Happy Birthday, Mark!

Today Mark celebrates his 26th birthday. Back in 1981 I was pastoring Redeemer Covenant Church in Downey, California (a Los Angeles suburb). Mark was born in nearby Whittier. Two years later we moved to Garland, Texas (a Dallas suburb) where I became the pastor of Northeast Bible Church. Soon thereafter we enrolled Mark in kindergarten at the Second Baptist Church in Garland. That’s where this picture was taken.

A few years later we moved to Oak Park, IL (a Chicago suburb) where I pastored Calvary Memorial Church for sixteen years. That’s where Mark grew up, went to school, and that’s where he played high school football. Later he graduated from Moody Bible Institute.

Two-and-a-half years ago he went to China as an English teacher. During his first year there, one of his teammates was a girl from California named Vanessa. When he came home for Josh’s wedding in the summer of 2006, he said here was “this girl” who was also going back to China for a second year, although they would be in different locations about 800 miles apart. What we didn’t know was that at Josh’s wedding, he told his brothers he thought this marriage thing was a good idea. Last January he proposed to Vanessa on the Great Wall of China. They were married in Atwater, California in July. A month later they moved to Tupelo to live in the cabin where we lived until June when we moved to our own home in town.

Yesterday Mary Mattucci flew in from Chicago to visit for the weekend. Nick also came over from Birmingham. Tonight we are all going to the Yocona River Inn near Oxford for Mark’s birthday celebration. As the second arrow in our quiver from heaven, he has been a source of joy and unpredictable excitement since the day he arrived.