateful for those experiences because it allowed me to know exactly what to do.  I pulled the van over to the side of the highway, and we swapped the tire out with the spare from the rental van.  This delayed us an hour, but I’m TOTALLY ok with that since the Lord protected us and no one was injured or harmed.  We arrived to the church parking lot at 11:55 PM and I was home by 12:30 AM.

I hopped into the shower and pulled my suit out of the closte because I was on my way to a wedding the next day (or later that day).  Taylor’s roommate from college (Erin) was getting married and Taylor was in Garland waiting for me to come over there.  I finally got in my truck to head to Garland at 1:30 AM.  I was scheduled to arrive (according to my GPS) in Garland around 2:15 AM.  I took 183 to Loop 12 to I-35 to 635.  When I got on 635, I was right next to the Galleria when all the traffic on the highway came to a dead stop.  All east bound lanes on 635 had been stopped due to an accident and the law enforcement wouldn’t let anyone through.  I sat on the highway for at least 20 (maybe even 30) minutes in park (literally).  No movement.  Middle of the night – wanting nothing more than to get to my wife in Garland.  The ambulance and fire trucks finally showed up and they opened the floodgates and the sea of incredibly frustrated (and possibly slightly drunk) people rushed down 635.  Not even a mile down the road to the 75 exit another wreck had occurred and the police hadn’t even responded yet.  It was INSANE!  I finally arrived to Garland by 3 and was asleep by 3:30 AM!

Needless to say it’s taken me a couple of days to feel like I’m back to my old self.  Sadly, I think I’d rather be on Mission Trip than back to the day-to-day life.  I had SO much fun and our teens did SO well!  If you kept up with my blog while we were gone, you already know that.  I wish I could take them all back and have week 2 with the kids at Urban Connection.  I hope we get to go back next summer so that we can do it again.  I made one simple charge to our kids – to love the kids like Jesus would love them.  Simple, yet daunting.  My hope was that it would be simple enough that they could succeed, yet challenging enough that it would cause them to grow and be challenged.  Our teens rose above and beyond their call!  I’m so proud of them!

Thanks to all those who went on the trip, especially all of the adults who worked so hard to make the trip possible.  I appreciate each of you and I’m very blessed to have such wonderful support.

Well….time for bed.  Good night everybody!