What Was I Thinking?

I have arrived in America. This picture was taken Thursday at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The famous Portland Headlight lighthouse is in the background of the photo below. What a beautiful day that was weather wise and company wise. You see, after snapping this picture, I drove to South Portland to visit my grandmother, Ella Manzo, better known to me as Grammy Manzo.  Gram is 96 years old and she still lives in the same house where she has lived for over fifty years.  When I arrived at here house, she was in the middle of her morning devotions in her rocking chair in the living room. She gave me a big hug and a kiss, and we settled in to talk about what has been going on in our lives since last July.  I got to tell her how much I appreciate her daily prayers and her financial support. I know that her prayers move heaven on my behalf, and I told her that maybe the only reason she's still here and not in heaven with her husband, my grandfather, Pappy...

This was me last Saturday morning. I was squatting down beside the waist high wall that separates the driveway outside our apartment building from the garden plot next door. I wanted some bricks in the background while I recorded the presentation of the GGCA graduating class of 2015. Pastor Barry Quirk and Nate McFarland both contacted me via email that morning asking me to do this, so I shaved and put on the spiffy shirt and tie you can see in the photo below. I managed to make it through the three-minute speech without coughing, which was good for me, since I had been fighting a battle with a chest cold for a few days at that point. Respiratory ailments are my Achilles heel, and it is by the grace of God that I have had only two major bouts of illness in my time here. This is me yesterday at the doctor's office, yet again, breathing in some sort of healing vapors before heading next door to the pharmacy for some more medication. (That reminds me that I need to take my e...

I was just looking back at what I wrote about a year ago just before the GGCA high school graduation ceremony. It seems like so long ago and so far away. Yes, the Internet has made it possible for us to see and hear each other almost anywhere at any time. I was just talking to my parents from my living room here in Uijeongbu to their living room in Scarborough, Maine via FaceTime. I got to speak to some GGCA students via Skype last week and see their faces on Missions Day. But it's not the same as being there in person. I will admit that I do not miss dressing up in a suit and tie and marching down the aisle onto the platform and being the host of a graduation ceremony. I always felt someone else should be doing that and that I should be sitting in the back row on the platform, ready to announce the graduate's names or something useful like that. But that's not what God had in mind. If I may be allowed to say something to this year's graduating class here in...