Owen Daniel, Cori and Nate, getting behind

I do not remember what time Makaila and Chase got to the hospital, but I know that Mama was texting the two of them through lunch yesterday afternoon. They were both very gracious keeping Mama posted on every development of effacing, dilating, and contracting. Through the quiet periods between these events Mama remained anxious to know the next bit of information. That continued through the evening, and then through church. It was only at the end of the church service that things went very quiet. We assumed that the phones had been set aside as the baby made his introduction to his parents. Right after we got home those assumptions were confirmed. Owen Daniel was born. Our youngest son now had a baby son to hold. The baby is healthy. Mommy is healthy. Chase is adjusting – and excited to be doing so. Owen was 7 pounds 11 ounces, 21 inches long. The next phase of the birthing celebration has begun with the initial pictures being sent. I still maintain that conception is the greatest miracle of creation we get to witness on a regular basis as a child is born to us. We take so much of it for granted.

Mama and I will be headed to Amarillo tomorrow morning. In addition to meeting our newest grandson, I have a meeting set up with our tax accountant for Friday afternoon. Mama and I make the trip every year about this time however, this is a very special trip having added Owen to the mix. I am always curious to see how our taxes turn out. I am fairly confident that this is the last year we will be in a position to get a refund on taxes paid. Starting in 2018 and continuing for the foreseeable future, we will be paying taxes over what has been collected through the year – which is not a bad thing. It just means we will be earning money rather than breaking even each year.

Cori and Nate let Mama know yesterday that they have purchased tickets to Honduras for early April – around the Easter timeframe. They are going down to look for housing. Whether they will purchase or rent remains to be seen, but the goal is to secure a dwelling so that when they do relocate to Honduras on the 10^th of May, they will have a place to unpack and set up a home. Meanwhile, the kids will be staying with Grammy – and Papi (only by extension.) Grammy is excited. It will be our last hurrah with that set of grandchildren before they head to Central America.

The Lord had blessed Nate and Cori throughout deputation. Nate has been very wise with the love offerings given and with the support raised. They have been able to accomplish in about eighteen months what takes many missionary families three years or more. When Mama announced their pending move as a praise during the time we were taking prayer requests last night, out pastor was quite pleased to hear they would be moving to their field in May. His remark, “They did that quickly.” Yes, they did.

Mama and I are falling behind on the work that needs to be done at the farm. I made a list of projects and related costs so we could set some financial goals to get the projects completed, however, that list has not had anything checked off for some time. As Mama and I have given priority to our new business, evenings have been relegated to that pursuit versus getting things done at the farm. None of the things we lack interfere with our care for the animals or maintenance of the house but all of them still need to be done. For instance, I am not sure if Mama and I will plant a garden this year. We are not to late to do so, but we are rapidly approaching that deadline for this area. Mama has big flowerbed ideas, but I have not even looked at the scope of that project. I want to do a lot of cleanup on the property and have not found the time to get that done. Doors need to be installed. Fences need to be built. Shelters need to be erected and all kinds of little repairs need to be made around the property.

Hopefully, by October of this year we will have the free time we are looking for. We just have to make due until we get there.

Travel, training, home

I made it home from Michigan about 9 pm Friday evening. All the flights were good – very crowded but good none-the-less. The weather in Michigan was actually better than Mama had over the same timeframe. I got to sleep one night in my own bed, then we were off to California.

Mama had begun packing Friday so all I had to do was get the things together for the training portion of our trip. I hesitated to take my work laptop but since I already had it with me, it made the trip with us. I packed the MacBook also on the off chance we could work two computers as we were being trained. That turned out to be a good decision – even though the computer bag I carried for the trip weighed nineteen pounds.

When Mama and I got the airport in San Diego I had to download the Uber app. I have never used Uber or any other such app, so I was a bit timid about supplying the information requested to set up for a ride to the hotel. We had been assured that Uber would be the least expensive way to get around, so Mama and I were willing to give it a try. It turned out pretty well. I requested a “pool” ride from the airport. Mama was skeptical when we first got to the car and found two people already in the backseat of – what was to us – a smaller vehicle. I gave her the front seat and I squeezed into the back. The very young couple sharing the ride with us were from London and Edinburgh respectively. We had a delightful time talking all things England and Scotland with them during the fifteen minutes of the ride. We did not venture from the hotel that night, instead we ordered delivery – Italian. It was very good and such large portions that we ate on it for both nights we were there.

We met Frank at the hotel Sunday morning. Mama and I were all packed and ready for training by 8:30; sitting in the lobby of the hotel watching people come and go. Frank approached us from the hotel side of the lobby – we were not looking that direction. We were a bit surprised to find out that Frank was already at the hotel enjoying a cup of coffee as he waited to greet us. Even more surprising, we did not leave the hotel for our training. Frank had us set up the computers on the long bar that was set up in the reception/dining area of the lobby and we did our two days of training right there. It worked. We had very good internet access. We had access to clean restrooms. We had access to water, juice and coffee. It was unusual, but comfortable enough.

Frank is a very pleasant, unassuming gentleman about my age. He grew up in a farming community in central California. His path to the business he now teaches was a circuitous one; rehab of apartments, brokering high-rise apartments and other commercial real estate, and finally retiring to tax liens and tax deeds. He is an index finger keyboarder who was dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age. A perfect teacher for Mama. We connected right away. His patience was charming and as Mama struggled at various points he waited, coached a little and encouraged a lot. The system he taught us works well for Mama because it is direct, simple yet thorough, and it is very efficient. At this point I do not see any improvements we will need to make, but time will tell. He provided us with a wealth of templates, guides, webpages to use for reference and a clear path to the information we need to make this business work.

By the time we stopped for lunch the first day, both Mama and I were at the point of overflowing with information. Mama worked the pc while I worked in tandem on the Mac. It was really good for her to do all the steps of the process as we learned how to find the county websites, narrow our searches and capture the information needed to evaluate the deals we found once we are approaching the auction date. All the templates were provided to us; we just had to learn how to fill them out, title them properly and set up the files to make them easy to retrieve. Our plan is to find 75 potential deals coming up for auction in March, see which ones of those actually make it to auction (some will be redeemed by that time which will take them off of the auction list) and determine what our max bid will be on the ones that do make it to auction, study the bidding process for each county and be ready to participate in the auction.

It’s a high bar.

Traveling, weather, quiet

I left the farm very early Wednesday morning to catch a flight to Lansing, MI. As it turned out, the weather here was more mild than the weather Mama endured while I was 900 mile north of her. On Wednesday morning, I had to scrape the ice from the truck windshield, but I did not really pay much attention to it. I fully expected that it would warm up and all the ice would melt into the greasy mess we are left with every time we get this kind of rain and accompanying freezing. It did not turn out that way. As the day progressed, the weather worsened, and offices closed, schools sent kids home early and the roads quickly became hazardous to impassible. Add to the freezing rain the flooding the area is experiencing, and Mama had a mess to deal with. The schools remained closed on Thursday, but our office opened at 10 am – for those who could get there. One employee had lost power and as of this morning was checking into a motel because there was still no power at their home. Meanwhile, in central Michigan, the weather was 40° F with plenty of sunshine.

Later today I will fly back home. I will get to spend one night in my own bed before Mama and I fly out to San Diego Saturday afternoon. We will start our two-day one-on-one training with an experienced investor Sunday morning and continue through Monday evening. Mama and I are both looking forward to the intense training. We need help interpreting the data and narrowing down the choices we need to be able to repeat over and over to make this business work. We are taking the red-eye back to DFW Monday evening, so I can return to work Tuesday morning in order to participate in another class.  By Wednesday, things will settle down somewhat and Mama and I can concentrate on applying all that we learned with our mentor. We have not set up our recurring weekly mentoring sessions because of the schedule I have had to keep the past few weeks. We should be able to get that done next week.

Nate, Cori and the kids left Thursday morning as soon as the roads were clear enough to let them travel safely. I do not remember what direction they are headed but I do know they will be back through at the end of March. It is then that we will have to say goodbye, From the farm they will head north for a few more meetings before saying goodbye to Nate’s family. Their plan is to head to Honduras the second week of May. They have raised 75% of their required support for fulltime service on the field. The goodbyes will be difficult, but not overwhelming. Honduras is easy to get to from DFW and Mama and I plan on visiting the work at some point – especially since we are praying about becoming part of the work at some point in the future. Only God knows the timing on that.

With the grandkids leaving Thursday morning, Mama had a very quiet day at the farm. It will take both of us some time to get used to the idea of quite mornings and normal days.

Cook out, little successes, the chase

We got word Saturday morning that our Chinese New Year Dinner had to be cancelled. Alex simply texted that his fryer had quit, and we would not be having the dinner. What we assumed was that the actual piece of equipment at the restaurant had failed and would need to be replaced – a very expensive endeavor. What actually happened was that the person working with him in the kitchen had quit and he was working the kitchen alone. That made more sense. We had scheduled to bring him some older hens over the weekend, but that did not happen because of how drastically his workload picked up. We grilled out instead. It was perfect weather for it. Between bus calling in the morning and working a couple hours on our business – with men’s prayer time thrown in – we had a pretty full Saturday.

Sunday started our revival. Bro. Dan Martin is the evangelist preaching the services. This year has turned out a bit differently for all of us. There is a lot of flu in the area and our church is no exception demographically. Even Bro. Dan came to us with some type of bronchial issue. He is doing his best to get through the preaching but it is clear that he is struggling to keep his voice strong enough. Even still, his messages have been poignant and powerful; though less vocally dramatic. Last night, his voice seemed a little better, but he struggled with a cough through the message. He simply asked a series of challenging questions, then shifted gears and listed a series of questions Jesus asked of those around him. It certainly got his point across.

Yesterday Mama and I kept the kids so Nate and Cori could take their travel vehicle and get the alignment and brakes checked. They knew it would take some time, so they planned a date-time around the repairs. Since Mama needed to go to Walmart, she took all the girls shopping and I stayed at the farm and worked while the boys played nearby. I was able to install the walkthrough door on the shop and weld up a gate on the fence we are installing for a new goat enclosure. The boys entertained themselves with a mix of Nintendo, trash collection using some plastic rods as spears to stab everything they found and eventually sitting nearby and talking. By the time the girls got home, they were ready for lunch. Me too.

Shortly after lunch, while I was working on setting posts for the fence I had installed the gate on, Mama came hurriedly out of the house yelling for me. Lin had called. He and Alex wanted us to deliver a goat and two chickens to them between 6 and 7 pm that evening. Mama was a bit overwhelmed by the suddenness of the request. I had to drop what I was doing and get things set up for the delivery. I saw it as an answer to prayer because we needed to sell out Billy goat and they were interested – at a very fair price. I backed the truck up to the back gate of the yard and loaded the dog cage into the bed. The cage for the chickens was already in the bed of the truck.

When the time came, Nate helped me drag, lead, chase, herd our stubborn little Billy across the yard to the truck and load him into the cage. He bucked, he flopped, he tried to run. I used a choker collar and leash hoping to lead him through the yard but eventually had to get my hand at the chain near his throat so he would not strangle himself and drag him every step of the way. It honestly did not take very long. It just felt like it. Now we had to catch the chickens.

We had all the help we could handle for that portion. All our grandkids wanted to participate. Blake wanted gloves and all Mama could find were some plastic, food service gloves. Mama scattered some bread pieces and the chickens gathered around her. That was the last time that evening they would do so. As soon as I caught the first hen, the rest scattered – and the chase was on. The kids dove, pounced, tried to corner and chased chickens all across the coop area. They even stuck out their legs toward an escaping bird as though they were a ball rolling across the ground. Over and over, the birds won the contest until finally, we caught three total.

The rest are now so traumatized that we will probable not get any eggs the rest of the week.

Feeling blah, our business, morning surprises

When I got home yesterday evening, I changed and headed over to our neighbors to get a bale of hay for the cows. Mama had told me the day before that Daisy was sifting through the stubble on the ground where the last bale had been placed, so it was pretty clear that the four of them had gotten all there was to get out of the last bale I had retrieved. A new one was in order. I took Bella with me so she could get some exercise. Mama has her a bit chunky. It was actually warm, a bit windy and 74°F. By the time I had gotten the bale of hay to the barn lot, taken the wrapping off and set the ring around the bale, Mama was home. She had made a couple stops in town before coming home. Once we finished feeding, I made myself a little bit to eat and we headed to my office. I had not felt energized at any point through the day yesterday. It was not that I felt bad. I just did not seem to have the energy to feel good. I would have loved to just sit at home last night, but Mama and I promised each other that we would be faithful to a schedule concerning this business – so I dragged myself out of the house so we could work. I was a good thing we did.

Mama and I almost missed a call from the person who was going to walk us through the process of setting up our company. We had both forgotten about the call so when the number showed up as we were on our way to my office to do some research, Mama did not cut off Maggie – who she was talking to at the time – to take the call. It was only after we got to work, and she listened to the voicemail that followed the two missed calls that we understood our mistake. That realized, we called customer service and were able to connect with the lady we had agreed to meet with to discuss setting up our business.

What we found out is that there is a lot more to the process than we realized. But I suppose if we are going to setup a legitimate business entity, the process should be a bit stringent. After all, we are building what we hope is a long-term business for this enterprise, so we should do our best to make sure the accounting foundation is as solid as possible. Looking over the notes I captured as Sharon guided us through the process, it may be a couple weeks before we have everything in place to operate as 4R9 LLC. Along with the initial LLC we are creating a retirement plan to act as both a 401k and a company profit sharing plan. It is a well thought out plan that will work in our favor for many years to come. It is also something I have always wanted to do; to set up a proper business…and to prosper in that business. We did a few things after the call -  mostly discuss our path forward and our preferred timeframe for getting all of this done - before we packed up and headed home. Mama and I got home at about 8:15 and I was in bed shortly thereafter.

We had an interesting morning. After realizing I had stepped in Mocha’s poop, I let her out of our bedroom and headed toward the front door to let her out of the house. The front door was wide open. Fortunately, it was warmish through the night and Sasha was camped at the doorstep – so we did not get any animal intruders – but it was alarming to find that the door had not been shut. Our front door is not loose fitting, so it would have had to have been left partially open for the wind to open it further. No one knows how that happened. Hopefully, we can keep it from happening again.

Nate, Cori and the kids should be getting to the farm this afternoon. They will be with us for a few days before heading out on their last leg of deputation. It should be a fun few days.

Good and bad

I taught an eight-hour yesterday. Arriving at the training site at a little before 7 pm and leaving just a few minutes before 5 pm. The only time I sat down through the entire day was for a few w minutes during lunch. I was pretty worn out after I got done. It was a good class; great participation from the 25 participants which usually means that through every break I was talking with someone about something we had been discussing just prior in the class. No one lingered when the class was over, and I had used the time the test was being taken to pack up the computer and projector, so I was able to leave soon after the participants left. We had a special service at the church to get to, so I did not have much time to spare.

I got home about 5:10 and headed back out, dressed for church, at 5:30. Mama needed to be there early because she was getting Yilin and Cheyenne, so they could decorate Valentine’s brownies. When we got to the church, things were pretty well set up and the dinner and service did not start for almost an hour, so I went into the sanctuary and stretched out in out pew. I slept for forty-five minutes. It was a great help to make it through the evening. The All-church Valentine’s Dinner was a big hit. The church served, ham, fried chicken, corn, green beans, garlic bread and salad. There were at least thirty desserts. About eighty in total attended. Mama, Victoria and I sat at a table with Yilin, Cheyenne, Gracie, and Joseph. Great food, a great little sermonette and great fellowship. We needed that. By the time we got home, I was ready for bed.

I have been having trouble sleeping lately. This muscle injury in my chest makes it difficult to find and maintain a comfortable position for sleeping. I have had several nights of several hours in bed, a couple hours in my recliner and an hour not sleeping at all. It is starting to take a toll on me. But I have a holiday coming up on Monday. Maybe I can work a bit and rest a lot because Tuesday begins a week of non-stop travel, teaching and training. Most of that I am looking forward to. I can definitely say that I am looking more forward to Mama’s and my time in San Diego than my time in Michigan.  Fortunately, the temperatures there are not too cold. It will feel like the past few weeks we had here in North Texas. Also, there is not a high chance of rain, snow or ice for the days I will be on the upper peninsula of Michigan State. I was able to choose an airport near the training destination, so my commute to and from the site to the airport will be about an hour each way. Not too bad.

Mama and I are still anticipating our trip to San Diego. To date we have not received our flight information so I will have to track that down today. But, we are excited about the training. Hopefully, it will meet and exceed our expectations.

Research, training, airtime

Mama and I had a modicum of success with our research last night. I elected to do the research at work because it is more comfortable in many ways. We keep the room warmer than at the church; almost too warm.  I have two screens/monitors on my desktop for doing multiple parts of the research. I know how to work in Excel and Word more proficiently than in Numbers and Pages (Apple products). That was one of the challenges when we used my Mac Book at church. On my work computer, we were able to cover a lot of ground and see some good results from the searches we accomplished. With Numbers I was not able to figure out how to sort the spreadsheet to maximize our time by eliminating all the information we did not necessarily want to sift through. It was actually a fun evening. Like I stated earlier in this venture, Mama is very good at this. Last week I asked permission to come to the office after hours to do the research and that permission was happily granted. That makes using the set up I have at work even more comfortable.

Yesterday we were offered several dates for our One-on-one training. None of the original offerings appealed to me and Mama because they put us too far out in March – coordinating with my required travel, the kids visiting, Chase and Makaila’s baby being born, etc., etc., etc. I settled for one and replied to the request letting the admin scheduling the two-day sessions that we were anxious to get going. Our initial choice would have used four days of vacation – not what I had hoped for. We got a reply shortly after my response that let me know that the closest date, the one we had selected, was already taken. However, there had been a cancelation and an even closer date was open if we wanted it. The only caveat was that it was a Sunday and Monday. Mama and I thought on it, prayed on it and decided to take it. That said, we will fly to San Diego on Saturday, February 24^th and do our training the next two days. I have not received word when we are booked to come back to DFW but I requested the “red-eye” Monday evening, if available.

We also got a call from the company we are being trained by that we need to start our mentored training. That is a separate deal. We will get with a coach on a weekly basis for several weeks to be mentored on the investments we are discovering through our research. The only challenge there is that they want a guaranteed timeslot week upon week. Such a thing does not exist in our lives, so Mama and I are wrestling with how to pull that off. We have done so for FBI classes, but we were always able to rearrange those classes based on church activities and special conferences. We will need to have good internet access for each of those meetings, which also adds a level of difficulty to making the schedule work with Revival and Mission’s Conference coming over the next several weeks. Oh, well. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

So, our schedule is starting to get busy. Saturday, we have a Chinese New Year Dinner with our Chinese family. They already warned Mama that there may not be a lot of items that she would like. I am off Monday for President’s Day. That is a blessing. Tuesday is filled with several long meetings. Wednesday, I fly to Michigan to present a class. I will fly home Friday afternoon. Mama and I will fly out to San Diego some time Saturday and fly back some time Monday – hopefully. On top of all that we have Revival starting this Sunday, running through Wednesday. Of course, I will miss the Wednesday night service. I may have a twenty-four-hour break between flights - coming home from Michigan and flying out to San Diego.

Busy is good.