On the Way to North Carolina

8:03 AM At the moment we are sitting at the Delta terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York waiting for our flight to Raleigh, NC. This is the final stop on our trip that began two weeks ago when we left Tupelo for the MEF Conference in Colorado Springs (that seems like a long time ago) and then on to Schroon Lake in upstate New York for a very busy week at Word of Life. I think this was the busiest week ever at Word of Life. We had 26 different meetings—including speaking 14 times. We had 12 other events—lunches and suppers with various friends plus meeting people, signing books, answering questions and making new friends. Last night thousands of people gathered on the beach at Schroon Lake for the 4th of July spectacular, climaxed by a massive fireworks display. We were so pooped that we didn’t go to the beach, but we heard the fireworks exploding in the sky. This morning we woke up—I should say that Marlene woke up because if she hadn’t gotten up, I would still be in bed—at 3:10 AM to drive to Pottersville on a completely dark highway where our headlights found Stu Page waiting by the road at 4 AM to drive us to the Albany airport. Stu was and is and seems always to be extraordinarily cheerful. He even had a cup of coffee ready for Marlene. We talked about books and the Internet and how he uses Google Reader to follow the 300 blogs he subscribes to. I thought I was a blogaholic, but I’m an amateur compared to Stu.

The Albany airport seemed very busy when we arrived a few minutes before 5:30 AM. They were being very careful at security—not uncommon these days—and my computer bag had to be hand-checked and passed through the scanner twice because I stuffed all the leftover KBM refrigerator magnets in the bag along with the battery charger for my camera. The combination of the laminate on the magnets plus the charger set off something in the machine. We soon got it all worked out and passed through with no further problems.

We’re on our way to North Carolina because I’m preaching tomorrow morning and evening at Colonial Baptist Church in Cary. I’ve never met the pastor, Stephen Davey, but we both went to Tennessee Temple and Dallas Theological Seminary. He has had an amazing ministry since becoming the founding pastor in 1986. By God’s grace it has grown to become a large and influential congregation. Each year they invite a number of speakers for the summer Sundays. This year’s speakers include Erwin Lutzer, Richard Allen Farmer, Jim Jeffery, Bill Brown and Mark Bailey. The late Wendall Kempton was originally scheduled to speak this Sunday. I think this is the first time I’ve ever spoken in North Carolina, which I regard as one of the most beautiful of the 50 states. It’s hard to say which state is my favorite these days, but for sheer beauty, good climate, and variety of landscapes, it would be hard to beat North Carolina.