I was a white, eighteen-year-old kid from the suburbs when I participated in my first missions experience during the summer of 1997. The North City Church of Christ was an urban city church plant, and I suppose there are still workers there, though I don’t know any of them. Even though a lot of time has passed, and a lot of things have happened in the last ten years, I doubt there has been a day since that summer that I’ve not thought about my experience in St. Louis.

I never got into trouble as a kid (except for a slew of speeding tickets), so it was a shock to see (yes, I saw it with my own eyes) 12 year old selling drugs. The first night I went out in St. Louis I saw a 12 year old kid arrested for selling drugs. I can still remember the clicking and clacking of the handcuffs as they were fastened around his wrists. It was like two tiny hammers tapping—I don’t know what on, but that tapping sound, that clicking and clacking has never left my mind. It doesn't seem like much when you see it on television but, man, is it different in real life! Drugs are different in the inner city than they are in the suburbs. I mean, I knew a lot of kids in high school who used drugs. Drugs were actually pretty common in Mustang, OK (where I went to high school), but I didn't see a lot of people who'd wasted their lives because of drugs. I know that it happened. I'm sure that they were plenty who didn't do much after high school because of drugs, but it's different in the city. In the city, drugs imprison people. In the suburbs, drugs are recreational, and while there are dangers and consequences, very few white suburbanites become imprisoned by the behavior. (I know there are some. I know that it happens. I'm just telling you the facts as I see them. Drugs might imprison a person here and there in the suburbs, but in the city they imprison entire cultures.) In north St. Louis, there was no escape from it. I didn't know any kid, and I'm talking 11 and 12 year olds, who hadn't used drugs.

That summer was also the first time I encountered poverty. I knew there were poor people in the world. I knew there were starving people in the world. I just never knew what it meant to be poor…I never knew what it meant to starve. Once I found out…I don’t know that I was emotionally equipped to handle it. I don’t think you ever become emotionally equipped to handle it. Poverty is 18 people living in a two bedroom home. There was a basement in that home; nine people stayed in the basement, but there was two inches of standing sewer water that couldn’t be drained (believe me, we tried to get rid of that problem but it just wouldn’t go away, I’ve never understood how we couldn’t fix that). Knowing poverty is different from know that poverty exists (I shudder to think what it’s like to experience it).

I’m sure I’ve forgotten about a lot of things. There good things happening in St. Louis. I remember that there were quite a few baptisms. In fact, the first person I ever baptized was a boy named Kevin. It was his 13th birthday. July 4th. How’s that for an Independence Day.

I went to college the following fall and majored in Bible because I wanted to bring the Gospel to the urban centers of America. I only lasted a year as a Bible major (I ended up with a degree in English), and by the time I graduated, I'd lost my fervor for urban ministry. I regret that. I wish I could have spent more time with the impoverished of this country. I wish I could have returned to St. Louis for at least a little while longer. I never forgot, though. Not entirely. That was a life-changing experience.

This summer, ten years after my first missions experience, I’ll be departing for Vienna, Austria to initiate a new work there. Maybe I enjoy irony more than I should (and you don’t what to know how much more than irony I enjoy sarcasm), but I find that fittingly appropriate (sermon-fittingly appropriate). At eighteen, I knew my time in St. Louis was just a summer. I knew I was going to spend the summer in St. Louis and then go to college. At 28, I stand on the brink of this new journey and I can’t see the end. Sometimes it feels like I’m floating down a river that ends with a waterfall. Sometimes it feels like I’m floating down a river that doesn’t end. Sometimes it feels both ways at once. It’s a strange sensation…and as I try to think of a good way to end this post, I can only repeat myself. It’s strange sensation.

Yesterday I went to the funeral of Malcom Hinckley, a man who served as an elder at Memorial Road for more than 30 years. There was a lot about Malcom I did not know (like how he and his wife spent seven weeks in the Middle East to see and study the places of the Bible), but there was a lot I did know. I knew Malcom's kindness and his love for God. I knew this, but I only had (maybe) three conversations with him in the almost 10 years I've been attending Memorial Road.

The Sunday before I started OC as a freshman, I attended Memorial Road's Sunday night service. That was the first time I spoke with Malcom. He told me his name and he asked for my name. When I told him, he seemed to daze off in thought for a moment and then he asked me, "Are you related to Tim Rusher?" That was my grandfather. To this day I don't know how he could have crossed paths with my grandfather, who does not remember meeting Malcom, but it was neat at the time. It's still neat now. Malcom was the first person I met at Memorial Road almost ten years ago. I'm not sure how or why I remember that, but I do...and I'm glad I do.

I know, I know. My month is over now and I should not be blogging into the Rusher's turf. But I had really wanted to get one more blog in, and I forgot about it last night. So I apologize, but here I am.

I was pretty little when the A-team was out on tv, but as I grew up I know that I watched many of the reruns. Anyway for those of you who have no idea what the A-team is just try to think of the tv show that had Mr. T on it. That's really the only reason why I watched the show. I wanted to be just like him, gold chains and all.

Anyway, I have noticed lately in working closely with Jake, Josh, and Brian, that we kind of form a really good A-team ourselves or is it V-team or is it W-team. Regardless of the name, we all work together with different talents and gifts to accomplish some pretty awesome things. Now, we don't ever take some beat up vehicle and turn it into a indestructible combat machine (that's the plot found in almost all the A-team episodes), but we do cooperate with each other and compliment each other as we strive to reach our goal of sharing the gospel with the people in Vienna.

I am sure that we will go through our ups and downs as a team, but we are really beginning to understand how each person will be the arm or the leg or the foot. It's not easy to do on a team, in a church, or for that matter in a family. But when you do, you really appreciate how working with others is a gift from God. I challenge you to think about how this should affect your church life, work life, and family life. Hopefully you are involved in at least one of these team settings. For the meantime, I will be enjoying my team, thanks guys.

Just in case you were wondering, I no longer aspire to be Mr. T. I realized long ago that I could never aspire to his physical stature

Do you remember these books?  If you grew up in the 80's or 90's, then you might be familiar with them.  They were a popular genre of books when I was young.  The basic idea was that as a reader, you could select different paths throughout the story and end up with a unique ending that matched up with your choices.  I think this type of story involvement appeals to the independent folk who like to have control of their own destiny.  It probably drives some of you crazy because you have to have resolution to each possible path, so you read the book like 10 times just to make sure you don't miss some scenario.

Well, I have observed that real life shares some of the same features of these books.  I believe that each person has literally millions of choices to make during their life.  Most people have the opportunity to choose everything from what they will eat to who they will marry.  Obviously, people living in poverty or some parts of the world with minimal freedoms do not enjoy the luxury of choice as often as a middle-class American.  I don't believe God manipulates each of us as a puppeteer would control a marionette.  But the question comes, doesn't God have a plan?  Doesn't God know everything that has happened, is happening, and is going to happen?  Didn't he say he predestined us to be his children?

I will most likely not provide a complete philosophy on the issue of freewill, afterall this is a blog, and you would get bored.  But I will say, the longer I live, the more I see how God can weave our choices into His plan as we go along.  Both good and bad, as long as we choose to abide with Him, He continues to actively work in our lives.  Even those that are separated from Him, He offers opportunities for them to be united with him.  Amazingly, in His good wisdom He enables us to make lots of choices of our own desire, and then He uses us along with our choices to accomplish His will on earth.  This doesn't mean there our millions of paths to reach God, there is still only one Way, through Christ. It also doesn't mean that your choices don't affect your relationship with God, they do.  But it does mean God has given us a lot of freedom to choose how we want to live and who we want to spend our time with. 

Ultimately, you have to daily examine your choices and see which direction you are going and which direction you want to go.  Right now you have a choice to make a comment or not, ha!  Tomorrow you will wake up to a brand new day, so choose your own adventure.  But as that great quote from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade advises, "Choose wisely."

Before reading this blog, I would advise any of you who currently work in the field of meteorology or have close relatives who work in that field to just pass on reading the following.  I may not be completely fair in my assessment, but that's one reason this is on a blog.

Oklahoma has just recently been through a series of winter storms that the local meteorologist gave pet names like "ICE STORM 2007" or "WINTER BLAST 2007".  I don't know if it is this way in your home town, but here, it seems that the weather report has become more of an enterprise than a sharing of information.  Maybe it is just Oklahoma, but for some reason I just feel like the weathermen here enjoy listening to themselves enough that they will interrupt the middle of your show to tell you about the possibility of a thunderstorm that evening.  Used to, it was only right before or during a severe storm that they interuppted for a very short update on the situation.  Now, as one of my colleagues put it, the weather was the only thing on for like two days straight. 

Now, I am not trying to say I don't appreciate all the hard work and advanced notice that our meteorologist provide in the case of severe weather, but recently it has just gotten a little out of hand.  You see about a week and a half ago, we had a winter storm that brought about 4 inches of ice/sleet in the OKC metro area.  It stayed cold and the ice stayed on the roads for several days.  School was out, the news talked about it everyday, fine, I can accept that it was a pretty bad storm.  I mean Oklahoma Christian cancelled school for a day, and that hardly ever happens unless a great force like "ICE STORM 2007!" appears on the scene. 

Well, to make a long story short, the meteorologist prepped us pretty much all week for the next storm that was coming our way.  It was scheduled at first to bring 4-6" of snow in the metro, then 2 days before its arrival it was upgraded to a 6-10" possibility.  By the day before, I briefly heard some reports of up to 12" of snow.  We're talking a whole foot, that is a lot of snow for Oklahoma.  People were ready, the shelves at the local supermarket were empty, wood piles were stocked full.  Well, Saturday came and so did about 2-3" of heavy rain.  I admit that I saw it snow for a few seconds, but really it just rained most of the day.  It melted the remainder of the ice lingering on the roads from "ICE STORM 2007!"

I don't really mind that the weathermen got it wrong, I mean you think they would get better at the prediction as the day of it's arrival came closer, but no one is perfect.  What bothers me were the words of one forecaster while justifying the inaccurate prediction.  He said and I quote, "this pesky warm air staying around" is keeping it from snowing and causing it to rain instead of snow.  Truly, his words reflect his whole attitude, not only was he disappointed about the failed prediction, he actually sounded upset that there wasn't a major snow storm pounding the metro area.  Instead, it was just a good ol' fashioned rainy day.  That wasn't really worth interrupting the afternoon movie, but he did anyway. 

Maybe all this doesn't annoy you that much, but here in Oklahoma the weathermen are about to drive me nuts.  I am not the only one who shares these feelings.  I assume they get paid the same whether we have a mega huge storm or not, so my thought is enjoy the good weather, warn us if we are going to be sucked up by a huge tornado, and stay off the air the rest of the time because it's seems to be a waste of time in most cases.  If you are going to come on the air to provide the best prediction you can, don't hype it up with catchy names, leave that to the hurricane forecasters down in Florida.  I only have one thing left to say, in the case of the storm this weekend....

"Rick, said it would" and "it didn't" so there!

It seems like forever since our last visit.  Zaden has probably gained 5 lbs since the last time I blogged to all you eager readers.  Man!  I probably gained 5 lbs since we last talked.  Anyway, needless to say things are going well, and Zaden and I are growing well.  Kari and I just watch in amazement as our little infant is quickly turning into a little boy.  My grandma, grandpa, mom, and dad always called me their little man until....well until just the other day....I guess mom and dad still call me that.  Anyway, it always made me feel good so I will probably pass it down to Zaden.  Maybe I will wait till he is at least 6 months old.

"He's got the whole world in his hands, He's got the whole world in his hands, He's got the whole world in his hands, He's got the whole wide world in his hands."

I generally perceive this song as one of the many children's songs that we occasionally sing when we do VBS, teach a kids class, or put our kids to sleep at night.  Recently, the words have taken a stronger meaning in my thoughts.

You see, there are two young families that were or currently are in our Bible class at church that have an infant child in the intensive care unit of the hospital.  Both babies are in a difficult fight for their lives.  Their parents have had to watch, wait, and pray many times just that their child would make it thru the night to battle another day. 

Even though Zaden himself had a stay in the NICU, I really can't begin to understand everything they are going thru because their child's difficulty has come so unexpectedly and with great uncertainty.  I am humbled by these situations not merely because I don't have the knowledge or ability to fix their medical problems.  I know that there are many talented doctors that have abilities to help heal and care for even the weakest of infants.  I am humbled, because I know how messed up things would become if I was in charge of everything and if the world depended on me. 

I know that only God has the power and the ability to use even the most difficult and worst situations to bring blessings into people's lives.  I know that only God could surround these families with an amazing hug of encouragement and love from their brothers and sisters in Christ.  Only God could use a simple set of blog entries shared by a father to exemplify faith in adversity and bring amazing encouragement to all of its readers.  I know I am leaving out so much more that God is doing but I will let you explore for yourself, if you want to read their story see below....

Ben's website: http://seekthefather.blogspot.com/

Harper's website: www.caringbridge.org/visit/harperhawley

Please remember these little ones in your prayers as well as their families.

thankfully in His hands,

Ira