For the past four years, I have been working as a volunteer with the Legacy Coalition as their Director of Conferencing, which means that I have been the chief planner of the organization’s national conference on grandparenting, The Legacy Grandparenting Summit.
The first two conferences (in 2016 and 2017) were held in Texas but this year (February 21-23, 2019) we’re doing it in Southern California, at the Fullerton Evangelical Free Church. As I write this, it’s only two weeks away.
And I’m confident that it’s going to be a good one. We have some great speakers lined up like Alistair Begg, Josh McDowell, John Rosemond, Crawford Loritts, John Stonestreet, Beth Guckenberger, Walt Mueller and about 45 more. We also have some talented artists like Fernando Ortega, Scott Wesley Brown, Bruce Carroll, Bob Bennett, David Pendleton and my brother Jim with his current version of Brush Arbor. My sister Mary Rice Hopkins will also be singing. I admit to a little nepotism here.
The goal of the conference is to encourage and equip grandparents in their role as spiritual influencers of their grandchildren. Also, we hope to encourage and equip churches to begin ministries to equip this demographic group as well. Most “seniors” ministries lack a compelling mission. But grandparenting is something that older folks get pretty excited about.
All the information about this year’s Summit is on our website legacycoalition.com/summit. Join us if you can!
Before we got the books printed, Mike and I named our new enterprise Youth Specialties. Took about five minutes to come up with that name. There was a business located near us called Corvette Specialties (specializing in parts for souped-up Chevy Corvettes) and even though neither of us owned Corvettes (yet), we thought it was a pretty cool place and a pretty cool name. So Youth Specialties it was. I designed a little YS logo to put on the cover and voila! we were in business.
Mayo Clinic is an amazing place. It takes up most of downtown Rochester and everyone in the city is connected to it somehow. We stayed at a hotel in the center of town and were given a wheel chair to shuttle Marci from one appointment to the next—all of which were scheduled over the next several days. When we told our primary Mayo Clinic doctor that our San Diego doctors were stumped by Marci’s case, he replied “We don’t do ‘stumped’ here.” He guaranteed that they would solve the mystery and give us an accurate diagnosis.
So, when you only post one blog per year, I guess you have no right to call yourself a blogger. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. I do … but I just don’t have the time, or at least I don’t make the time. And in recent years I have become less interested in writing about myself. So maybe I’ll write about about somebody or something else.
Last week I led a group from College Avenue Baptist Church to Ensenada, B.C. Mexico to build a house for a family living in poverty and to conduct a VBS (Vacation Bible School) program for neighborhood children. There were 36 of us in all who went, ranging in age from 4 to 70 (or so). We had quite a few families on the trip this year—parents with their kids—which is one of our goals. I don’t think there is a much better way for parents to pass on the values of the Christian faith than to serve together on a mission trip.
This year we worked with Pastor Carlos Santana of the Puerto del Cielo church (an Assembly of God congregation) just southeast of Ensenada. The family of five who we built the house for lived a short distance from the church in a deplorable dirt floor shack with a tarp for a roof and walls made from sticks and scraps of plywood. When we arrived, they told us through an interpreter “We have been praying for this for a very long time.” It is an awesome experience to be the answer to someone’s prayers.
We built the house in just four days (Monday through Thursday) and like most YUGO houses, it turned out to be a beautiful home—complete with a functioning kitchen (stove and refrigerator), table and chairs, bunk beds, area rugs on the floor and other amenities. We presented the family with the keys to their new home on Thursday afternoon and while I’ve witnessed this scene many times before, I’m always deeply moved by the joy that a simple three-room house can bring to a family who have never had one. I can only imagine how they must feel every night as they turn out the lights and go to sleep on those soft new mattresses under a strong roof and surrounded by solid walls that won’t fall down.
Because the Puerto del Cielo church is located in a heavily populated neighborhood, our VBS program attracted more than 150 children. We weren’t prepared for that many kids but we managed to stretch our resources and make it all work. Children came from all over the neighborhood to play games with us, sing songs and hear Bible lessons prepared by our team. It was thrilling to hear the children recite Bible verses from memory 
and listen so well to stories about Jesus. This year we gave all the children t-shirts with “Cristo me ama” emblazoned across the front and we sent them home with Bible story books in Spanish that they could read with their parents, siblings or friends. A Mexican pastor told us a few years ago that he went to a VBS program just like ours when he was a child. “I went for the candy,” he said, “but the seeds of the gospel were planted in my heart.”
Merle Haggard turned 79 today and then died. He had been ill for a good while although he was planning to fulfill some concert dates in the near future. Today was also my father’s birthday, who would have turned 95 had he lived this long. Dad loved to hear Merle Haggard sing and so it was quite a thrill when my brothers and I (with our band Brush Arbor) went on tour with him.
So Larry invited me to a meeting in August of last year in Chicago at Awana headquarters to explore the idea of starting a new ministry to help grandparents. About 25 ministry people were there, each offering their perspective on the need to help grandparents and what it would take to get a new ministry going. After much discussion and prayer, it was decided to put the wheels in motion to launch what would eventually be called “The Legacy Coalition.”
