A Stone's Throw

One of my really good friends is Brad Daily.  The boys and I are watching the Montreal Canadians 100 year anniversary celebration game and I am thinking of he and his bride, Nora.

I first met him while I was serving at Hopedale Baptist Church in Ozark, MO.  He was a huge help to me in the student ministry as well as traveling companion on several trips, basketball watching, golf playing, early morning music store line crashing, and baby photographer when Taylor boy was born!(I know that really wasn’t even a sentence!)

He took an interest in video production and web development while he was living in Nixa, MO.  He then served several summers on staff with World Changers, a ministry of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (wow, we have some long names in SBC life, don’t we?).  While he was doing World Changers, he met some folks that had ties to the Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists.  They offered him a position as a media guru (probably not his actual title) in their office in Topeka.  During that same year, Jenny and I felt called to plant a church in Nixa.  Brad created a promotional video for our church plant.  We are eternally grateful for his hard work on it.

Then, to go a step or two more, he built us several different websites for the church.  He is an amazing developer and brilliant with web developing (as you can tell from SlideShowPro Director.)

How did he get to Montreal?  Well, it is a pretty long story, but basically, he had several friends from Kansas-Nebraska, World Changers, and NAMB that got him up there.  Then he stayed, fell in love, and the rest….you know the drill.

This past fall, he and his beautiful bride, Nora moved to Nixa, MO.  (Nora and Brad met and married while Brad was serving as the communications director of the Canadian National Baptist Convention.) Make sure you check out Nora’s blog to record all of the fun details of a “Greek-Armenian-Canadian, french speaking Montreal native” living in the “sticks” in the Ozarks!

He has continued to be a very good friend all the way to Montreal, Canada by way of Kansas and back to the Ozarks. (Check out some of his handywork on e-quip.net. and his recent venture at SlideShowPro.net and SlideShowPro Director.)

Anyway, Let’s GO HABS!!  And let’s hear it for friends!!

The Original Habs.

Taylor was 3 for 3 in his game tonight!

It is interesting to think about the small differences between batting 1.000 and .000. Even the difference between .200 and .300. An extra bit of hustle. A good bounce. All lead to the ever-elusive hit. Almost every Hall of Famer gets out 2 of 3 times he is at bat.

In life and leadership, we all need to realize that more often than not…we will make an out. That shouldn’t keep us from swinging for the fences! We need to realize that even the best strike out–a lot!

Keep swinging!

Taylor has been playing basketball for 3 years now. He absolutely loves sports and really lives basketball. This year, we decided to play YMCA basketball instead of Upward. Nothing really wrong with Upward, except it is a drive and I honestly want to be around people who aren’t “professional church goers.” It has been fun hanging out with people that don’t all have a church home or background. I love working with the kids too! Our guys (and girls) have really improved over the last 8 weeks! The time has sure flown by! We don’t keep score in the games…but our kids say that we are undefeated–don’t know how that works exactly!!

Here are some fuzzy pictures at the game this morning.