A first entry for me (Scotty): This past Wednesday, we were invited to join several families from our church to pick strawberries at a farm a little ways north of Charlotte. Team Miser got to work locating only berries of perfect ripeness. To the left, you can observe me beginning to enjoy the fruit (ahem..) of our labors. Do you see the little kids at the bottom right of the photo? There were a bunch more, both younger and older, and I have to say, the most ridiculously well-behaved kids I have met en masse. Lisa and I have already put in our order for several of that caliber (a couple years from now, of course).

That night was the first of a new small group season, so we kicked it off with a cookout and discussion of the book we'll be studying. It's called Above All Earthly Powers by David Wells and is about the supremacy of Christ in a postmodern world. I'm eager to get into it and will hopefully tell you more about it as we discuss it in small group. It was great to welcome several new members to our group, which has grown very close over the past 8 months. Lisa and I then shared with the group an animated movie we have taken to (introduced to us by our friends Jeff and Cris Ramsdale in Seattle) called Spirited Away. It is an artistically impressive, wildly imaginative story of a young Japanese girl who goes on a journey of character development in a bizarre setting. You might want to check it out...

Thursday, Lisa and I drove to Asheville, NC and I dropped her off at a Women of the Harvest retreat at The Cove, the Billy Graham Association's retreat and training center. That mountainous area of NC is really beautiful and that facility is amazing, too, in the style of a huge mountain lodge. I'm sure she'll fill an entry describing her experience of being encouraged and pampered along with other missionary women currently on home assignment. On the way there, we stopped in Montreat and got to see Jake and Sarah Wetzel, missionary friends from Bolivia.

This is the first time since we were married that Lisa and I have been apart for more than several hours! Thankfully, this return to bachelorhood will be over soon--I miss her like crazy.