Prescott AZ, Great people, busted lungs

I'm just about to speak to a group of AWANA "yungins" out here in Prescott, AT and am having a great time.  The Alliance Bible Church in Prescott is one of our stalwart ministry partners.  They want very much to engage with us in our ministry in Kosovo.  They want to pray, they want to love and support the missionaries, they want to give towards our support and they want to join us in ministry.

I had a great meal this afternoon with their "Missions Action Team,"
 which is their missions coordinating committee.  We had a great time discussing important issues like the pros-and-cons of Short-Term Teams, how their giving towards the Great Commission Fund affects us on the field and where we want to go in our future partnership.

I came back from lunch stuffed...it followed a 6AM prayer meeting and LARGE breakfast with the men of the church this morning.  One of my daily disciplines is to try to exercise, which I've singularly failed to do in recent days.  But today was the day.  I was going to take a long, aerobic walk or ride around my hosts home.

As I was anticipating all of this my host got home from work.  Ron is a great guy who loves the outdoors, loves bikes, horses and, in his words, "straddling anything he can get is legs around."  Let's go for a bike ride!!, says he.

Shortly thereafter I'm struggling to keep up with the young neighbor girl who's happily riding bareback through the Arizona high-desert.  Ron is sometimes in front of me, sometimes behind me having a great time.  This is a lot of fun, except that the sand keeps trying to swallow my mountain-bike tires and that my lungs are seriously laboring a 5,000 feet above sea-level.  Given that my home city of Raleigh, NC is a lofty 434 I'm hoping I can just die soon and get it over with.

Seriously though I had a blast being in the outdoors with Ron today.  On the other hand, I really, really miss my family today.  Tomorrow is my wife's birthday and I won't be there.  All things considered I'd rather be with them.  But if a guy has to be away from home, what more fun can he have than spitting his lungs up all over the desert.