Cleobury Mortimer on the hill

Some of the Young Life staff working on one of the service projects – a new sidewalk

Well, it’s not the most poetic name I’ve ever heard, but the town is beautiful.

We’re here at the staff work weekend for Young Life UK. This morning I led worship, we took some pictures, and then Nathan and Rinnah worked on the service project while I put Toby down for a nap and did school with Rachel. Then we went down the hill to see Cleobury Mortimer, and I gave a little concert this evening.

Driving here has been very interesting. Staying on the left isn’t the half of it. It’s staying on the left while sitting on the opposite side of the car so all the proportions are different, in a rental you don’t know, on extremely narrow streets that people just park on randomly, and then playing chicken with (and yes, this happened today) an oncoming bus. When we managed not to wreck our car, the parked cars, the 500 year old building on the side of us, or the bus, Nathan said cheerfully, “Well, we’re all still alive!” but apparently the kids were pretty spooked. Rachel yelled, “Dad, I wish I knew your middle name!!” I guess she knows what is said when someone’s in trouble. 🙂

The chips in question

Well, we’re here! Jolly old England. Where some people do actually say, “Pip, pip, cheerio!”

We flew to Detroit, had a 3 hour layover, and then a bit of a delay leaving for London, but still got in on time. Man, that’s a long flight, especially when you’re landing at 3:15 am your time, and they served you breakfast an hour and a half before and you need to get off the plane and drive several hours on the other side of the road.

We got our car which took a long time, and then had the hair-raising experience of trying to drive on the left sitting on the left for the first time at Heathrow airport. Well, we’re still all here. 🙂

Then up for an amazingly beautful drive to Buckinghamshire. We’re spending the weekend doing worship for a Young Life staff weekend. We caught up with my friend Tom, lead some worship, put the exhausted children to bed, and caught up our blogs.

My favorite quote from the day was from a little old lady at the Three Pigeons Pub, where we stopped for lunch. I ate a french fry off Toby’s plate, and she said, “You better watch out, or your mum’ll pinch your chips!!”

Sounds painful. 🙂

Well, we’re seriously freaking out now since we’re leaving tomorrow for our UK/Kenya tour, but I couldn’t go without saying that God is amazing. He’s amazing in all kinds of ways, but when we started this whole thing, we needed to raise $10,000. I prayed right at the beginning, “God, would you mind please providing that before April 30th?” We always laugh about how I like to plan ahead, and how God likes to teach me to trust Him by not letting me.

Last week we still needed $2000. I just thought we would have to cover it somehow.

Well, money just started coming in all week, and yesterday (and yes, that’s April 29th, a whole day before April 30th for those following), we got three more checks bringing our total to $10,078.

Seriously?! God, you are great, and you have a pretty funny sense of humor too. 🙂

Our clothes for the Little Lambs in Kijabe, Kenya

I can’t believe that I didn’t get a picture of her WITH her beautiful handiwork, but my friend Britt apparently has a strange fascination with packing. She offered to come over and finish packing up the clothes from the drive, which frankly, have been seriously overwhelming to me. Behold her handiwork. And yet, now, I look at it and think about how we have to move about 450 pounds of clothing with us through the UK…

Yes, I know. I had enough to do. What was I thinking to book a women’s retreat three days before we leave in Florida? I’ll tell you what I was thinking: I’ve met these women and they’re great!

Yes, it’s nuts, but I’m flying to Tampa. This morning I sent out press releases, tried unsuccessfully to finish booking a safari, emailed the people in Mombasa again, confirmed the van in London and canceled the other car, tried to connect with my manager and radio promoter to start the new single, and talked with Chris about booking while I’m gone. Answered a bunch of email, got Salvation Army to do a pickup at my house, and tried to finish packing clothes for orphans. Packed up this show, and I’m sitting typing this on the plane.

I’m really looking forward to this because it’s what I love to do. And because I’m not going to think about everything that needs to happen before Friday until I get home. You want to see freaking out blog posts? Wait for the next couple entries, ha!

Well, I’ve been packing all those clothes for the orphans from the clothing drive, and it’s official. There’s not way in the world we’re going to get all that into a sedan with our kids to haul it all over the UK until we get to Nairobi. And yet, it would cost us about $800 to leave it at the airport for a week. Yikes.

So I spent about 2 hours this afternoon trying to locate a mini-van. There aren’t many, apparently because the roads are so small there, no one drives them. Oh, joy, we’ll have the biggest car when we can’t remember to stay to the left! At least it’s automatic, so we don’t have to remember how to shift on the other side while driving on the other side. See, there’s always a silver lining. 🙂

Me and Andrea (down front) with my mom and several of the women from St. Susanna

Had a great time with Andrea Stephens today. She has a ministry to teen girls and to women based on her B.A.B.E books (Beautiful, Accepted, Blessed, and Eternally Significant) and talks about true beauty in the Lord. We met down in Florida last winter and did the show at the teen detention center together. She asked me to drive down and do music on this event in Cincinnati at St. Susanna’s.

How fun to get to know her better, and to be with all the sweet people at St. Susanna’s. We loved getting to know you! Hopefully we’ll be back soon. 🙂

Well, now we’re panicking. We leave for the UK and Kenya tour in one week. I’d said to my husband, “Let’s not forget to (fill in the blank)” so many times that I sat down to write a list really quickly, and, um, had two pages of a yellow legal pad filled in less than 10 minutes. Yikes. That did not make me feel better, just make me freak out a bit. Okay, as Dory says, just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

Back home again from Nashville. As I was driving through Cincinnati for the fourth time in five days, I couldn’t help thinking that I have to drive back here again for a show on Saturday. Arg.

Ken Lewis with his goat toenails, Paul in the background

Today we had a bunch of meetings and GMA-ish stuff, but in the middle of all that Chris and I went with Paul to the final tracking session for the single. Ken Lewis is putting world percussion sounds on the song, and he couldn’t do the regular session because he was recording in Korea (oh sure, that old excuse).

He was pretty amazing, and I love that stuff, so we were watching him add a lot of percussion “bling”. He takes out this long rope that has all these little one inch square, brown, papery little things sewn to it and wads it up in his hands with a Tibetan bell rope. I spent the whole track trying to figure out what that was, so when he was done, I had to ask.

“Oh, that’s goat toenails.” Um, what? “Yeah, it’s goat toenails. I pick up weird things all over the world when I’m traveling. But they make a cool sounding shaker, don’t they?”

Actually, Ken, yes they do. They sounded really cool. And yet, I wonder, does knowing that there are goat toenails (and yes, people, I assume he means the hooves!) on your track take away any of the worshipful feeling? Hmmm….