I guess the best way to start is to explain that the creation of this blog was inspired by a suggestion made to me by my boss at World Vision, Adam Bricker. We were together in Nairobi and Adam suggested to me that he thought that there would be a lot of people who would want to see and share what I was up to as I travelled around the world and that he thought that having a blog would be a good place to do that.
I have to tell you that conversation happened in January of 2007 and here we are in December so you can see that I had a lot of time thinking about it. No seriously, I did think about it and then as is often the case life got busy. The past year has been an amazing one for both me and my family as I have settled into my job at World Vision, travelled to many countries this past year, met some amazing people and even hosted some of my colleagues here in Canada a few times. On the family front Chelsea celebrated her first birthday, we bought and moved into a new house, Shane started Grade 1, Cheryll went back to work after maternity leave (returning to work at the elementary campus from the high school yea!!!) and Nathan just keeps getting more musical every day (including joining the school marching band). All of these things and more have contributed to an amazing 2007 and I am really looking forward to 2008 and what it holds both personally and for the ministry work that both Cheryll and I do.
In starting this now I am fulfilling a commitment I made to myself (and shared with my IT Council Colleagues) in late October that I was going to do this for not only others but really for myself as a personal way of capturing and sharing my thoughts and experiences. I am pleased that you have taken time out of your busy day to share a little bit of mine and I will try to stay on top of things and keep updating regularly.
As I said before I am looking forward to 2008 and what it will bring but for now I will try to share a little bit of 2007 in the next few weeks with you all.
May God Bless you and yours at this special time of year and may you enjoy special family time away from the hustle and bustle of things so that you can focus on the true meaning of Christmas and delight in the gift that was our Saviour, Jesus Christ's birth.
Regards,
Mike
P.S. By the way, the picture above is from 10 days before I started with World Vision in October of 2006. Chelsea was almost 6 months old and this was her first (of many to come I'm sure) visit to Disneyland.
