Everything done with 135mm (except #5&6, those were with a 35mm), lowish ISO, usually wide open.

And to my aunt Kathy’s dismay–no make that “mortification” per my cousin’s account–he did a good job.  To set the record straight, no, I wasn’t hunched into my phone feeding fb with a steady stream of to pee or not to pee, then didn’t-pee remorse.

No, that was all Brent.

But we laughed very hard when I we read it in the car after it all.

Our Big thanks to Brent!

So now we’re back in New Orleans, sitting in the airport, awaiting our flight to Puerto Rico (that’s the honeymoon).  It’s been good, but Fast.  And a little by design, we haven’t seen anyone since we left, minus my brother who drove us to the airport–and showered us with ridiculous funny to the point of not-funny, then back to funny again stories of his flight home with Delta and their misplacing a pilot, discovering one of those little cabin windows fell out, and running out of peanuts.

There’s a long sigh for a long sentence.

Now before we go eat way expensive airport food, here are a few pictures from my phone.  All our other pictures are currently stranded in our cameras and our photographers cameras.

For five dollars a transaction she’s buying internet time for “a little while” from “this guy,” but sending video over such a limited bandwidth is shaky at best. Each time she calls, it looks like’s she’s been locked up in a cold, dark room, and she’s somehow sneaking a glimpse to the outside world. I think it’s just a combination of bandwidth and the camera on her computer.

She gave us a quick walkthrough of her room. Quick because it’s so small that any slower would actually be not-moving. When she got to the bathroom, she noted that it was missing one critical item.

As she began to pan her laptop camera, I saw the shower, check…the sink, check…the toilet…uh, where’s the toilet?

Oh, the toilet, yes, that’s next door.

Okay, that’s weird.

But its sink is here.

What?

Yes, there’s a communal toilet, but there’s no communal sink to wash your communal hands when your done, uh…communalizing. You have to go back to your room for that sort of fluffiness.

I laughed and cringed at the same time. Anyway, that’s a quick excerpt from Denise in Haiti.

Now to make a grinding change of gears. I want to give you some of what you can expect on my blog soon:

I recently bought Jon Acuff’s new book. With that he offered to give blog critiques.

On my drive home the other day my phone rings from a Nashville number. I answer, and it was, “hi joe, this is jon acuff, got a few minutes?”

uhhh, yeah i do!

We talked about my blog for a little while, and he gave me some good ideas and strategies curtailed to what I want out of my blog.

In the past, I’d committed to posting five days a week. And that lasted for a good six months. But as my interests change, my schedule evolves, and my time is reshuffled, so that everyday-thing just doesn’t happen any more.

Lately I’ve been posting whenever and whatever. But in the last few months I’ve been tossing around a few different strategies, and with Jon’s help, I think I’ve settled on one:

I’ll be posting once a week, and it will be somewhat theme-oriented with a little more structure than in the past. My goal is to make my posts good enough for readers to always want more.

Sound good, right? Yeah, well, that wasn’t the revelation. What I’ve been thinking about is how to do that.  In short: weeding out the crap.

In other words, when someone comes to my blog, they should be able to take something away. Otherwise, why would they come to my blog…

And I still plan to include guest bloggers (in addition to my one post a week). This has always been an important part of my blog. And I am indeed very thankful for Michelle and Beau taking the time to write posts for me.

So, thanks again for sticking around.  More coming soon!

Side note: if you’re thinking about sending any toys to kids in Rwanda, the government put a ban on plastic bags. Messing up the country or something. But in the picture below, you can see a few in the right side of the photo.

We remembered all that after we finished packing the box.

Had to extract them.

It’s all good.

I love short trips. Getting out of the city and getting away from all my stuff is such a rejuvenating formula for me.

Second Thing:

My boss, Jack, and Mike are in Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that rubs up against the western border of Rwanda.

You might recognize the region, if not the name, as being one of the places in Africa that gives it its darker, dangerous reputation. The eastern parts of the DRC seem to be in constant governmental flux, resulting in a highly unstable way of life. As a matter of fact, Mike sent me an article the day he left about more government/rebel/civilian violence that is such a staple of this country.

This, tragically, is the reason why so many people there are starving. In many places just like this, over fifty percent of the populous rely on food aid from the US and other industrialized nations. This is, in part, what we do.

On an interesting note, there is a constant debate at the highest levels about how to help these people become self-sufficient. It’s been proven it’s not the incapacity of the people. It’s also been proven it’s not poor land or the lack of other recourses.

It’s the fighting. It leaves such a pitiful framework for industrialization and stabilization that the affected regions are left with people who’s farms are destroyed, roads are destroyed, and bridges are destroyed. How can one self-sustain like this?

In thinking about all this, what’s the solution?  I hesitate to write the singular, “God,” although I firmly believe He is. I look around at the constant godlessness in my own country, and I can see the outcome is clearly not the same. What then? I don’t know. But I do know two things: I don’t (and won’t) know everything. And God is allpowerfully in control. Based on this, I have peace and continue to move forward.

Pictures from Mike:

All pictures taken by Mike Ludwick.

It was quite encouraging.

There is something inherently smart about being able to introduce yourself as Smart. Because it’s your first name.

Smart.Jack and our host, Steve.My good friend Denise who travled with me. She actually posed for a picture, but I thought this was a little too quintessential to pass up.

Tomorrow: NYC part 1

This time I’m going with her. And for the last month she’s been on serious count-down every time she’s walked past my desk. We’ll be there for exactly 31 hours, but I’ve been secretly adding up her list of must-dos, and it’s clocking in somewhere around eight days.

It’ll be good.

There will be pictures.

Speaking of pictures. I took some of those.

This is along the lake a couple blocks from my house. I used to always drive this way until they started doing this…

[sad face]