I believe we landed in North Africa and then went to Sicily and then into Anzio and then up the boot. We were in Rome when D-Day was happening. We were a diversion down in Italy. We began to turn the war around when we hit the ball bearing plant and they couldn't move their tanks.

When we got close to Dachau - 2 miles away, the stench was horrible. There were 42 boxcars outside. People were put in there - taken there to be cremated. But there was no rail systems. They lived as long as they could get fresh air.

Piles of bodies everywhere. They spilled out of the box cars.

We couldn't drive into camp - the bridges were destroyed. We went in by different paths. We went to the main gate and my Lt. Colonel suspected what we might find. Orders were to take it and let no one in or out. We were told that the 42^nd division was on our right and they may participate. Our commander was a 37 yr. Old Major General.

I said, "what can we expect?" He said, "a POW camp." Because Eisenhower kept the lid on it - we didn't know what would we'd see. It was April, but a chilly day. Big massive gate. High stone walls.

My boss jumped on my shoulders and stood on the wall and then pulled me up. I was the 2^nd man thru the main gate. There wasn't a soul to be seen. There were less than 200 guards in the camp (mostly Ukranians, anti-Semitic) they were encouraged to brutalize the prisoners.

The S.S. and the colonel all got away. The prisoners were in the barracks. They were made to hold 60 people, but there were up to 1600 in there. They began to hide. They were under the barracks.

There were over 30,000 in the camp. We kept them in camp. Every disease ever created was in the camp. We saw the naked bodies in the showers and in front of the ovens. They were all cataloged with tags on their toes.

When our people found all these victims, God help any Germans who were there. Our soldiers went crazy - uncontrollable rage. Kill anything that moves that isn't a prisoner. One kid killed 17 unarmed Germans with a machine gun before we stopped him. They broke into labs and saw bodies being skinned, bodies were being frozen. They were performing all these laboratory experiments. They would hang people from the fence and tie meat to them and then turn the hungry dogs loose on them.

Last week a bunch of Talia and Emily's friends (Dmitri, Clint, Nicole, Kelly, & Dustin) came over to the house. My girls met most of them working at Medieval Times. They are all a lot like Emily and Talia - life-of-the-party, fun, people-people - ENFPs that are 2% of the population. We grilled hamburgers, played volleyball, and sang songs by the fire till after midnight.

And the question in the air is, "Would any of these people who are so similar to one another be a good match?" The answer you read in all the books is, "No, because you need opposites to make a good marriage. If one person brings the party, the other person has to clean up the dishes. Not everyone can tell stories late into the night; somebody has to wake up and fill out the tax forms and pay the bills."

For the most part, that's a good rule of thumb. Emily knows she needs a practical man in her life - "someone to take care of me."

But in this complicated and way-too-worldly world in which we live, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I shouldn't change my standard to Hebrews 10:24-25, which is the minimum standard for church, "Let us not give up meeting together, but let us encourage one another."

If your marriage, friendship, or church can do that over the long-term, then here's my new precept: by all means get together. If on the other hand what you feel is mostly discouragement or boredom, then perhaps you should not get married and keep looking for other people to hang out with.

Assuming they keep their jobs at Medieval Times, Emily and her friends can always hire some accountant to do their taxes. Some repairman will show up and fix the broken dishwashers. Regular encouragement, on the other hand, is the least I expect of my future son-in-law.*

*A corollary for those already married is that (if you're brave enough to do this) you can know whether or not you're a good mate by asking your spouse whether you regularly encourage him or her.

Give such critics their due. They may be motivated by compassion or by a sense of stewardship. Who hasn't seen the homeless on our cities' streets and felt as though something needed to be done? Going overseas can seem like a costly extravagance when the need is great right here in our backyard.

That said, anyone who has seen the great swarms of hungry children picking through the mountains of trash outside Manila or Maputo can't help but be struck by the thought, "This is a whole different level of poverty. These people are just barely surviving."

When You're Down in the Dumps from Brady on Vimeo.

At least in America there is a safety net. There is food. Any large city has multiple homeless shelters. Emergency rooms will take you in if you are desperately sick. The poverty line for a family of four is defined as $21,201. Contrast that with the 1.2 billion people in the world living on less than a dollar a day or the 2.5 billion classified as living in extreme poverty. That is a standard of living that is more than twenty times poorer than those classified as poor in America.

At its worst, someone asking the question, "Why don't you reach out to poor Americans first?" is parochial or nationalistic. They value a poor human being in America more than a poor human living elsewhere. Because you're American, you belong to some sort of really big club of special people.

God classifies the poor not by nationality, but by their ability to care for themselves - widows and orphans being first in line for help.

ANYWAY

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People need help but will attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

*Kent Keith originated this poem in 1968, and Mother Teresa placed it on her children's home in Calcutta in a slightly different version. As a result, many have attributed it to Mother Teresa.

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The great paradox of life is that those who lose their lives will gain them. This paradox becomes visible in very ordinary situations. If we cling to our friends, we may lose them, but when we are nonpossessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. When fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it, but when we have no need to be known, we might be remembered long after our deaths. When we want to be in the center, we easily end up on the margins, but when we are free enough to be wherever we must be, we find ourselves often in the center. Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human arts. This will gain us our lives.

I often spend my day making decisions that impact many people's lives - I need that kind of wisdom. How about you - where do you find wisdom? Proverbs enjoins us to seek it. The older I get, the more I look for it and value it.

Even knowing which decisions are the important ones requires wisdom. A few of the decisions you'll make in a given year will probably be more important in your life than all the others combined - decisions like who you'll hang around. What job you'll do. What you'll read and think about.

We don't really need more information so much as we need to a better job of managing it. We need wisdom and we need people like Henri Nouwen in our lives. Nouwen authored more than 40 books chalk full of wisdom and he showed a simpler way to live, leaving his professorship at Yale to join and serve a community of handicapped adults.

To get his daily devotional email, sign up here. If you're going to buy one of his books, let me recommend The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life, or select one from this list.

Life can be a bully pushing us around. I discovered this while parenting. Periodically one of my children would come to me with some tale of woe. Their face told me the story before they said anything. And frequently I would address not the problem, but their response to it by asking a question:

"Have you learned the secret yet?"

"What secret?"

"The secret of being content no matter what your circumstances."

Paul frequently found himself in the most adverse circumstances - shipwrecked, in prison, threatened, and on trial for his life. Yet he declares, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." [Phil. 4:12]

What a contrast with this discontent, petulant, grasping age in which we live - a time in which we are in the grips of the god of "not enough," prisoner in a cell of angst, trapped by thoughts of what could be but isn't'.

We need to learn the secret of happy living. It's a secret Paul spells out plainly earlier in Philippians 4. Call it an "attitude of gratitude." Verse 4 tells us to, "rejoice in the Lord always." Verse 6 says, "do not be anxious." And it continues, "with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Verse 8 concludes, "Think about excellent things."

Are you discouraged or anxious? You need to learn the secret. Practice Paul's four steps and live a life of contentment:

1. Rejoice.

2. Take anxious thoughts captive.

3. Thank God for your concerns and turn them over to Him.

4. Meditate on things that are true, noble, and excellent.

If we do this, we're promised: "God's peace will guard your hearts." It's a powerful key to happy living.

Time and time again I find myself saying, "Yup, he nailed that one; that's how it works." Early on, for instance, the book covers the subject of modeling and its key role in making disciples. Later it delves into the practical questions of how you counsel and disciple through various issues or how you deal with blocks in their development.

McCallum lives in the real world - a world populated by people asking questions like, "How do you distinguish between weakness in a disciple and sheer resistance? And then, what's the appropriate response of a disciple maker?" (The answer: A disciple struggling with weakness generally needs encouragement, whereas a disciple who is resistant often needs confrontation and possibly discipline.)

I loved that the book had a whole section on coaching and I loved that its counsel is both biblically grounded and rooted in the everyday experience of someone who leads 250 home churches. I've read so many books on discipleship and few drill down to address the questions ordinary people have as they struggle to help their disciples grow.

All of us who have committed ourselves to following Jesus and representing his name need to learn how to make disciples. It was the last thing he asked us to do before leaving the earth. If you as a Jesus-follower feel like you need help in learning how to do this in a way that feels natural, do yourself a favor and get Organic Disciple Making.

"Meditate on Matthew 5-7." I responded.

Whenever you're spiritually becalmed and need fresh guidance, it's good to go back to the Master and his radical first message. It runs so contrary to our natural inclinations. His words are so counterculture and bracing. We need them to center us and reorient us as we swim like salmon against the current.

"You should write a short blog about that" she said.

The FYM program (First-Year Missionaries) gives college students a chance to spend a a year-abroad being discipled. We started it several years ago and have seen it change hundreds of lives. My daughter Estie was the first of our children to do this, and it was one of the best things she's ever done.

After spending almost a year immersed in a different culture, young Christ-followers have a new level of compassion for the the poor. In the process, they get a piece of God's heart. They learn to let go of cliches and programmed religious responses. Melissa Hintz, a First-Year Missionary in Africa tells how that happened in her life:

My heart is heavy with the news I have to share with you. Sihle Shongwe died on Monday, April 7th, 2008. I went to the Hospital and as I walked past their room, I noticed the blankets on Sihle's bed looked different.

My head knew there was no way that Sihle had been discharged from the hospital over the weekend; she hadn't hit her target weight yet, but my heart wanted to believe that somehow it could be true. I forced myself to ask the question I didn't want the answer to, "Where is Sihle?"

The Mothers dropped their heads and mumbled to me that she died the day before. I stood there dumbfounded; trying to make my head and my heart understand.

The Mothers nodded their heads and looked at with me with sympathy. Death does not affect Swazis the way it does Americans, and they understand that. They know me, though; the look in their eyes before they even told me the news showed me that they felt sorry for me. These Mothers with dying babies of their own felt sorrow for me…I can't even comprehend it.

I went on with my day and sat there in a quiet fog. To those around me, I probably just looked tired, but inside I was crying, screaming, and questioning, "Where is my God that I know is big enough to do the impossible? Did He take a break from listening to my prayers?"

Every day was just another reason of why not to go back to the hospital. But I made myself go back because I was afraid if I didn't, then I'd never work up the courage. I went to visit Sicalo. He was only 3 months old and was abandoned at a bus stop when he was 2 weeks old. He was the smallest baby and since I love the little bitty ones, he was the one I spent the most time with. He wasn't really sick, so in my mind he was the "safe" baby to love.

Then it happened again - Sicalo died during the night. I don't even know how or why he died.

I ran home. Hurting and upset with the Lord, I began asking all the questions again.

We've seen a lot of tragedy this year with babies and young children dying from causes that little ones shouldn't have to deal with. We all get scared some times and want to run away, but those that walk into the pain with trust are the ones who experience the fullness of God's glory. If this breaks your heart, maybe God is calling you to do something about it.

If you're interested in the Africa FYM program, let me encourage you to check it out.