If truth be told (and why shouldn’t it??) I had mixed feelings about going on the most recent DurhamCares trip to the Dominican Republic.  It marked my third trip in as many weeks and I was behind.  Behind at work, behind at DurhamCares.  I’ve done a lousy job of following up with the pastors from last weeks’ pastors lunch.  I’m behind on the launch of our new international ministry site, and I’m definitely behind on sleep.  Also, I had seen many of the ministries we were to visit . . . albeit in different countries.

As it turned out, I was very pleasantly suprised in finding that it was one of my best trips.  Part of the success from the trip came from how great the fellow travellers were on the trip, part of it came from our two leaders, Jason Bryan and Scott Steele (former Young Life Director in the DR, and now Executive Director of Cherokee Gives Back), but most of it came from the people on the ground that were doing ministry.  I suppose I’ll never grow tired of hearing from people that give up their lives to minister to the financially and spiritually poor, particularly those that do it with the passion of the folks that we met with.  It’s also absolutely awesome to talk to the people whose lives these ministries touch (wait until you see the posting of video on the new Dominican entrepreneur whose business was made possible by a loan from Hope International).  Lastly, it was very rewarding to see folks from Durham see the same thing and see their lives transformed as they experienced ministries from microfinance, to teen evangelism, to sustainable Christian medical clinics to leadership development/pastoral training.

I think/hope and pray that these 3 day trip formats will be a major success in blessing those that we visit in-country, and those that travel along with us.  The cost is modest (about $1,400 incl. airfare….as we look to just break even) and the time away from work and family is minimal, and as mentioned above, the trips get exposure to the culture (we had a great dinner with the YoungLife and Youth for Christ folks in the historic section of Santo Domingo).

We have a 3 day trip coming up to Guatemala in November and we will be announcing our Spring Trip schedule soon.  We hope that you can join us!!

I’ll post pictures and videos of the trip over the next few days along with a little more in depth commentary. Have a great week!!

I've been back for a couple of days from my trip to Nicaragua, and I've now absorbed enough to be able to share some thoughts, including my biggest takeaway.

First, some background. David (my business partner, great friend and co-founder of DurhamCares) and I had wanted to get away to celebrate his 40th birthday. The original plan was to go see the Tour de France for a few days as we've done in the past (we're both avid cyclists). Lance Armstrong was back and in a 3 day trip we could take in the individual Time Trial in Annecy, which for my money is the prettiest town in Europe, and see the epic stage 2 days later at the top of Mont Ventoux. It sounded cool and we were ready to go. It occurred to us, though, that this might not be the best thing to do. You see for years we've been talking at the company about how our personal and company values are: Faith, Family, Work and Fitness (in that order). Shouldn't we celebrate his birthday in a way that was more in line with that? Don't get me wrong, quick R&R trips to go skiing and/or cycling are great and we'll do more of them, but this occasion was really special and we wanted to memorialize it in a way that was something that we'd never forget. So, we decided on a 4 day trip to Nicaragua with our sons (Daniel age 9, and Benjamin age 7). We also asked along our great friend Scott Toal, who went to ORU with David and the Chairman of the Mailbox Club and his son Seamus (age 8).

Our trip was AWESOME! The first two days were in Managua principally to visit ministries and a Micro Finance Institution. The next two days were in San Juan del Sur down on the coast for fishing and surfing. Pictures from the trip and captions describing what we did are at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=136611&id=573895140

I won't tell you all of the details of the trip as there is much that we've put in the captions on fbook, but I do want to share some highlights:

1. Visiting the Lirio de Las Valles, a church that sits 200 passionate believers that couldn't have cost more than $1,000 to build. As I tweeted from the visit, "now this is a capital campaign that I can support."
2. Normally quiet and reserved Benjamin standing up in front of the crowd sharing his love of the Lord...it blew me away that he said one word, let alone what amounted to a full blown testimonial. All things are possible with the Holy Spirit!
3. Seeing lacrosse and hope in the slums of La Chureca, a slum at the Managua city dump. (For an awesome 14 minute video on how it got there, check out the video at: http://lacrossethenations.org/)
4. Touring the dump and the ministries inside it with our new friends Brad Corrigan (of the band Dispatch) and Daniel Bain.
5. Other surfers at the Remonsa beach clapping for Benjamin as he surfed. There IS something soulful about surfing. Btw, check out the movie "Walking on Water" if you haven't already.
6. The many, many unsolicited hugs that I got from Benjamin. I bet that I've gotten 10-15 from him up until the trip. I got more than 20 on it. AWESOME.
7. Great bonding with the other dad-son combinations.
8. Benjamin leading us through a slide show upon our return, getting to the picture of the church with all of the kids in it, and JoeJoe (our 5 year old son) exclaiming, "Wow, that's a beautiful church!".....AND IT WAS! Not for the building, but for the balloons hanging from the rafters and the beautiful children inside of it. It was Matthew 18:3 applied better than I've ever known.
9. Hundreds of other things that I won't throw at you now...I'll just wrap them all into an encouragement for you to do the same. It wasn't too expensive, about $2,000 for 5 days incl. airfare, and it was wonderful to see other ministries that we might get involved with, and it's a life experience that we'll all NEVER forget!

Now, for the application to Durham:

The second part of our trip was to a town on the coast named San Juan del Sur. It has a population of about 3,000 people and is beautifully located along some of the most dramatic coastline I've ever seen. But that's not what impressed us. What impressed us was the incredible sense of community that we felt while we were there. I've been to other surf towns in Central America and elsewhere around the world. Unfortunately, they're typically known for their night clubs, public consumption of alcohol, men trying to sell you pot, and women trying to sell something else. NOT HERE. At night, the entire town came out to walk as families around the town and to visit each other on porch stoops. Children played in the streets without a fear in the world; neither them NOR their parents. The sense of it all was overwhelming. We couldn't help but feel that this is the way that every town should be...the way that we envision towns long ago were in America before television and the Wii.

Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in Latin America, and yet for my money it is the richest I've ever seen. Happiness in San Juan del Sur is not measured by financial success, material belongings or academic credentials (they don't have any). What they do have is a love for family, a commitment to engagement and relationship and faith. I would go so far as to say that the average person in San Juan del Sur is significantly happier than the average person in Hope Valley, Chancellor's Ridge, NE Central Durham or any other community here in Durham.

Here's my hope for Durham: that we put down the computer, the TV and the video games long enough to discover our neighbors, engage with them, learn about them, build relationally with them, and yes to love them. If you want to see what it might look like some day, go check out San Juan del Sur and tell me if you've got anything of real substance on them; are they citizens of the 2nd poorest country in the world, or are they actually residents of the richest town in the world? And you can get in some great surfing and fishing while you're at it.

I went on a vision trip to South Africa two and a half years ago. It was an incredible experience in several ways. First, it's absolutely amazing to get on a plane here in the States at the end of Fall when the leaves are falling off the trees and it's getting dark at 5:30 at night and then arrive 20 hours later in a land where Spring in full bloom with jacaranda trees and their beautiful purple colors decorating a scenery where it doesn't get dark until 8:30 or so. I've travelled all over the world, but that seasonal change was the closest thing I've ever felt to time travel. Second, the trip was full of visits to incredible missions. We saw an AIDS clinic, orphanages, two seminaries, a school and met with local entrepreneurs in 3 different areas of the country, mostly with the accompaniment of Michael Cassidy (a man who has been referred to as the South African Billy Graham). It's in the third way that the trip impacted me though, that is the inspiration for this blog.

South Africa is a land of incredible contrasts, mountains and oceans, lush beauty and dry deserts, but no where is the contrast stronger than in the differences between rich and poor. When I mean rich, I mean very, very rich. Johannesburg has the nicest residential neighborhoods that I've seen anywhere. Huge mansions look like they've been plucked from the English countryside and put into a lush garden that unlike Britain, in in bloom 9 months out of the year. We stayed in one of these incredible homes during several nights from our trip. During the day we went into the townships and saw squalor that would shock most and deplorable living conditions that have only since been matched by what we saw in India recently. At night we'd come back to our host families and have dinner.

I'll never forget one of the hosts asking me what we had done during the day and I replied by telling them that we had been to Alex Township. They replied "oh, and what's it like there" I couldn't believe that they had never been. They shared the same faith as I, and I had thought were moved to take care of the poor, but they had never been to a township which was two miles away from where there own house stood, and I had travelled across the world just to see it! I didn't say anything at the time, but I couldn't believe it.

Fast forward to 1 year later. I'm in Durham and someone says to me something about a new project at the corner of Angier and Driver. Where's that I ask?  Then boom, just like that I'm hit with a bolt of sudden awareness of my own hypocrisy. The only thing worse, of course, would have been being told this from visitors from half a world away who had come to serve in my own backyard. Alas, this has, of course, happened. Ever see that great brick fence around the Good Samaritan Inn? It was built by a church that sent a group from Michigan -- a group that now knows what some of our downtrodden neighborhoods look like and how to serve them and frankly in some (and many) cases more so than we do.

At DurhamCares, we're hoping that the new DurhamCares trips initiative will help to serve as a way for Durham residents to learn about how they might serve together in the world through 12 trips going to places like Guatemala, India, Uganda, and yes, South Africa, as we think it's very important to live out the broader definition of neighbor as taught to us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan where a stranger from a foreign (and hated) land came to the aid of the wounded traveller, but it's the initiative to take DurhamCares trips to DURHAM that has us most excited. We'd ultimately like to scale these up to 1 a week and give Durham citizens an opportunity to learn more about the city in their backyard. Through these trips led by local leaders like Elaine Bushfan (Durham's Chief District Court Judge), we'll see what's going great in our neighborhoods, who's transforming the city, and what still needs fixing. Most of all, we're hoping that this trip might serve as a catalyst for groups of folks to get involved in encouraging and supporting the initiatives that are building momentum, and working hard to start yet new movements to come alongside other people to fix what hasn't yet been tackled.

Please check out the Trips section of the site at: http://www.durhamcares.org/index.php/trips and please tell a friend.

Thank you for loving your neighbor!

I am just back from a trip to the Holy Land. David and I took our fathers for a week tour of Israel and Jordan; an absolutely incredible adventure. I can’t properly describe (and it’s not just because I’m a novice writer) what it felt like to see and be in the places (Capernaum, Nazareth, Canaa, Jerusalem among others) that Jesus walked in. It made me have a much greater appreciation for the humanity of Jesus. One thing I now know absolutely is that he must have been in shape with some great quads…the hillside surrounding Galilee and Jerusalem is remarkably steep…think San Francisco steep.

I recommend a trip like this to anyone, and while the biggest impact made on me was to see the places that figured prominently in the Bible, I can say that there is so much more to see from the beautiful beaches of Caesarea to the dynamic city of Haifa. Add in some great secular history in Petra and Beth Shean and surprisingly good food, and the region could stand on it’s own as a great travel destination even if God hadn’t chosen that area to inspire us as the setting for his Word. Happily, though, for us last week, he did.

I could go on and on about the trip, and would be happy to do so off-line, but it’s time to get to the point that I’m trying to make here, and to share what I learned in Jerusalem that has inspired me for what our future might be in Durham.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is the supposed site of Christ’s death and burial. It’s been a pilgrimage since the 300s AD. It’s been jointly administered by many orthodox churches, the Armenians, the Greeks, the Syrians, the Ethiopians, the Copts and the Catholics among others. It’s a strange sight to see the various groups lead church services at the same time as they vie for the attention of various parishioners.

And here’s the challenge: the different sects don’t often play well in the sandbox together. In fact, within the last month the tensions between the groups have resulted in fistfights that have been reported on CNN. Things are so bad and have been for a long time, that a group of Muslim families actually have to manage the church and unlock it every day.

Imagine that! What kind of message does that send to seekers and non-believers about Christianity? What would Jesus say!?!?

Fortunately, we have a great opportunity to do things much better here and there are signs that area pastors are increasingly willing to work together on joint projects. There are many different congregations in Durham, but we are one body in Christ. Let us all work together as one Church to serve our community as we serve him. Let us be a beacon and a light to all around us, together as one. This opportunity is clearly missed in modern day Jerusalem, let it not be beyond our grasp in Durham.