The visas have arrived!

     

     Several of you have asked if I (Anita) will also be blogging about the trip.  The answer is yes... Don and I will be co-blogging from this website and hopefully, our marriage will survive it.   

     We're prepping for a two month trip to the other side of the world - China, Indonesia and Australia.  Until you are in the middle of it, you don't realize how much work it takes to get there!

     I spent several mornings talking to the Indonesian consulate  and Chinese visa service and locating the documents we needed.  Because we’re going to be in Bali for six weeks, we had to apply for a social-cultural visa for Indonesia, which meant we had to send in a thick stack of paperwork - including a letter of invitation from a sponsor in Indonesia, that person’s identification papers, our travel itinerary, a copy of our bank statement, a U.S. letter of employment, and our U.S. passports.  Mailing off our two passports to the Indonesian consulate in NY just weeks prior to a trip was a little anxiety producing - and we were going to have to do it twice!  You can’t do it too far in advance because you have to use the visa within 90 days.  Thankfully, the Indonesian visas arrived back within a couple of weeks, stamped neatly inside our passports.  The next day, I  loaded a second mailing envelope with another stack of papers and, again, our passports,  bound for the Chinese consulate in Washington, DC.    And today, the wonderful FedEx delivery person showed up at the front door with our passports and Chinese visas.

       Thanks be to God that Australia has entered the digital age.  For an Australian visa, we just had to log onto the Australian government website, fill out a form with our passport information, give them our travel dates and our credit card number and Boom!  We have  electronic Australian visas.   

Visas done...  and then there were the shots!

      We spent an afternoon at the MUSC travel clinic and found out again that the medical staff there really know their stuff.  We had used the clinic before we traveled to South Africa in November and were very impressed with their knowledge and helpfulness. So, there we were again, getting immunized against everything from typhoid fever to hepatitis.   Don hates getting shots so he was relieved to find that the typhoid vaccine is an oral medication that you take over a period of days.  We also were given prescriptions for anti-diarrheal medication and assured that we would definitely need it.  The travel clinic gave us recommendations for mosquito repellent,  a list of places where the water is not safe for wimpy American stomachs (pretty much everywhere we are going!) and other travel recommendations.

Visas done.

Immunizations done.

Packing.... well, that's next.

AF

*********************************

The Waters from Which I Came

For a few wonderful months while I was in seminary, I had the great privilege and joy of having Grady Nutt as my Sunday School teacher.  Words just can’t describe how much we laughed, and learned. 

One Sunday, as he was finishing up he became very serious.  He looked at us and said something that I so needed to hear, and something I have never forgotten.  He simply said, “I have never met a mature person who was ashamed of where they came from.”

Saturday night, I took the time to go “back to where I came from.”  Oh, I didn’t go home to Cherryville, NC.  I went to Darlington!

You need to understand.  I was a NASCAR fan before being a NASCAR fan was cool.   It was hereditary.  My father and uncles would make pilgrimages to Charlotte and Darlington and Daytona and the stories of those trips have become family legend.  I remember the first time I went to the infield of the World 600 in Charlotte, sitting on towers that would never be deemed safe by OSHA or my mother or any sane person! 

I met the King as a young boy (and if you don’t know who that is you will not understand anything that follows!!!) and thought I might as well die then!  Could anything better EVER happen???  I can talk to you about Fred Lorenzen, Fireball Roberts, Tiny Lund, Junior Johnson, and about Cale Yarborough and his infamous 1979 fight with the Allison brothers at Daytona—a race The King won I might add!.  I learned early in life that you were either a Ford man or a Chevy man or a Chrysler man and you didn’t change!  (I still can’t buy a Ford, although I recently rented a Taurus and it was incredible!!!)

A few years ago Richard Nunan, made me an offer.  We would go to the Saturday night race at Darlington and he would drive home so I could be ready to preach on Sunday.  (That is a Sunday in which I PREACH REAL LOUD!)  It has become a tradition. 

You have to understand that Richard is the last person in the world that you would suspect of being a race fan.  He teaches philosophy at the College of Charleston, is prone to wear a T-shirt to the race that says “This is what a Feminist looks like” and brings wonderful vegetarian pizza to eat.  Last night we had a wonderful conversation about time travel and the philosophical implications.  He is teaching an honors course next fall that you really should take—even though you can’t!  Richard grew up near Hueytown Alabama, a point of contention that I have gotten over!  (How could you pull for the Allisons???)  He is a Mark Martin fan and dreams of living long enough to see him win again.

 

Sorry Richard!  You’ve been outed!)

I am a Baptist minister who serves a church on Daniel Island, drives a Volvo and loves going to the ballet.  I have a degree from Wake Forest, Southern Seminary, and Emory, and have been accused of being rather liberal in my politics and theology.  Not the kind of people that you would expect to be sitting in the Pearson Tower at the Track too Tough to Tame on a Saturday night listening to country music, Republican senators and the roar of engines!

But there we were!  Pearson Tower.  Section H, Row 24, Seats 23 and 24. 

We’ll be there again next year. 

Sometimes you have to dip your toes in the waters that birthed you.

Sometimes you have to remember not to be ashamed of where you came from. 

You Get What??!!!

There are times when I am almost embarrassed to tell colleagues that I get a sabbatical.  The envy is almost more than I can bear!  It is even worse when I tell my “non-clergy” friends.  Their reaction, even if in jest, is always, “But you only work one day a week now!”  (I remind them that I also work on Wednesdays, thank you very much!)  What many want to know, however, is how.  How did I get a sabbatical?

It was very easy!  I asked.

There was a bit more to it.  I moved to Providence 17 years ago from a position at First Baptist, Greenville.  At that time I was granted a 2-month sabbatical every 4 years.  So when we began having conversation with Providence, I just asked for 2 months every 3 years.  I can only imagine their thinking.  “He is taking a pay cut to come here, so we should be nice.  But seriously, the average tenure of a minister is barely 3 years, so this probably won’t ever cost us anything!  Let’s throw it in!”

This will be my 5^th sabbatical!  It is the secret to my longevity.  (Well that a an occasional walk on the beach and fresh shrimp.)  In all seriousness I cannot imagine doing this job without the knowledge that there is a time when I will be able to just set everything down and just be...

A sabbatical is gift from our church to my family and me.  These weeks give us time to just be, to reconnect, to vacate.  But it is also a gift to our congregation.  Providence is unique in that we have 21 ordained ministers in our congregation.  (We only have about 350 members, so you do the math!)  While I am away our congregation gets to hear a different voice.  This time we also have the gift of several friends “from off” who are coming to lead in worship.

But this sabbatical is also a gift from the Lily Foundation.  Several years ago they became concerned about burnout in ministers, how many were just walking away to do something else.  They created a program that would allow ministers time away to renew their souls, to do things that would make their hearts sing.  I had applied several times before, but to no avail.  I applied again this year (actually last year) expecting the same result! 

But surprise!

So over the next 12 weeks (I am using all my vacation time this year) we will be resting at home, and then off on a wonderful journey.  We are going to Beijing, China to see our daughter and son-in-law; then to visit/work with friends in Bali and then home via Perth, Australia where we going to check up on church members. 

None of that would have been possible without this grant, for which I am so grateful; without the gift of the time from Providence; without the extra work and ministry by my colleagues.  It really is gift.  I really am grateful.

My guess is I don’t know how grateful yet.  That will come over the next few weeks.

The Waters that Bind Us

    

     I am the pastor of a Baptist Church on Daniel Island, SC.  My world is defined by water.  Geographically, we are surrounded by the waters of the Wando and Cooper Rivers.  Spiritually it is where we begin, as we go down to the Wando for baptism.  Water binds us together. 

     But it also binds us.  The rivers around Charleston not only give us beauty, but also boundaries.  You live East Cooper or West Ashley or James Island, or Daniel Island.  The waters give us a geographical, social, and many times economic identity.  Providence is on Daniel Island—an absolutely wonderful setting. We live in Mt. Pleasant—east of the Cooper River.  We have talked about making the 6-mile move to Daniel Island.  It would be so nice to walk to everything, to get rid of a car, to be more a part of the community.  But my fear is that if we did move, I would never leave the island! 

     Which is why this sabbatical journey is so important!  During this time we are going to explore the waters that bind us—in ways both good and bad.  How do we allow barriers to bind us into routines that keep us from one another?  What are the commonalities that bind us together—even when we don’t recognize it?  For the truth is we are all bound together by water.   

     A few years ago I came across a wonderful little book by Maruso Emoto called The Hidden Messages in Water.  He writes, “We start out life being 99% water, as fetuses.  When we are born we are 90% water, and by the time we reach adulthood we are down to 70%...In other words, throughout our lives we exist mostly as water.”

     This is a journey to break out of the confines of my life, to go places both physically and spiritually that I have never gone, but also to discover the ways that we really are bound together—by our common humanity, by water.  It will be the journey of a lifetime.

DF