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Expectations and Commitments

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 11, 2011| 1 Comment »

A couple of days ago, I asked you to help me with word choice for a revision of what we used to call “Guidelines.”  I received many good suggestions, so I thought you might like to see what the current final product is.

I went with Expectations, which was by far the most popular suggestion.  I like expectations too because it carries some weight while not feeling as negative or authoritarian as rules. Several suggested great words like covenant and promises, but expectations won!

I don’t know when the idea of a two-part entry hit me, but I thought it might be helpful to separate the principle from the concrete actions. By separating these, it certainly allows us to appeal to the principle even if a corresponding action has not been mentioned specifically.  We were desperately trying to avoid any attempt to capture every possible situation or every possible disruptive action that might occur on an LST project. We did not want to become Scribes and  Pharisees!

Feel free to ask questions or comment on any of these expectations and commitments. There is a story behind each one. If you will apply to go on an LST project, you will get to hear the story, though I suspect if you read enough of these blog posts, you will hear the stories as well.

EXPECTATIONS AND COMMITMENTS!

 

EXPECTATIONS COMMITMENTS
1)      God first! 1) I will begin each day with my team devotional and put God first in all I do and say!
2) Put others before Yourself! 2) I will put the needs of my project first and my teammates next. I will not insist on my way!
3) Be affirming, not critical. 3) I will affirm my missionary, my team members, and the local church. I will not criticize, correct, or debate with anyone, either in person, or in my communication to people at home!

 
4) Serve those you came to serve 4) I will not use electronic access to keep me from engaging and serving. I will not be distracted or disengage from the project to which I have committed.
5) Develop spiritual relationships 5) I will not get involved romantically in any way with anyone. All relationships will be pure and not perverse, chaste and within God’s boundaries for single and married Christians.
6) Adapt in culturally appropriate ways.

 

 6) I will dress, speak, and act in ways that the host church holds to be spiritually and culturally appropriate
7) Protect the integrity of your testimony! 7) I will abstain from tobacco, alcoholic drinks, illegal drugs, bars, discos, nightclubs, and any other activity or situation which I, my team, LST, or the host church believes will diminish my witness for Christ.
8  Be responsible for yourself! 8  I will make only myself legally, financially, and morally responsible for my own actions, and I will not blame others.
9) Submit to the local host. 9) I will cooperate completely with the local host. I will bring all Readers asking about salvation to the local host, and I will only help local people financially through the local host, so that the most good can be accomplished. I will not try to be independent of the local host.
10) Submit to the Let’s Start Talking Ministry I will cooperate fully with the Let’s Start Talking Ministry by following the letter and the spirit of these expectations, as well as all other instructions given by LST. I will not commit LST funds, LST teams, or the LST ministry unless specifically authorized.

 

 

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Souuthlake and The Hills: A Follow-up and Three Questions

Posted in Christian Culture, Church Leadership, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Sunday, January 9 was the first official Sunday at the new Southlake campus of The Hills Church of Christ.  Sherrylee and I attended the service as did 524 other people—a number too large for the sanctuary—a wonderful problem to have!

The energy was high and the sense of anticipation strong. Lots of young families were there, lots of children! Chris Hatchett, the campus minister, did an excellent job of introducing himself to those attending the adult class at 9:00.

That things were different was obvious from the moment you walked in the door and were greeted with the bulletin and worship program from The Hills.  The worship team on this Sunday was mostly from The Hills, and even the call to prayer and benediction were The Hills style.

God provided a little icing for the cake: as the back doors of the auditorium were swung open at the end of the service, all were surprised to see that it had begun to snow during services—a Bing Crosby moment for everyone!  We left feeling the Breath of Blessing on this place in the Kingdom of God!

As I told you in the initial post about the Southlake/Hills merger, I am not in any way involved in any of the decision-making groups nor in any of the leadership groups, so whatever I report to you as well as any thoughts I have are strictly from the pew.  (But I do like to sit up front!)

I woke up this morning, thinking about the kinds of questions that these leaders are asking and praying about. I guess this kind of thinking is just in the blood of us missionary types. Sorry! I still drive by vacant commercial property and briefly evaluate it as to whether it would be a good place to locate a new church, just like we did in Germany so many years ago.

Anyway, for those church leaders who might be in similar situations—or who are thinking about being in similar situations—I suspect these are some of the questions our church leaders are facing—questions you might need to ask at sometime as well:

How alike and how different should the campuses be from the mother church? The current metaphor governing The Hills new campuses is, according to the public announcements, that the campuses will be “twins, but not identical twins!” This approach is probably based on this assumption: The Hills has a successful program, a successful style, one blessed, so why change the formula?

While this approach is perfectly rationale, I suspect the leaders have had to wrestle with some or all of the following questions—and if they haven’t yet, I think they will certainly be on their agenda in the future.

Question  1.  Is it possible that different campuses will have different demographics from the mother  church  which might require significantly different approaches?

The Hills is currently launching two new campuses, one on the west side of Fort Worth and the Southlake campus in the northeast corner. The west campus is about thirty miles from the Southlake campus. Both satellite campuses are 10-18 miles from North Richland Hills, where The Hills is located.

Having grown up in Fort Worth, my sense is that the west side campus is located in a more western, pick-up truck demographic, and the Southlake church in a suburban, SUV demographic. The mother church is enough of a megachurch to draw from a much wider area than its geographic location.

What this says to me is that you have the potential of very different subsets of people likely to attend the different campuses. If these differences are real, that would argue to me for allowing enough variety and differentiation on each campus to address those differences.

Question  2.       Is a blended church different from a new church plant? The west campus is a true church plant while the Southlake campus is a merger/blend—two very different starting points.  The Hills has provided all of the new leaders and staff for the west campus by either reassigning people from the main campus or hiring new staff.  The Southlake campus had a full slate of elders and a small staff. The elders resigned and the staff members were kept on the staff of The Hills—at least for a while–though some were given different assignments.

I kept wondering yesterday if the working assumption—a perfectly natural one– is that the main campus staff and leaders were more gifted than the ones inherited from the merged church?  I raised this question at lunch yesterday and a corporate attorney  friend  replied that in his experience,  in every takeover there is a winner and a loser and whoever takes over is the winner and calls all the shots! He said, all corporations talk about equality in the new blend—but it never happens. The winners stay and the losers go home!

I know this is true in the business world, but my prayer is that churches who are seizing an opportunity to merge or blend will never frame any of their decisions with this winner/loser framework! I don’t believe The Hills/Southlake leaders did this.

Not using this corporate framework, however, would mean that even the bigger church would be open to learning from the smaller, that the stronger church would recognize the golden nuggets that even weaker churches might contain.  What if the minister of____ from the subsumed church is more gifted than his/her counterpart at the main church? Who should be setting the agenda for that ministry? Is it automatic who goes and who stays? Could the main church be improved by the campuses?

Question 3.  Isn’t it likely that each campus will grow and change at a different rate? Won’t the need for the inevitable changes that accompany growth occur at very different moments? A good example of this is that the Southlake campus began with just one service, but probably needs to move to at least two services already. The plan currently is for two elders from The Hills to shepherd the Southlake campus, and for “local” elders to be selected sometime in the future.  Having two or three services immediately, mushrooming  children/youth programs, greater benevolence needs, unique outreach opportunities –all of these evolutions demand more leadership, more prayer, more attention and more resources.  And each campus will face them in different moments!

Finally, I’m thrilled that The Hills has had the vision, the boldness, and the courage to accept these Kingdom challenges. I’m sure these questions have been raised and discussed by church leaders at The Hills  who think about these things 24/7! It is a great time to learn from their experiences.

I also believe the option of merging churches for the good of the Kingdom will be seriously considered more and more in our fellowship, and if we talk and think and pray together, God will do even greater things than we can imagine! Thy Kingdom come! Thy Will be done!

 

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Do You Like Rules or Commitments?

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 7, 2011| 4 Comments »

My task this weekend is to re-write what we have long called the Let’s Start Talking Guidelines. They are a list of non-negotiable behavior expectations that have grown up over the thirty years of our history.

For instance, we do not wish our workers to get involved with anyone romantically while on their mission project, so we have a No Romance policy.  I hope this seems reasonable enough to you, but because we work with many college students and because being away from home creates an exotic ambience even for adults, this is one problem area that seems to surface every year!

There are only sixteen such guidelines in their current form, so it is not cumbersome,  but over the years we have continued to revise them to the point that sometimes the primary expectation is no longer obvious.  For instance, our No Romance guideline now reads:

“Dating team members is a major distraction to the commitment you have made with LST. Spend that love, time, and attention on those who need it in order to find Jesus. Romantic relationships with Readers will block their ability to find Jesus. Involvement with church members will create undesired problems. From our years of experience, this area is one of the most sensitive. Keep your focus on spending all of your energy sharing Jesus.

See how mushy this is!  So let me tell you what my biggest problem is in this assignment. Maybe you can help!

I cannot find the right word!   Which word or phrase will describe this important document in a way that is neither offensive nor condescending to both our college and church workers? Which word might perhaps even motivate or inspire them to full ownership?  HELP!!!

Rules of Behavior is too authoritarian, but Guidelines sounds like The Ten Suggestions, which has no teeth.  Standards does not ask for commitment, but Commitments is a pretty strong word that makes people run for cover!  A Code sounds military (just think about A Few Good Men), Pledges makes me reach for my wallet, and Promises evokes strains of The Wedding March! Where is Shakespeare when you need him??

As we talked about this in our office common room today, it was interesting to notice which personalities went for which words!

Wait a minute! Therein lies a clue! Outside of gross criminal actions, we live in a society where no one really wants anyone to infringe on their own right to make their own decisions about their own behavior!!  Everybody wants to choose their own word!

How can we live in such a community? How can we live and work together?  How can two walk together unless they agree—on how to describe the mutual expectations to which they are willing submit?  I begin to think my semantic problem is a symptom of a spiritual problem!

After I finish my assignment, I’ll tell you some of the stories behind our guidelines, so you can consider them for your short-term mission project.

What word or phrase would you suggest I use?

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I Didn’t Know I Would Get A Blog Grade!

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 4, 2011| 1 Comment »

I am almost at the end of my first year of blogging, so an email from WordPress that arrived yesterday surprised me.  I did not know that I was going to get an evaluation from them.

Of course, I was interested in the raw statistics. As of just sixty seconds ago, WordPress recorded 14,972 views since the first blog on February 10. Now that does not represent a large number in Blogworld, nor is it the actual number of people who read some post. It could have been my mother clicking hundreds of times, trying to figure out how to get my blog to come up with her WebTV (yes, it still exists!). No, really, I know people are reading because you tell me—and I appreciate that!

I have to say that I have really enjoyed writing this year. I’ve enjoyed the discipline, the challenge, the exchange of ideas with many of you, both on and offline, but perhaps most of all, I’ve enjoyed being of some benefit to you.

Many commented on the “Great Churches” series. A lot of you enjoyed the “Raising Your Kids To Be Missionaries” project, and I got lots of great feedback on the “History of LST” I did in September. On the other side, the Advent series did not seem to resonate—or maybe we were all just too busy. Timing does seem to make a difference, and I have a lot to learn there.

As we start this new year together, here are some of the things that I want to do make this site more useful to you and to the Kingdom!

  • Re-do the basic site so that I can control the pages a little better and make them friendlier.
  • Allow comments to show up more readily and try to encourage more dialogue.
  • Show popular posts that some may have missed.
  • Make the site more useful with ready links to other pages like LST, and FriendSpeak as well as other important blogs.

Content-wise, I want to focus a lot this next year on the area of Leadership. I’ve already got two major projects I want to tackle, one being a look at the leadership style we promote at LST called 1A Leadership.

The other area I want to explore with you will draw on Sherrylee’s and my experiences over the last thirty years in starting, building, and continuing to lead a non-profit ministry. The non-profit sector is growing rapidly. More than 30,000 new non-profits registered with the IRS between January and August 2010, and many of these are faith-based.

In addition, I’d like to go a little deeper into some of the topics we touched on this last year—not too deep, just a little more, along with a chance to respond to some of the comments you made.

I’d love for you to make suggestions, comments, or criticisms. Tell me what you would like to talk about. I promise you that I will listen!

If you and I were sitting down in a cozy room together with an hour to talk about anything, what would you want to be sure and talk about?

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Top Ten Posts for 2010 – plus One!

Posted in Uncategorized on December 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

1.     Thoughts About Pepperdine

2.     Raising Children to Have A Heart For Missions: Can They Sleep Without Their Blankey?

3.     GREAT CHURCHES AND EMERGENT CHURCHES- PART 11b

4.     Don’t Report on Your Mission Trip Like This!

5.     Great Churches and the Emerging Church – Part 11a

6.     November 14-16:  Can A Church Be Exemplary in Germany??

7.     Raising Children to Have a Heart For Missions? Is That What You Really Want?

8.     What If Our Kids Can’t Tell The Story?

9.     Tips for Good Short-Term Missions, Part Two: To Mom and Dad

10.   Is Your Church Slipping Towards Unitarian Universalism?

And my favorite series of blogs:  A Personal History of Let’s Start Talking Ministries, Part 1: The Idea

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Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Posted in Other, Uncategorized on December 25, 2010| 1 Comment »

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November 10 : Hotel Mistakes

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

 Yesterday, Sherrylee and I had a good meeting with Yuriy Aniper, who is another of the young preachers working in Eastern Europe today.  He inherited the work when Rick Pinchuk, a long-time worker, died.  Yuriy has prepared himself well, having completed a degree at Kiev Theological Seminary and has good support from the States, so we pray that his work will be fruitful and he will be faithful for all of his life.

By the way, have I ever told you how hard it is to choose hotels in foreign countries over the internet.  I’ve always booked our own travel because I’ve done it so much, I think I can do it better than everyone else.  After all, you have to consider several important factors in choosing a hotel over the internet:

  • location – You don’t want to be on the opposite side of a city from the people you are wanting to see if it takes a couple of hours to cross by tram. You also don’t want to be too isolated when your friends are not around.  And, finally, you want to be relatively convenient to getting to the airport, preferably not a 50 dollar cab ride away.
  • cleanliness and comfort – All turkish hotels have hard beds because that is what they think is standard. All London hotel rooms are tiny, crowded, and have marginal bath/showers. You have to allow a wide range of acceptability here, but still you have to look for something that works for you. We have found that the date the hotel was built and/or when the rooms were updated are probably the only way to really tell anything about the hotel on the internet.
  • restaurant, internet access, and airport shuttle are all important to us, but not 100% essential
  • cost – Cost is the hardest.  I always try to balance the above factors with what I think is reasonable.

When I make a hotel mistake, it is always because I thought cost was more important than what I was giving up–and it never was.  That is exactly what happened with the hotel I had booked in Kiev.  It was a two-star hotel, which didn’t look too far from the center of town, but the only reason it won in the finals was because of price.  We took a taxi from the airport–it is always a bad sign when the taxi drivers don’t have a clue where the hotel is.  As he started slowing down, I started peering out the taxi window into the darkness–the eastern European darkness that is just a little scary. The only businesses anywhere near were the little tin sheds selling cigarettes, magazines, and whatever. 

As we got ready to stop, Sherry said, I don’t think we can stay here.  That is all it took for us to just keep on driving.  Hotel mistakes are expensive mistakes. Our only choice in the middle of the night was to ask the taxi driver to take us to a big name hotel, so we ended up at the Radisson–a very nice, but pretty expensive hotel.  So, anyway, my only advice to you about choosing hotels is that you may save money in the long run by not being quite so stingy when you are searching.

And, yes, I did look on Tripadvisor.com and I will be writing my own review as soon as we get back.  So my final words of advice on this subject are

  • Never believe the pictures on the internet. Just remember that they are all glamor shots.
  • Make sure you read reviews on neutral sites–and make sure those reviews are recent. (I almost chose one hotel in Kiev until I got to the fourth review that said something like, “Oh yea, if it makes any difference to you, the hotel is above a pretty loud strip club.” )
  • If your gut says “maybe not,” listen to it.

We are in the best hotel ever in Budapest, so I’m batting 3 for 4 so far.  I’ll keep you posted though.

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Traveling Thoughts: DFW to FRA

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

Today Sherrylee and I are leaving for three weeks of extensive travel through Europe for Let’s Start Talking. From the beginning of this missions ministry thirty years ago, we have felt that it was important to know well the sites that we are sending LST teams.  It’s important also for them to know LST well.  If we don’t know them well, we might send a team to a site that was ill-suited to them.  If the mission site doesn’t know us well, their expectations of what would happen when an LST team came could be totally misaligned.  Either of these errors can lead to very poor mission projects!

For the next three weeks, we are making very short stops in Turkey, Romania,  Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. At the end of our trip, we will attend the Euro-American Retreat in Rothenburg, Germany.

I will not be taking my own computer, so my hope is to be able to get on the internet as we travel in order to keep you up to date.  This could mean that the blog schedule for the next few weeks is a little erratic, so I hope you will understand.

It’s going to be a great trip with many good conversations with great missionaries. I hope to introduce you not only to the cities and countries, but to the great heroes of faith that we get to visit on these kinds of trips.  You’ll enjoy it, I promise.

So, Auf Wiedersehen–well, not really.

The Germans actually not only use this phrase which means literally “until we see each other again”, but also Auf Wiederhoeren, which they use formally on the telephone to say “until we hear each other again.” I guess I’ll say Auf Wiederlesen–until we read each other again–or something like that!

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Traveling Tips #4 – Purchasing Travel on the Web

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m going to spend most of today booking international travel on the web.  I have the basic itinerary set—though not confirmed because you never know for sure until you have finished booking the travel.  I’ve done some preliminary checking on trains versus air for some portions of our trip.  I know when I need to rent the car and where we will return it.

So today is the day to commit! And since our trip is less than a month away, I’m quite aware that I may run into availability issues and I may not get the absolutely lowest price—but I might!  It’s a treasure hunt! Or a scavenger hunt!  It’s a challenge!

There are no magic websites! If what you are looking for is the magic web travel agency that will give you exactly what you want with the lowest fares and throw in business class upgrades, well, you won’t find it here—and please send it to me when you do. I’ve never found such a site.  But I can give you a few tips about using the web to book your travel that could be very helpful to you.

  1. Use more than one website to search—until you either find exactly what you want or you find out that everybody is offering you something less. I will probably start with Expedia (www.expedia.com) . I know that it is one of the oldest travel sites and one you have used many times, but I keep coming back to it as very reliable and just a good place to start for comparisons.  Other sites like this are Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) .
  2. There are some websites that let you search multiple sites at once. Kayak (www.kayak.com) is one of the more popular. I also like www.airfarewatch.com, www.shermanstravel.com ,  and www.yapta.com .
  3. I always check the website of the airline that appears to offer the lowest price. Sometimes you will find lower prices. Sometimes you will find other flights that are better. Sometimes you will find only higher prices! If you find only higher prices, it may mean that you may not get the lower price from another website.  Read on!
  4. Your tickets are not really booked until they are confirmed. Yes, you gave them your credit card number and everything else—and it feels like it is for sure, but it is not! Virtually all the websites first sell you the ticket, then confirm it with the airlines. Occasionally, they come back and say, sorry, the price has changed. Do you still want the ticket?  That’s very irritating because you have already booked more travel based on that itinerary, so you are often stuck with a higher price.
  5. If you have flexibility, don’t hesitate to use Priceline to get cheaper tickets. I have bought international and domestic tickets on Priceline, but you have to be very flexible. You can choose the date, but you can’t choose the airline or the time of day that you fly. I have never had a bad experience with Priceline.  Rental cars and airport hotels are what I book most often on Priceline.
  6. Rental cars and hotels are often cheaper to book at the last minute. This is another reason to book your air travel first. Again, I go to Priceline—sometimes even on the day I’m traveling. If I book a hotel, then I usually go to www.hotwire.com or look at Priceline’s own site to check on which hotels are located where. If there are only one or two 3-star hotels in a certain part of town, then I can be pretty sure which hotel I’m bidding for in the “Name Your Own Price” section of Priceline.  We have stayed in many top hotels for $40/night when booked this way. And I rarely pay over $25/day for a full-size rental car.
  7. Check out the customer reviews on hotels when it makes a difference to you! Sometimes you just need a place to sleep near the airport, so price is the main thing. Other times, when you are taking a couple of days off from traveling, you want a good bed, cleanliness, and good service.  I almost always look at www.tripadvisor.com and see what other people think of the hotel. This site has saved me several times from booking a hotel that looked great on the internet, but that real people had had terrible experiences with.
  8. Try using foreign travel websites. I’m not sure how the big U.S. websites choose which airlines to search, but I do know that if I am having trouble getting either the flight I want or the schedule, then I always go to a foreign website.   For years, I used www.opondo.de – a German website because we speak and read German.  A couple of years ago, I typed in “German discount airfares” and found a wonderful German travel agency ( www.sky-tours.com ) that gave me many more flight options and much better prices  that year.  These sites may include the discount airlines that won’t pay to be included in the American website searches.  By the way, when planning driving in Europe, I always use www.viamichelin.com navigation site rather than mapquest or google maps. I find it more accurate and more helpful with restaurants and hotels.
  9. If you are planning a tour, don’t forget the travel guide sites for hints on best airlines, best ways to get around, etc. We have personally found the Rick Steves European guides to be excellent (www.ricksteves.com) . Other helpful sites are www.lonelyplanet.com , www.fodors.com and www.michelin.com .
  10. There is no end to the information you can gather and the options you have for purchasing your travel needs, so do the basic research, get an idea of what you want to pay, and when you find it, BOOK IT! If you hold out, trying to find something a few dollars cheaper, I can almost guarantee you that the good price you found will disappear before you get back to it. It’s somebody’s law—but it always happens to me!
  11. Keep good records of what you buy. I print out hard copies of all reservations and line them up in order of use in a file that I carry with me on the trip—not very tech savvy, but helpful when you need it in some foreign airport.

Well, I’m off to the office to start my treasure hunt!  I’ll let you know if I learn anything new today! I’d like to hear your favorite websites for travel as well!

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Traveling Tips #3 – What To Do About Travel Warnings?

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 9, 2010| 1 Comment »

The recent State Department travel warnings for Americans going to Europe raise good questions for those of us who are planning imminent trips to Europe—or really to anywhere in the world where these BIG warnings about terrorist threats occur.

In our own personal travel and in planning the travel for Let’s Start Talking teams, we have dealt with these kinds of warnings, threats, and sometimes actual occurrences of public violence in many different countries. We had workers in Russia when tanks rolled down the streets of Moscow in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1989 when civil war broke out, and in Thailand during at least two major episodes of violent uprisings.

Sherrylee and I flew in and out of the Vienna airport where terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire in 1985. The same year on June 19, another bomb exploded in a trash container in the Frankfurt Airport, the very one we were flying in and out of that year with our three kids and our LST workers.

Let me repeat though very clearly: at no time have we or any of our LST teams ever been in imminent personal danger that we were aware of. So the question is, how do we try to keep ourselves safe in a world where terrorists hijack planes, shoot up tourist hotels, and blow themselves and others up in public market places?  First, get your thinking straight!

  • If we are afraid and stay home, the terrorists have won. If we are afraid and stay home, the Devil has won (just that battle, not the war!)
  • Staying home is not safe either. Sherrylee and I were in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. One hundred sixty-eight people were at home—and died in a terrorist attack. We can’t be afraid!

Then there are also very specific things you can do when traveling—but you can do these things without being afraid. For instance,

  • I am always aware when traveling that I am safer AFTER going through security than before. So we don’t dawdle any longer than necessary in the pre-security area.
  • We listen to the news when we travel—the international news—and try to anticipate hot spots politically.
  • If we find ourselves or a team unexpectedly caught in a threatened area, we listen to what the local people are saying about how to respond. Sometimes, running to the nearest airport and trying to flee the country is the most dangerous thing that you can do.
  • Avoid large political gatherings. Actually large crowds of any kind are bigger targets.
  • Keep your eyes open for anything unusual.  This means being aware of what is usual in a foreign place, so it just means looking around a little more purposefully.
  • Register your trip with the U.S. Embassy. You can do this online at https://travelregistration.state.gov/ibrs/ui/.  The State Department has a special travel site at travel.state.gov with lots of good information and tips.
  • Give your loved ones your itinerary and overseas contact information before you leave.

That’s probably enough.  Some people’s risk tolerance is much greater than others, so people make different choices about where to go and when.  Occasionally we have had to rein in some college student that thought he was invincible and was doing things that even made the local people nervous!

The best advice I can give you is to walk close to God and to live in a way that if Jesus comes today, you will be delighted.  To live without fear of the Second Coming makes the uncertainty of traveling through this world much less frightening.

 

 

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