I had an interesting morning.

A press release from my friend, Alison, landed me a spot on morning talk radio at WTNI 1640AM with co-hosts, Ken Allen and William Sackett to talk about the Single Parent Network. Our big event is this Saturday, and today was a perfect day to talk it up.

I had been on this particular program in the past (for Habitat for Humanity I’m certain), so I knew a little bit about what to expect. The hosts were gracious, but beyond that, I was so excited that they GOT IT when it came to our ministry. By the time I left, I think they were more excited than me! In fact, Mr. Sackett proposed that we devote one of his one-hour shows to the concept in the near future, complete with more of “us” as guests as well as encouraging callers to call in and interact!!!

In the middle of today’s interview, the hosts were notified that a caller was on the line, and it turned out to be Susan Tennant, one of “us” in our new ministry! It was absolutely perfect that she called in, lending credence to the overall concept by adding the voice of a single parent. Susan came to our very first meeting, and we learned that she had a heart for single-parent ministry and had simply been looking for a way to make it happen. So… she joined our work immediately, and headed up the Childcare Committee for our last event. Now this Saturday, she is co-chairing the Program Committee!

I know that I went to the studio to drum up enthusiasm for this ministry, but I’m pretty sure I was the one whose enthusiasm was drummed up today!

Then there was this afternoon…

My youth minister, Trent, called with news that he and one of our teens, Matt, had collided in a softball game at Bible camp and that they had taken Matt to the hospital to make sure everything was alright. He said he would call with an update later.

When he called later, he shared the unsettling news that Matt’s spleen was ruptured and that they were taking him into emergency surgery. I did a quick web search on that injury and learned that it is fairly common in sports, but that it is very serious and can be fatal without the surgery. This is not what Matt had envisioned from a week at church camp, nor did anyone else envision this either.

Gene (one of my elders, and Matt’s grandpa) just called a few minutes ago to say that the surgery was successful, though they had to give Matt three units of blood and discovered that both his kidney and pancreas were bruised. They plan to keep him in ICU overnight and in the hospital several days afterward to make sure everything heals properly. These surgeries typically witness full recovery, with the only long-term effect being a greater susceptibility to infections due to a weakened immune system. But keep Matt and his family in your prayers nonetheless.

My Ocean Springs

I tried to get back into the swing of several things today after the holiday weekend, including my Ocean Springs photography project. I enjoyed very much adding two entries today: the YMCA and Broome’s Grocery store.

At the “Y” I had a most enjoyable visit with CEO, David Harris. He was so very gracious to me and more helpful than I could have ever expected, though when it came to picture time he handed me off to the Fitness Center Manager, Joey Edmonson.

I caught Barry Broome at a bad time when I approached him about my project, but he still took the time to pose for a picture in front of the store. The stories I have read about his legendary father (who passed away last year) are priceless.

You can scan through all my Ocean Springs pics from 2007 in the slideshow above (though it cuts off much of each pic), but I’d encourage you more to go to my photography blog HERE to read about the YMCA and Broome’s Grocery.

Today is my thirteenth wedding anniversary. Coincidentally, my wife is celebrating her thirteenth wedding anniversary today, too, so we decided to celebrate together.

Due to a fortuitous series of events, we both agree that this has turned out to be the very best anniversary of them all.

Fortuitous event number one: Our anniversary fell on Memorial Day, and my wife happened to be off work today.

Fortuitous events numbers two and three: Our oldest daughter is in Arkansas for the summer, and our youngest daughter left for Bible Camp yesterday.

So…

We drove to New Orleans yesterday afternoon and checked into the Maison Dupuy hotel in the northern section of the French Quarter. We wandered around the Quarter and ended up eating at “our place” (I guess): Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Company. That this is “our place” is ironic since Jody is the only person on Planet Earth that didn’t like Forrest Gump. Nevertheless, we shared the Run Across America Sampler, I had Captain Jim’s Fishwich, and then we shared an unbelievable chocolate chip cookie & ice cream dessert.

Today, we discovered a new “favorite” place (but only when you secure a small bank loan and have a huge appetite) when we tried the Jazz Brunch at the Court of Two Sisters Restaurant on Royal Street.

Un. Bee. Leave. A. Bull.

Go to the link and check out the menu, though words cannot describe. Of all the amazing food I sampled, I would probably give a tie between the glazed sweet potatoes and the ice cream with praline sauce for “best dish.”

We spent the rest of the day walking and talking and basking in a singular day where we didn’t have any responsibilities to anyone else.

Thirteen may be unlucky for some people, but for us it has seemed the luckiest day ever.

Well, my youngest daughter is off to camp for her second straight year. I thought of something really weird today: she is the exact same age I was when I went to camp and decided I wanted to be baptized. I was too young, really, but still… it’s a weird thought.

Who knows what might happen in a week like this?

I grew up hanging around the Gramling house, a set of three brothers who were unbelievable athletes, along with good friends. Troy was the oldest, and his senior year at our high school went down as the most legendary basketball season in school history. And Troy was the leader.

When Jody and I decided to get married, we asked Troy to perform the ceremony. Over and above being a great athlete, Troy was also one of the most spiritual men in the universe, and we were honored to have him officiate.

The church Troy led in my hometown grew from 50 to over 600 in the time he was there, and about the time we moved to Ocean Springs, he moved on to other locales. We kept in touch by email.

After Hurricane Katrina, the church Troy leads in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, sent some very generous contributions to help our church family. Beyond that, when life had settled down a bit, they paid for my wife and I to fly to South Florida for a weekend just to get away. The picture above is one I took of Troy that Saturday morning when he crawled out of bed to show Jody and I around the amazing campus at Flamingo Road.

I’m afraid to follow John Dobbs’ lead in linking to blogs of all my friends, since that is an awesome task. Instead, I just have two linked to the side: John Dobbs (the king of all blogs, and the man who introduced me to blogging), and Troy’s.

I was reading Troy’s blog this morning and discovered that he had been on CNN last night! I forgot to mention that Troy is the king of all creativity when it comes to church life. His most recent teaching series was titled “ivescrewedup.com,” which came complete with a website of the same title. It is, in effect, a cyber-confessional, and the concept is so novel that he was interviewed and featured on the Anderson Cooper 360 show last night.

If you’re interested, you can read the transcript HERE.

And, of course, the more interesting website is found HERE.

It’s neat to know someone like Troy, someone whose heart for God and impressive talent combine in such a way that the entire world takes notice.

My friends, Jim and Betty, operate Mississippi Mud Works in downtown Ocean Springs, offering a variety of beautiful pottery products Jim creates in his studio.

In the post-Katrina world, downtown Ocean Springs has seen a proliferation of bars, much to the consternation of Jim & Betty and many of the downtown merchants. Litter, in the form of empty beer bottles and cigarette butts, has greeted Jim & Betty every morning for quite some time now.

Wondering how to react to these changes, they came up with a new “project” last week. Betty made a nice little display with “free Bibles” in it for any takers who might be enjoying their business front after-hours.

Betty reported no Bibles taken after the first night, but it will be interesting to see how things develop in the future.

What an awesome sight to behold!!!

On Monday morning, there were twenty slabs in Gulfport, Mississippi. And this Thursday afternoon, when I got out of the car to the beautiful music of hammers at work, there were twenty structures that are beginning to look an awful lot like houses! The Americorps Build-a-Thon with our Habitat for Humanity affiliate is clearly a stunning success!

There is something inspirational about the construction of a Habitat for Humanity house, but the sight of so many at once, staffed by talented young men and women from Americorps, was simply unbelievable.

Anyone on the Mississippi Gulf Coast ought to make a trip over this weekend if at all possible. Just get on Old Pass Road directly behind Gulfport Memorial Hospital and turn on 45th (or 44th, I forget, whichever one you see there). You will be more than impressed.

I also had the unexpected pleasure of seeing my old friend, Eric Cullen. Eric came to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina to help jump-start our affiliate’s construction team. He eventually moved back to Seattle, but he had to come back for this special building event. As Hillary and I walked along the construction line, I heard someone call out my name, and it was Eric! It was so neat to see and visit with him again.

BIG HABITAT ANNOUNCEMENT! I’ll get to see Eric again next year because there was a big announcement this week: the Jimmy Carter Work Project is coming here next year!!! This is the biggest Habitat event of each year, and we were chosen to play host next year! Habitat junkies from all over the world converge on one site each year to do amazing things, and we get the best seat in the house in 2008. It ought to be unforgettable.

Sorry for the rare “skip” day yesterday. Just goes to show that some days can be so full of life that there isn’t even fifteen minutes to throw together a blog post!

* The day began with Hillary’s last day of 4th grade, which as every last day of school goes, was a party day. Which meant I was in charge of taking and picking up a crock pot in between the craziness of last day of school traffic. Plus, I had the great opportunity to visit with both Mr. Estis and Ms. Nungesser, two teachers that touched Hillary and our family’s lives in special ways.

* Then there was our weekly Neighborhood Watch meeting, followed by a very lively ladies’ class, the liveliness of which spilled over into crock pot picking-up territory.

* On the side, Hillary left elementary school in a Hummer limousine! Two girls had a joint birthday party in which they invited 16 girls to a slumber party, and they left school in a Hummer limo! I saw it rolling down the street on the way to get the aforementioned crock pot.

* Then I went to Biloxi to sit on the front porch with my buddy Hezekiah.

* Then I went to Gulfport to look for the Habitat for Humanity blitz build. I drove around for a long time and never found it. Then this morning, I get an email with directions. Guess I should have asked for that first.

* Then, best of all, my old friend Rob Shaver arrived from Arkansas to hang out with us for a while! Rob was my star point guard back in 1994 when we won our conference and had a spectacular season. He was an unbelievably quick, long-range bomber who scored points like John Dobbs collects blogs! In addition, he was a deep-thinking young man with whom I shared a lot of great conversations. A lot has changed since 1994. I hadn’t seen Rob in ten years, and in that time he nearly died with Stage 4 cancer. In that battle, he had his left shoulder blade removed, and in awful irony, he can’t lift his left arm high enough to even shoot a basketball anymore. But more importantly, it is inspiring to hear Rob talk about how cancer changed his life for the better – his new lease on life has translated into an even deeper place from which he approaches life.

* Rob went to dinner with Jody & I (Cafe New Orleans) and then to Ocean Springs High School’s graduation. When we made it back home, we talked and talked and talked and talked…

I went to bed at 2am this morning, and was in no condition to blog at that time!

But what a great day…

Well, I didn’t cry.

Today was the 4th Grade Promotion Ceremony at Magnolia Park, and my wife and I had the honor of watching 160 bright, talented, and beautiful students receive certificates acknowledging their promotion to the fifth grade. Having a 4th grade promotion ceremony may seem a bit odd to those of you with different school formats, but here in Ocean Springs the elementary schools run from kindergarten through fourth grade, so today was a milestone.

Hillary received three certificates today: the promotion certificate, an Accelerated Reader certificate, and a certificate for being one of the “five year students” that have attended Magnolia Park ever since kindergarten.

I didn’t get too mushy today, but the ceremony did bring up some interesting emotions:

* It felt strange to recognize that my daughter is old enough to have spent five years doing any one thing.

* It felt nostalgic to realize how much has happened in her life during her years at Magnolia Park, not the least of which being losing her home and possessions to a deadly hurricane.

* I felt pride to recognize the bright, talented young lady she has grown to be during these years. I’ll never forget that that cute little puffy-cheeked kindergartener had to miss her very first day of school because she was sick, but as she approaches her final day there tomorrow, she is healthy and happy, bright and beautiful, and a mature and vibrant young lady.

I wrote a mushy devotional years ago now where I admitted my jealousy of Magnolia Park, since it would see so many of my daughter’s formative moments over the next five years. Now, looking back, I don’t feel any jealousy at all. Instead, I’ve grown quite attracted to this neat little school. It has served my family well, and it will always bring to mind the fondest of memories.

No, this wasn’t a picture from the worship assembly at the Ocean Springs Church of Christ this morning.

Instead, this was from a jamming concert featuring the North Mississippi Allstars this afternoon, after a HUGE event combining the end of the first-ever Americorps Week with the kickoff of the Habitat for Humanity Build-a-Thon. 500 Americorps Habitat volunteers will join with many other volunteers to build 20 houses from scratch in Gulfport this week!

Quick side note: I highly recommend checking out the North Mississippi Allstars. They are a cool combination of rock ‘n roll meets the blues with a little touch of country thrown in. Check them out!

But… back to the event. Lots of speeches preceded the concert, but lots of really good words were shared. I’ve always had a lot of respect for the Americorps program, but I’ve never been in a room with hundreds of them all at once! While some were in their later years, most were college-age, and seeing these leaders of tomorrow gathered together at such a tender age was a moving experience all by itself.

If you’re not well-versed in Americorps, check them out, too.

But tonight, after our evening devotional at the Ocean Springs Church of Christ, came the sweetest part of the day. Hillary has a great friend named Alexis. A while back now, we came to find out that Alexis’s awesome family still had not rebuilt their house following Katrina. The storm brought nine feet of water through their house and destroyed everything. A group of elderly Lutheran volunteers gutted their house, but it sat empty for well over a year. Many people wonder why people didn’t rebuild more quickly, but there’s this important factor called: money. No insurance help. No FEMA help. No church help. Just waiting and waiting.

The government grant system became their only hope, and they kept waiting and waiting on that. When we found out about their plight, our elders were able to offer some financial assistance to help this great family get started. Finally, the grant came through, and three weeks ago our new friends moved into their house.

Tonight, I had the honor – per their request – of coming over and saying a prayer of blessing for their resurrected house. They fed us strawberry shortcake, we shared wonderful conversation, and then we had the privilege of holding hands and sitting in a circle – their family of four, ours of three, and two grandparents – and giving God thanks and asking for his protection.

New friends.

What an absolutely wonderful way to end a day.