Life is good to me
Today I have been doing one of my favorite activities. The sun is shining bright but it is not hot. I have been sitting on my back porch enjoying my life. A lot of my working career involved being away from home and working long hours. I came home from Egypt a little less than eleven years ago and have not been away very much since that time. I started writing this column while I was in Egypt and have continued it every week for this period. Many of you have read my columns about my memories of foreign lands. My TV news in Egypt came from the International BBC and the International CNN channel so it was often a little warped to the liberal side. Both of them are broadcast from London. Fox news was not available to customers even though it was available to the satellite carriers. I got the conservative views off of the Internet.
At the time I was in Egypt, President Mubarak was in control and everything was peaceful and commerce was operating well. President Obama and Hillary Clinton supported the Arab Spring rebellion, which put President Mubarak out of power and the economy and government of the country has not settled down or recovered even now. Two of my close friends that were Egyptian left the country and moved to Saudi Arabia. The President of the company that employed me was a friend of President Mubarak and he had to flee the country to keep from being arrested.
I was not able to connect with a Christian church while I was in Egypt but I had five Christian networks on my TV that kept me fed spiritually while I was in the country. Some of these networks are not available to me on TV here in America.
Being in a foreign land brings some loneliness. I missed being with my family but the experiences were very rewarding and the recognition for
My brother tells me that I need to put a TV on my back porch but I really don’t want anything like that. Sometimes I read a book. Every day I work the newspaper Sudoku puzzle and the cryptoword puzzle. Sometimes I take my IPad and check my email or look at Facebook. I have played over 2000 games of FreeCell on my IPad and have a record of winning about 80 percent of the games. Sometimes I take a nap.
I do help some with the housekeeping, but I have a lot of time to do things I enjoy. Writing is one of my favorite activities. Several years ago, I wrote a book that was professionally published. Now I am writing and producing what is sometimes called a “Pocket Book,” but I usually call them Mini-Books. They are 4 inches wide by 5 inches high. I write them as an E-book that I can email and then format them for printing on my computer. My printer prints both sides automatically and collates the pages in order. I print a separate card stock cover and put them together and staple them. After they are folded and trimmed they make a neat, professional looking small book. Most of them have been written in a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book kind of format and cover parts of the Bible. I have written 27 small books so far. These books are not written for profit. They are my way of telling the message of the Bible to folks that want to learn what it says in a simple plain English condensed format.
God especially blessed me last week. My granddaughter, Alex, and her husband, Jason Ray, gave birth to a son they have named Jack Kenneth Ray. That makes me a great grandfather and my son Kenny Herron a grandfather. I’m not one that brags a lot about their family but I believe this one is the prettiest baby boy ever born in Gordon Hospital.
Life is good!