Touching Third

David's time at home this weekend is like an Astros player on second base trying to score on a long single: third base is touched, but only briefly, then it's off again to someplace else.

He returned this afternoon at 2:15 from his week in Winchester, VA, as part of Jeremiah Project with a hoarse voice and stories to tell.  The hoarse voice he can't explain; he says he's not feeling badly, although I hear he laughed so hard during the week he needed his asthma inhaler--now *that's* a camping story!

He says he met some great people, and his team of kids did some good work while they were there for people who needed help.  One say they put in a handrail for someone who needed help getting up and down the stairs.  Two days were given over to building a wheelchair ramp on a house that now needed one; another was the "Tunnel of Fire" project (building a deck between two sun-radiant white trailers) and another was washing and sealing a deck--without power tools.

It's terrific that he had a chance to go and make a difference in the lives of people who need a little more help.  I told him I was proud that he had a chance to be His hands and feet for a week.  He unpacked and we saw all the mail he received from people at the church as well as us, and the very kind words of affirmation he received from the people there.  One other thing tumbled out of his bag: a pure white, gleaming tile, like from a bathroom wall.  He says he had a chance to write down all of the things the keep him from God, and then he received his tile: it shows the clean slate he has with God, he told me.  I can't help feeling joy--tearful joy--at hearing him tell that story.

And so he's here for all of 16 hours or so--tomorrow morning at 8 he leaves for Scout camp and another week gone.  Most of it will be spent asleep, recuperating from a busy week and in anticipation of another to come.  And I suspect I'll be looking in on him, in his bed late tonight, feeling pride in the kind of young man my son is becoming.