The Barnabas Blog

I need to digress somewhat with this post because I have come to understand that many more folks than our local church in Dothan are keeping up with this mission trip. Therefore I will take the next few lines to address an issue that has come up since you have been reading this blog. I would not have you ignorant brethren concerning. . . . . whiskey. You may have noticed in some of the previous posts that I have (jokingly. . . at least I hope that is the way you are taking it) a few references to “whiskey” and the “whiskey wagon.” This attempt at dark humor is something that I picked up from the hospital. Several years ago, I worked with a physician who walked into a procedure one day prior to us beginning and spoke to the patient about getting started with his case very shortly. The patient then asked the doctor what kind of medicine that I was going to use to put him to sleep. The physician replied, “Well, Philip is going to give you a little whiskey in your IV.”

I begin by answering a few questions that have come up on the blog comments. You have no idea how much the blog comments are helping me to stay up and write all about what is going on here. So I need it for two more days. . . . please! By the way, we are much weary in body at this point and it will be a marathon all day on Sunday. In fact, this whole trip has been a marathon. But as one of the old black ladies was quoted during the civil rights movements, “My feets is tired but my soul is at rest!” That is the way that I feel! We are supposed to have much of Sunday afternoon free but some of our gang will be trying to wash clothes and do some preliminary packing. We shall see how all of it turns out. Sister P atterson -- Amazingly they took your advice without me having to tell them to go to bed. All went to bed last night and the night before very quickly after we got in. Stephanie Harrelson -- I told some that you said “hi” but not all. . . I

This is a brief bit of technical information: I thought I would tell you that I am somewhat limited with all of the video clips. They have to be less than 100 megabytes to fit on Godtube so that is the reason that they are usually less than a minute. Also the internet connection speed here is a little slower and it takes a loooooonnnnnnnggggggg time to get them uploaded. I am going to work a little harder to figure out exactly how many minutes of video that I can upload for you. I am telling you or warning you that you will want to have a room by yourself for all of the videos from today. They are incredibly powerful!!!!!!! The reason the video image is shaking in some of them was because it is extremely difficult to video and cry at the same time. Everyone is moving very slowly today. There has been very little rest for the weary. I would guess that those who have been on prayer walks the previous two days have probably walked at least 10 miles or more.

We are somewhat getting into the routine of things here in Romania . We are having occasional bouts with jet lag or with jet slag, whichever may be appropriate. We are both lagging and slagging in a real way. We were up this morning at 7:10 AM thanks to our alarm clock, Jay Lewis. Brother Jay toasted his digital clock the very first day here when he tried to plug a 110 clock into a 220 outlet. It didn’t work and his toasted alarm clock stands as a very mute witness to all of this. However, not to be outdone, he told us that his “internal” clock goes off at 5:15 AM or 5:30 AM or some other ridiculously early hour and when he gets up, he is quite bright-eyed and bushy tailed. The fact of the matter is that Brother Jay and Brother Patterson sat down with me this morning at breakfast. I didn’t feel much like talking, they did! They discussed the kinds of bread, the types of omelets that folks eat, the grout on the tile, the veneer on the tile, and the types of roofing o