More From the Road (Update 494)

So, I have a moment to be on a laptop and it is a few minutes before midnight, so I might as well go ahead and write the daily. I'm sitting in a beautiful, 2 star hotel in Saginaw, Michigan. There is a suspicious stain staring at me on top of the comforter. Baseball is on and the view is majestic with a panorama of a Denny's, a Taco Bell, an Outback, and what was once a Pontiac dealership, probably. Funny how this morning I was staring at Lake Michigan- which is basically an ocean, now I'm on the other side of the state, tired but feeling pretty good.

Here is a fun fact about the state of Michigan- There are all of the people that live in the main "Hand" section of Michigan. Then there are some people who live on the upper peninsula. They are called "youpers". The land is desolate up there and they basically are in Canada. There are also only about a baker's dozen or so of people up there anyway. But these "Youpers" call all of the ten million or so people that live in the south of Michigan "Trolls." Trolls? That is very Lord of the Rings of them, isn't it? Anyway. That's your fun fact of the day.

Last night- back in Grand Rapids-- or Allendale, to be precise- we ended up at this pub with a bunch of kids after a bible study. Phil and I plopped down next to these two freshmen. We began to talk and to tell stories and to tell jokes. It was so good for the soul. At one point, I turned to this freshman named Matt and said,

"Knock knock who's there?"

And he just stares at me.

And we all realize that I messed up in the execution of a knock, knock joke. I have not laughed that hard in a really, really long time. The saddest thing is that I have messed up a knock knock joke in the same way before, on my birthday of this year. Wow, I'm not very smart.

The beauty was that both of those kids wrote on my facebook today that they want to do Globalscope. They had never heard of it 28 hours ago-- and now they are saying that they want to be there next year sometime.

And then we went to visit Central Michigan University today. The Chippawaw. These guys... They have a ministry that is just huge. 600+ in their ministry. And it was super encouraging-- that's all I'll say. God bless those guys. As Phil said, "My baby- she's a Chippawaw, she's a one of a kind."