Audrey’s Skydive

Audrey has wanted to skydive for her birthday for a while, so when she turned 18 she did it! She amazes me. She was not scared and never hesitated.

Here’s the video. It’s big download, so it may take a minute or so before playback starts.

Cathy’s sister, brother in law, and niece came for a visit and also jumped out of the plane with Audrey. My original plan was to drive them all there and watch, but when I got there I realized it was one of those moments in life that only happen once. So I joined them and jumped, too. What a rush!

We All Jumped

The only bummer was that Cathy could not join us, but she says, “I have no sadness at all. I am absolutely thrilled that they got to go.”

We jumped with SkyDive City, and I would highly recommend them for a skydiving adventure. Great customer service, friendly staff, and a first-class, safe operation.

Audrey’s last First Day of School

Today was Audrey’s last first day of school. Cathy got up and saw her off, and I was happy to have someone else in the house awake with me that early. Overall, I think we’re all glad this is the last year of high school.

Audrey’s First Day of School 1999

Our friends, Michael and Rebecca, took us along to visit two of their recently formed farming co-ops as part of their community development work in rural Kenya. This was a fascinating adventure and gave us a view of the world we had never seen before. Yesterday we walked around Nairobi with my friends, Paul and Peter, and today we walked in Kibera for a while and had another amazing day.

My New MailChimp T-shirt

MailChimp likes me. I don’t know why. They sent me a t-shirt. I’m a big MailChimp fan, so they didn’t miss with their gift.

Cathy pointed out that several businesses I have used have sent me gifts. It started years ago with a Vonage t-shirt after I referred about ten others to their service. Then Google sent me a Christmas gift, and Chipotle gave me a t-shirt. I wonder how long this string will continue.

This is a QR code that points to the Ministry category posts on http://Hertzlers.com.

If you have an iPhone or an Android phone with a barcode scanning application that reads QR codes (like Google Goggles) you can point your phone at this one, and it should take you back to our site. I’m playing around with this to see if it would be a good thing to put on a business card. So far I’m thinking not; a little too geeky for now.

You can generate your own QR code of any website using a QR code generating service like Kaywa.

Youth Group Performance
at Christ Covenant Church

Last Sunday my friend, Paul, introduced me to a Kenyan church in St. Louis, Christ Covenant Church. I was welcomed as an honored guest because my friend had set things up ahead of time, and I had an experience that I didn’t expect. For three hours I was transported from St. Louis to Kenya. At times during the service I caught myself trying to remember where I was; St. Louis, Orlando, or Nairobi? I heard more Swahili in this service than I did at Harvest Fellowship in Nairobi. Afterward we had chai and Kenyan donuts. What a great experience!

Now that I am a parent of two older teenagers, I no longer consider myself a great parent (humility is always healthy). I did my job, but now I believe that a lot less was under my control in shaping their lives than I originally thought. One of those things is the way my kids view the world. While I am sure I helped shape some of their views, much of their views came by virtue of the world they live in – where anything valuable for them is free.

There are two categories of ‘teenager free.’ One is the set of things that come to them through the largess of parents. Mobile phones, use of a car, clothes, etc. This category really isn’t free, but it seems like that to them, and we know that someday they will realize how un-free those things are when they are providing them for their kids.

The second category really is free. These are the things like email, video calls, phone calls, music, video, TV, movies, etc. Legality aside, these things are truly available for free and provide true value and may never require payment by those who use them.

Now I find myself becoming dependent on these free things as well.

I have free home phone service (after the first year of payment) that gives me nationwide long distance. I have free voice mail, a free second number, and free transcription service for calls to my cell phone. I have a free secretary that writes down any reminder I tell her to. I have a smart phone (Android) with a slew of free applications on it and a PC loaded with free applications.

Money still goes out my door, so I am paying for plenty enough things in my life, but where my money goes has shifted lately.

I’m still trying to understand how this will affect the way my kids view the world. How do you think today’s free things affect how the next generation will think?

This month I emailed our prayer letter using a cool service called MailChimp.com, and it motivated me to create a subscription page. That drew my attention back to the fact that photos on our site weren’t working properly, so I finally found and removed the cause of the problem, those four characters.

If you see the MailChimp logo below, you know problem is fixed.