For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been on vacation. I was gone for twelve days, and in that time I traversed the continent and back.
First I made a very special trip to give away a friend of mine in marriage. This friend was someone who I’ve asked people to pray for before under the name “Fatima.” She is a convert to Christianity from Islam, and I’ve been working with her for a number of years. During that time, we became friends, and I was pleased and honored to give her hand in marriage.
Next I went up to Michigan to visit Steve Ray and Ed Peters. In case you don’t know their faces, that’s them standing on either side of me in the picture (snapped at WDEO just before the three of us did “Catholic Answers Live” last Thursday). Steve is the one with the glasses and Ed is the one with . . . oh. Hmm. Okay, Steve is the one in the hat and . . . um. That’s not going to work either. Okay: Steve is on the left and Ed is on the right. I am in the middle.
While visiting Michigan, I stayed with the Rays, and Steve and his wife Janet were the absolute best hosts I could possibly have wanted. They are extraordinarily kind, thoughtful, and generous to a fault. Steve gave me a rock that he’d picked up on Mt. Sinai (at least, the site traditionally honored as Mt. Sinai) which is known to the locals as a “burning bush rock” because it has what looks like the image of a bush scorched into and through the rock itself! (A geologist might attribute the darkened image to a fossilized plant, but who can’t wonder at a burning bush rock from the traditional site of Mt. Sinai itself?) I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Rays’, and was honored to stay with them. Turns out, they’re also fans of the comedy-detective show Monk, and we got to watch the season premier together. I also got to meet a number of the members of the Rays’ delightful family: two of their daughters, their son-in-law, and one of their grandbabies. It was a thoroughly enjoyable time!
I also got to visit and catch-up with long-time friend Ed Peters and his family. It was great to see how his children have grown since I saw them last, and though I didn’t get to spend as much time with them as I did the last time I visited, we still got to hang out for a couple of evenings, during which we watched Babette’s Feast and The Stupids (from the sublime to the ridiculous, as it were).
One of the main purposes of the visit was to do a Bible study on St. Paul’s epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, and so for four days I talked non-stop, seven hours a day, as a group of us worked our way through the two letters verse-by-verse. We also got these sessions recorded on CD, so if the audio comes out we should have a couple of Bible-study products from the event.
More on all this soon.
I suppose that one could say, what with me attending the marriage of a friend who I helped convert and leading a large-scale Bible study, that I didn’t get apologetics completely out of my vacation, but then apologetics is more than just a job to me. It is part of what I do.
Perhaps I’ll have a less apologetics-intense vacation next time, when I hope to go to Texas to visit my kinfolk.
Great guys..Don’t be workaholic..Spend time for your self to relax…=)