Swinging at Curve Balls

We are writing this blog far from our home in Arkansas, in fact far from the U.S.

We are not giving up on our dream of building a family recreation attraction we named the Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure, but it is going to have to wait this month. We are following the instruction of Galatians 6:2, which says "bear one another's burdens" by traveling to Bali Indonesia to minister to our dad/father-in-law/grandfather.

Our tip for entrepreneurs today is: when life throws you curve balls, be patient, wait for your pitch and take your best swing. There's not much else we can do right now except trust that God will take care of us and our dream and our family while we are out of the country. Right now we need to be with Grandfather.

Robyn's dad had a stroke back in May just weeks after our second oldest daughter's high school graduation. He flew in from Bali to be there for the big occasion and looked fit as a fiddle. But one night two weeks later while at Robyn's brother's house in Los Angeles, he had a stroke that left the right side of his body paralyzed.

Robyn is a physical therapist and David is working on establishing this business dream, so it seemed like a good fit for us to help Grandfather with his recovery and with his business. We escorted him back to Bali this past week (through four airports and 19 hours of flying time) and are staying with him for about five weeks while he recovers.

Here we are on the beach in Bali Saturday night. (Interesting note: 7 p.m. Bali time is 6 a.m. Arkansas time.) That's Diamond in the Rough playing in the waves in the inset. Unlike the beautiful white beaches of Destin, Fla., the beach we walked last night pictured here is made of black sand. It is still beautiful and the waves are bigger than Destin's.

We will try to continue to blog from overseas, and we hope interest in our business dream will continue to grow. But our priority for the next few weeks is bearing Grandfather's burdens. We covet your prayers during this time.

For those struggling to start or keep open a business, our best tip for entrepreneurs today, put another way, is to trust God and roll with the punches.