Once upon a time there was a prince and princess named Prince Thrash About and Princess Never Move Over. They were wonderful children, but like many children who had once been abandoned, they suffered from fairly frequent nightmares. When they called out in the night for the King or Queen to sleep with them, the King and Queen had problems.

With the Prince, he was always accommodating and would let the King or Queen stay with him. As soon as the King or Queen would lie down, the Prince would begin to snore. As he began to snore, he would also thrash about ensuring that the King or Queen would be nursing injuries far into the night.

The Princess was different. When she would call, she would always be sprawled in the bed, seemingly trying to cover every inch. When the princess was asked to move over, she might flicker an eyelash, which indicated great movement on her part. When asked again, she might consent to move one limb one fraction of an inch. This would be played out many times before there was room for the King or Queen.

The moral of the story is there is a REASON the King and Queen look tired.

The end of the college season is over, and for the most part, the kids got into good places with good packages. Never have I seen, in five years of doing this, such a week of miracles. BokEum gets a nasty rejection from a school that is so mean spirited that I call the school; they apologize, accept him and give him a great aid package. Shannon gets a package that says because your parents make 35k but they live in Tanzania, they should live on 10k and give 25k to the college. I call and explain that IF they live in a hut, and don’t have power and water, and can flap their wings and fly when they need to return to the states, this strategy might work, but otherwise, 35k doesn’t buy you riches in Tanzania. They change their package, and she becomes our first ever to attend Duke. Jesse hasn’t received his aid package from the University of Virginia on April 29th; three calls later we finally get a wonderful package on April 30th, the day before a student must declare. Narshil gets no offers that are affordable, but one call and she gets a wonderful aid package.

One call and lots of prayer from our staff. Those of you who know me know how wonderfully articulate I am. I’ve been called the man who invented Um … Somehow, the prayers of the saints made all the difference.

Probably right now you are busy making your May 6th celebrations, but this is too good to pass up. I am going to be doing lots of traveling in the next few months, mostly college conferences and a few speaking opportunities that fund the college trips. The big college meeting is in Seattle on September 25-27, and after a couple of speaking engagements in Oregon, I will arrive in Seattle on September 24.

By coincidence, the greatest musician of all time is doing a concert in Seattle that VERY NIGHT. Long time readers may recall that I actually had coffee with a worship leader in Dallas who has Neil Diamond’s guitar player in his worship team. Long story short, I actually received an actual email from Neil Diamond’s guitar player, and I will get to attend that concert in September.

It has been a long time since we have had a contest, so it is time. Since I will be receiving TWO tickets, and Nancy will be back here teaching, there is an opportunity of a lifetime for someone. The contest rules are easy:
1. Write an essay explaining why you deserve to see the most important singer-songwriter of our generation.
2. Have a car and be able to drive me and you to the concert.

I anticipate the demand for this will be ENORMOUS, so enter NOW.

The tribal clashes, horrific inflation and the falling dollar have led to the perfect storm:  it used to cost us $1.50 to feed a child for a month. Due to the tribal clashes, there are many displaced people who have nowhere to go and have no monies at all. It has led to three thousand additional students at the 34 schools we provide food for. Last term we fed about 15,000 children a day. This term it is right at 18,000, with no additional schools added.

The official government statistic for inflation is 20%. But we are seeing a much bigger rate in almost everything we try to buy. This term, it will cost us $6 plus to provide food for one child for a month. That is close to FOUR times what it was last term.

The dollar has declined against the shilling in the past few years. At one point, we got 80 shillings for every dollar. At this point, we are fortunate to get 60 shillings for every dollar.  It has gone from 80 to 60 in a fairly short time.

So, we have more kids, more expensive food and our dollar buys much less. I have had a dozen schools request food in the past two weeks; headmasters are afraid of what is coming.

It could be a time to panic, but I seem to recall a story about a bunch of guys in a boat when a big storm came by. Lots of them were very scared, but one of them was calm and took care of everything.
In the time of a perfect storm, it is such a joy to know the guy in the boat.

Your pal,
Steve