24 Good Hours

My Friday/Saturday was pretty full. It started when I drove to Butler University for a planning meeting for the Indiana Association for College Admission Counseling's annual conference next fall. After six years of being very involved in the Pacific Northwest association, it was a little strange to walk into a room and literally not know anyone by name. I didn't know what to expect. Fortunately, I was able to make a few contributions that were received pretty well, plus I left without having very much work to do for the committee. :-) I think I'll get to do my "personal mission" workshop at the fall conference (the one that I experimented with at the student leaders lunch on campus) so that is kind of cool.

When I got home, Jeannette, Jameson and I went to see National Treasure 2 at the dollar theater (er, the $1.75 theater on Fridays). Talk about a mindless movie! I honestly don't think that there was even one scene in the entire film that was plausible. In the end, I suppose that was good. If the movie on the whole had been believable and authentic, it would have been impossible to suspend disbelief when it came time for the crazy scene involving a city of gold hidden underneath Mount Rushmore. It made for a relaxing waste of 100 minutes.

We hurried home to catch NBC's Dateline at 9:00, which was a two-hour special on the story of Taylor students Whitney Cerak and Laura VanRyn. I wrote about the tragic accident and the subsequent mix-up that made national news two years ago here in the blog:
http://palmersworld.blogspot.com/2006/06/amazing-grace.html. Now the VanRyn and Cerak families have written a book about it all. Matt Lauer spent two hours retelling their story with news clips, photos and interviews with both families. It was amazing to hear them tell about their experiences, expressing authentic faith and compassion. They could not have represented the Lord any better than they did. What was even more amazing was how NBC respectfully handled the story and allowed the families to talk about their faith. I was very impressed with Matt Lauer. He not only allowed them to tell their stories the way they wanted to without any attempt to redirect or minimize their expressions of faith, he helped them tell the story he knew they wanted to share, by asking leading questions that brought out poignant anecdotes. Given the emotions that this story elicits and the publicity the family has received, including an appearance on Oprah next Wednesday, their book--Mistaken Identity--is sure to be a million-seller.

Saturday morning, I started off by ironing all my dress shirts. Okay, that's not a big deal but I did feel quite productive. After an 11:00 breakfast, Jeannette and I went on a shopping trip. We had three specific and, for us, big ticket targets: a table and chairs for our patio, a BBQ and a lawn mower. We haven't had any of these three items since moving from Oregon and I wasn't sure we could go through an entire summer borrowing Lance Clark's riding mower. Well, we had a very successful excursion. Without going into boring detail, we managed to figure out what we're looking for in a grill (we'll keep shopping awhile longer) and then we found a discontinued model Toro self-propelled mower for just $229, at least $60 less than any other mower we looked at seriously. It isn't as fancy as some of the others we saw but it has the over-sized rear wheels and front wheel drive, and it's a Toro. From there, we went to see a table and chairs that Jeannette found at Value City. They were very nice but right next to the set she liked, I spotted another set for $100 less and Jeannette ended up deciding she liked it even better! A table, six chairs and an umbrella for just $199. Not bad!

Second Anniversary

Two years ago today, we first met Nan Cai Jing in Guangzhou. (Ignore the date on the first photo below.) The next day, we went to the Civil Affairs office. At the end of two Civil Affairs interviews, we signed a questionnaire and the woman reviewing our file immediately said, “Congratulations, the child is officially yours!” It's hard to remember what life was like before MelodyJoy became a part of our family.

Tonight I picked up take-out Chinese food from Hopsing's for dinner. Not quite the same as what we had in Beijing at Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant, but it was a small way to celebrate the arrival of MelodyJoy Marie in our household. Before we ate, we went around the table and thanked God for bringing her into our lives.

Quote of the Week

“Hope makes an extraordinary difference. Academic performance of freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania were predicted more accurately by tests that measured their level of optimism than by their SAT scores or high school grades. Daniel Goleman writes, ‘From the perspective of emotional intelligence, having hope means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks.’ . . . . The conviction that our effort makes a difference and that we are not victims of circumstances is what keeps us persisting in the face of setbacks.”

- John Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, p. 159

Easter Sunday

Good morning, Easter Bunny!

In church this morning, the service began with a medley of songs accompanied by several dozen percussionists playing on five gallon buckets. If you look carefully below, you can see Jordan, wearing a plaid short sleeved shirt, with Phillip to his right and partially obscured by another musician. If I can, I'll post video of the music later.

When we got home from church, we took a few Easter pictures, primarily for the benefit of Auntie Laura . . .

After that, our friends Jeff and Karen Parish came by for a short visit, along with Jeff's brother Mike and Mike's wife, Karen. They had been in Ohio for the boys' mother's funeral and so they drove the 110 miles to Fort Wayne to see us. We had a chilly backyard Easter egg hunt for the four youngest kids . . .

Obviously, Jordan helped hide the eggs . . .

But Aislinn didn't mind retrieving them at all . . .

Then there was egg coloring . . .

. . . followed by the traditional Easter dinner of pizza, pizza, pizza and pizza and then we watched the DVD of our trip to China and video of our vacation in Florida with Jeff's family in 2002.

Passover Dinner

This evening, we went over to Dave and Jayne Walters' home for a version of a Passover dinner. There were five families there and Dave had prepared an outline to guide us through the various courses, from salad greens to unleavened bread to matzah soup and on to lamb and eggs and dessert. There were over twenty of us there.


Dave waxes theological . . .

Eric breaks bread . . .

Lance serves up some matzah ball soup . . . for most of us, it was the first time we had tasted this . . .


Surprisingly, there were a number of us who also had never had lamb. Dave explained that the lamb that was slaughtered and eaten by families in the early Passover dinners was actually raised in the home as a family pet, so when that lamb was killed, the family really did feel a sense of loss and sacrifice.

Afterwards, we all sat around and talked or watched the NCAA games.

Here are Phillip and Jordan with Becca Howard and Tianna Clark. Becca ran cross country with Jordan this fall and she's going with him to next month's Junior-Senior Banquet.

The evening ended with a large circle of girls (plus Jameson) doing Ring-around-the-Rosie for the benefit of Miss Melody . . .

Splashing Around

"It Won't Get Any Better"

Getting ready to go to this afternoon's viewing for Reece Wood, I was looking for something to give to her parents and found the following passage that, in an odd way perhaps, may be meaningful and helpful to them.

“I try to imagine the future. Will we ‘get over it’ and be cured of mourning? Will we forget and find comfort in forgetting? Will we remain in the unreal reality, dreaming through life, hoping we will wake up and it will all be untrue? Then I shop in a store in our small town and the owner, who I have in my grief forgotten has lost a son, shocks me by saying, ‘It won’t get any better, Don.’

“I step back as if he hit me. He watches me but refuses to apologize or attempt to gentle his brutal counsel, but strangely, as I leave, I find myself taking comfort from that statement. Lee’s death will be part of us forever. It will mark us forever. There will be healing as there is when a leg is amputated. We will become who we are: ‘the Murrays, who lost a daughter, you know.’ And as we live this life, we will always feel the leg that others cannot see, the invisible leg I have heard amputees talk about that feels cold, pain, itches, lives on in memory.

“It will not get any better, and I feel a strange comfort in that. I will have to live this changed life as well as I can. There will be no healing, but I will become familiar with this new life, always having at my side the daughter no one else can see. I might even find it a comfort to know she will always be near.”

- Donald M. Murray
In The Lively Shadow: Living with the Death of a Child

Tomorrow, I'll probably try to go to Reece's funeral in the morning and then drive to Larue, Ohio, for the funeral of Lois Parish, my good friend Jeff's mother. Two extremely different types of death there, I suppose, with one being a toddler and the other a woman with many years behind her. It will be interesting to experience both in such close proximity to each other. If I do attend both, I'll have gone to more funerals since November than I have in the last decade and a half.

Let me close with another good quote from Don Murray:

"We don't get over the death of those we love. Don't tell those who have suffered such a loss to get over it. Think how terrible it would be if we could forget."

Quote of the Week

This week’s quote comes with some background. First the quote:

“Our hearts are laden with sadness, but only for a time. We know where to find you, and we’ll meet you there.”

- Sydney Smith, 10-year-old daughter of pro basketball player and coach, Derek Smith, at her father’s funeral, August 15, 1996

Today, the head of TUFW's management program, Evan Wood, and his wife had to say good-bye to their little girl, Reece. Reece was about three years old and she went through open heart surgery on the 4th. Evan and Lisa surely knew that this needed operation was risky but many of us were naïve on that count. Modern medicine seems able to perform miracles. God performs miracles. No need for concern here, right? After the surgery we learned that some doctors give only a 20% chance of success for the type of procedure that Reece underwent. Well, there was no miracle. Evan and Lisa held Reece today and said good-bye, then let her go.

Please keep the Woods in your prayers, including Reece's siblings, Emi and Callan.

Quote of the Week

“Experience never exists in isolation; it is always a factor that coexists with temperament, training, background, spiritual outlook and a host of other factors. Character is your magic word, it seems to me—not just what they’ve done but how they’ve done it, and what they’ve learned from doing it.”

- Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian

Quoted in Time, March 10, 2008
“Does Experience Matter in a President?” p. 29

On a Mission

Last year, as president of PNACAC, I led the board through a rewriting of our association mission statement. In that process, we discussed the fact that a mission statement can be something you measure every activity and opportunity against. It is a prioritization tool. In working through that process, I began to think that it would be nice to have a personal mission statement but I didn't have time to really work on something like that, plus it's just a little too touchy-feely for me.

A few months ago, I was asked to speak to a group of student leaders at Taylor University Fort Wayne and I agreed to do so. Now the date of that speaking engagement is creeping up on me and I need to figure out what I'm going to say to these students. This past week, I thought some more about the idea of a personal mission statement but I realized I couldn't very well challenge them to do something I haven't done myself so yesterday I talked with Jeannette a bit about it and came up with the following:

My Mission Statement

I am a Christ-follower who seeks to glorify God
by caring for my family,
by elevating Christian higher education,
by serving others through connecting them to resources
that help them achieve their goals,
and by acting with compassion and integrity.

Palmer H. Muntz

I'm sure I'm not living up to that mission statement fully but I hope it'll provide some direction as I face decisions about where to invest my energy and resources.

Quote of the Week

"Excellence that feels it has to be proclaimed, by the mere fact of its proclamation admits the doubt of its existence."

- Cleo Mae Dungy

Three Random Photos from Grandpa Phil and Grandma Deb's Visit

The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum

Yesterday afternoon, Jordan, Phillip and I took Dad and Deb to Auburn, a town about 20 miles north of where we live. Auburn hosts a very famous collectible car auction and has several car museums. Our destination was the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum. The focus of the collection is on cars from the 1920s and '30s, but it ranges from some of the very earliest cars to several very modern models, including the Chrysler Prowler, a very cool vehicle from less than ten years ago.

I hadn't realized that Indiana was such a center for auto manufacturing and I think all of us arrived at the museum with several misconceptions, including the assumption that Duesenbergs were made in Germany. The size of many of these old luxury cars was astonishing, as much as 25 feet long by the time you put the trunk--yes, a literal trunk--on the back bumper.

This one caught my eye partly because of the Oregon license plate . . .
and partly because of the etched glass side windows . . .

We all got a kick out of this 1910 Auburn Model S Roadster because of the "mother-in-law seat" at the back . . .

The price of this Model S Roadster was about $1600 new and it was considered to be quite sporty. We laughed a lot at that mother-in-law seat, though, and the fact that the way the car was arranged there was absolutely no way for the person in that back seat to communicate with the driver. We also laughed at the fact that in addition to having no shelter from the weather and no doors, there were no restraints in the back so we could easily imagine that passenger flying right off on a sudden turn . . .

There were also a few well-preserved, unrestored cars in the collection, such as this one that is very similar to the one above.

My favorite car was either the first one that we saw upon arriving, a recreation of a 1931 Cord that was owned by Jean Harlowe's husband . . .


Or this one, which I had just recently read about in a magazine. It is a 2007 Bugatti Veyron 16.4, an amazing vehicle for many reasons, starting with its retail price of $1.4 million. It has a top speed of 254 mph and the informational sign noted that at top speed, it will run out of gas in 12 minutes, which is fortunate since at top speed it will also wear out its tires in 15 minutes! It goes from zero to 100 mph in 5.5 seconds . . .
Grandpa Phillip's favorite car was this 1957 Chevy Bel Air, which is very similar to the first car he ever owned . . .


Looks like the Fonz, with Richie and Potsie . . .

I'm not at all a big car guy but I thoroughly enjoyed our two hours walking around the collection. The cars are beautiful--real works of art--and there's a lot of historical information to glean.

Extreme Makeover: Kitchen Edition

Jeannette's dad and his wife drove down from Wisconsin this week to help Jeannette with her Valentine's Day gift from me: New flooring for the kitchen and dining area. When I was house hunting, Jeannette was very specific that she wanted a tile floor for the kitchen area and so I made that a priority. Once we got moved in, she decided she didn't particularily like this specific tile floor because it was hard to clean. But I'm not bitter or anything. Here's the before picture, from Thursday evening:
And Friday morning, Phil got to work. He laid a pad down right on top of the tile and put the wood over that . . .

With Jordan by his side. Jordan had been sick most of this week and stayed home with a fever on Thursday and Friday, but it wasn't enough to keep him away from the tools and sawdust . . .


. . . and the After photo from this morning . . .
It turned out very nicely, plus it's not nearly as cold on our feet as the tile surface was.