Minister Of Mocha

Sometimes we need to shed some tears. I’m the kind of guy that cries at almost anything. Take me to a movie, and there’s a good chance I’ll get choked up. My kids make fun of me because the movie Miracle made me cry. In case you don’t know, it’s a movie about hockey. So I…

Sometimes I wake up with a song or a thought in my head. Today, it’s a thought that keeps rattling through my mind. Let me step back for a moment. Starting at about 10 o’clock last night, I began having a spasm in my left ear drum. It was a maddening fluttering noise and feeling…

It’s Christmas time again. As I write, we are sitting on a rainy Christmas Eve Eve (the day before the day before Christmas for those of you keeping score at home). I’m wishing everyone a “Joseph Christmas” (because Mary has been getting top billing for a couple of millennia)! I’m thinking about tradition and such…

Wow, I’ve been a bit lazy of late. Sometimes I get in to a rut and just start moving through life on auto-pilot. That kind of thing happens all the time, and it happened to your MoM. As I put my head down to power through the holiday season I just got caught up in…

The team that I follow in English soccer has been having a bad year. Things have been slowly deteriorating for months and it finally reached the point where the owners decided that it was time to sack the head coach. A new coach was appointed and fans throughout the world celebrated a new beginning. The…

Last week one of my favorite people was taken to the hospital. My mother in law was experiencing trouble breathing. At 92, this was a big concern. We made a decision that it would be good for my wife to go home to help out. That means that I will be spending Thanksgiving without my…

Recently I was discussing the idea of mistakes and forgiveness with my #PrisonFellowshipAcademy class. We noticed a pattern with King David in the Book of Psalms: sin, repent, repeat. At the end of class I asked each student to bring in a Psalm to discuss with the class. Most of my students did what I…

Yesterday I went on an out of town date day with my wife. We started with #CRInside at the prison, then went to see #MikeBirbiglia at a theater in LA, then had dairy free ice cream and gluten/soy/dairy free pastries on Larchmont Street, then finished it off with a nice dinner out (using gift certificates,…

I got blessed with a trip to Disneyland last week. I’m not sure if they still use the catchphrase, but as a kid I remember they always called it “The Happiest Place on Earth”. I was able to spend two full days in the park with three grandsons and two of my daughters and sons-in-law.…

We hosted another #HopeEvent for #PrisonFellowship this weekend, and again, it was a huge success.We had a great speaker lined up for the event, but he was unable to come due to a funeral, so we a had a late replacement speaker. It can be a bit unnerving when things don’t go as planned, especially…