When I Was Just a Wee Zombie...

This is me (yes, i had hair at one time) and my friend Paul Bengds at 15 and 16 years old, respectively.  We met in 1988 on our first short-term summer mission trip through Teen Missions, International.  During that time, we spent the better part of 80 days together winding through the canals and locks of England on canal boats and the hills of Scotland by bike as part of a 20 person team that included other teens from around the country and Canada.  Our mission?  Open air "street" evangelism in major port cities ranging from Birmingham (England's second largest city) to Glasgow. 

Paul and i actually returned to TMI the next year and spent three gruelling months in Papua New Guinea on a hospital construction team, and then i returned a year later on another team to Budapest, Hungary.  These trips set the tone for the passion for Mission that has continued to burn in me through the rest of my adult life, and as I look back at my developing years of adolescense and young adulthood, stand out like mountain peaks among the myriad other formative experiences.

One other note:  although Paul and i became such good friends that we continued to visit and write each other for nearly a decade after our initial foray into Missions together, somewhere over the last ten years, we eventually lost touch.  I figured we'd probably never reconnect until he found me on Facebook a couple of months ago, and we have been re-igniting old memories and contemporary stories about where God has taken us over the years.  I tell you... Facebook is a wonderful thing!