Day 7 – Winding Down (in Pain)

It was an interesting final day, filled with a strange combination of laziness and suffering.

Sandy was awakened at 5:30 am by Alex’s trip to the bathroom (attached to our bedroom). Not able to go back to sleep, she woke me up to talk for awhile. At 6:00 am, she got up and went down to the beach for a cool quiet time. It was interesting for her to be alone down there, but she was surprised to watch a snake swimming around the beach. Needless to say, she didn’t get in the lake the rest of the day.

I got up at 8:00 am and spent some time on the Internet. I know I’m on vacation, but if I let e-mails back up for eight or nine days, I would never get caught up. So today I was catching up on lots of little things that needed to be done. But I didn’t just work. I took breaks several times to play basketball, swim, take a walk, and start packing up our stuff.

I even had the chance to pray for someone here. I was sitting on the porch of the rec center, chatting online, when a lady that Mike and I talked to earlier came up to me. Her name is Emma. She said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I know you’re a Christian. Could you pray for something for me?” So I talked with her a bit and found out that her step daughter has been “kidnapped” (her word) by her fiance’s ex-wife’s parents. It was a complicated story, and something I didn’t really want to try to get all the details on. However, she told me the little girl’s name is Hannah, so I stopped and prayed for her right there. I’m not sure how she figured out we were Christians, but it’s nice to be noticed. If you have a moment, would you pray for Emma and Hannah as well?

When we returned back to Dezi’s condo for brunch, we found out that Mike was in bad shape. He got a horrible sunburn on Wednesday and was afraid that he may have gotten sun poisoning. This morning, he got the fiery itch that he couldn’t shake. He has had it before and expected that it would last twelve hours. The rest of the day he spent howling in pain, barely soothed by Dezi’s best attempts at comfort. By 8:45, he had gone to sleep and the 12 hours of torture were over. Early tomorrow, they have to drive to St. Louis to drop Dezi off at the airport to go get Raena, so we’re praying that Mike feels like driving her the 5 hours to the airport.

Star Wars – While Mike and Dezi were out of commission, everyone came to our condo for French Bread Pizza, Ice Cream, and watching Star Wars. Now Dezi is down here making Funnel Cakes for everyone. That should get everyone wound up before bed.

Well, I’m off to carry things out to the van and post the final blog. We’ll be taking off about 8:15 in the morning, and should return home by about 3:30 Saturday afternoon. Thanks for reading and praying while we were gone for a week. It was a great time. We’re talking about Chicago for next year’s vacation.

Day 6 – Exploring the Lake and Town

Here’s the very short version of a very long day. It’s 11:47 pm as I write, and I just want to hit the highlights.

It was fun to head to the recreation center and work out in the exercise room, then get on the Internet and catch up on some e-mails. I needed to call Dr. Oakes to talk about a few things, so I used skype to call over the Internet and get caught up with him. I think some people walking by wondered why I was talking into my laptop, but oh well.

We had decided Thursday was the day to rent a pontoon boat and explore the lake. Turns out that there wasn’t much of a lake to explore. Crown Lake is only 650 acres, which makes it comparable in size to Long Branch Lake in Macon. It is a man-made lake, but is pretty. There are several nice homes built along the lake, but not really the million dollar homes like you might see at Lake of the Ozarks or Branson.

We rented a 28 foot pontoon boat with a 90 horsepower motor. With 11 people on the boat, that’s not exactly a lot of power. I felt like we had all the speed we needed to pull an inflatable raft behind, but it wouldn’t have worked for skiing. Since the lake was so small, it didn’t take long to go from one side to the other.

We spent a little while just getting a feel for the different parts of the lake, then the kids were ready to ride the raft. Adam and Talon started. After Mike and Colan fell off into the lake, Sandy got to ride with Anna. Their smiles showed how much fun it was.


I rode with Alex later.

He wanted to sing while we rode, so we did Jesus Loves Me and This Little Light of Mine. He had a blast on the thing and never seemed scared of the water at all.

After everyone had a chance to ride, we stopped to swim.

While the kids enjoyed the swimming, the ladies got out sandwiches and chips for lunch, which we ate on the boat.

We did a little more riding around and even got Sandy to show off her skiing skills on the raft.


Four hours on the boat went by pretty quickly, and then we were back to the condo for the afternoon. Everyone was pretty wiped out from the ride. I even took a nap, my second afternoon nap of the week!

For supper, I grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, getting them just a little too well done. I’m used to my George Foreman electric grill at home, and the charcoal was just a little hotter than what I could control.

After supper, we decided to try the mini-golf place. After being at some mini-golf places on vacation in the past that were eight or nine dollars each, we thought this place would be more reasonable. When we got there, the guy said it was free! What a deal! Some of the kids fooled around from hole to hole, but Mike, Ian, and I had a little competition, with Mike as the winner. One neat thing about the course was that each hole had a scaled replica of a building in town (a church, grocery store, restaurant, etc.). Eighteen holes basically covered the landmarks of the whole town.

The little kids and the ladies went to a town park to play on the playground while Adam, Ian, David, and Mike went to the Country club to play tennis. The court wasn’t as nice as the ones we have in Moberly, but the surroundings were pretty. It was on the top of a hill overlooking the golf course below. The Fincher men beat the Worstell men 5 points to 1.

We all got the kids to bed, then the Worstells brought frozen pizzas upstairs so we could have a little couple time. We played a neat game called Sequence, with Mike and Sandy beating Dezi and me two games to one.

It was a late night, but great fun.

Tomorrow: Winding down

Day 5 (Wednesday) – Beach Bums

Now this is what vacation is all about. I slept until 8 am, then spent some time at the Rec Center catching up on my Internet, drinking coffee, and having prayer time. It was time to do some laundry, so I volunteered to go wash and dry. The kids spent most of the day at the beach, playing in the sand.

Mike got a bad sunburn, so pray that he won’t feel too bad the rest of the week.

I watched Alex and Devin from the outdoor pool to the indoor pool. I volunteered them to go to the indoor pool so I could use my pocket PC on the Internet there. It was neat to chat with some people at Central while sitting next to the pool. I only felt a little guilty.

But for the whole afternoon, the kids were working on their own sand fort. They got chewed out a little by the resort staff for digging so much sand up into piles (They are a little strict here, but I won’t talk about that now.) Here are the results of what they worked on all afternoon.

Anna is building a volcano.


Adam is working on some kind of castle.


Alex would rather just swim in his lifejacket (here with Devin).


Their final product:

I’m not sure what to call it, but they sure had fun building it.

If you haven’t looked on the website, here are what the units look like (this one is right next to ours).


We’ve really been eating well this week. Sandy and Dezi have gone all out to make some of our families’ favorite foods. Sandy made baked potatoes and sausage-rice casserole for lunch. Dezi had beef and noodles with other goodies for supper.

We finished out the evening at the playground, playing a little badminton and horseshoes. By the time 8:30 rolled around, we were all pretty wiped out and basically out of gas. We sat down on the couch to watch Gary Smalley on TBN, but it was only a few minutes until Sandy was asleep. So I wrote my blog while she slept and Gary talked about the importance of memorizing God's word to help improve relationships. Not a bad way to finish the day.

Tomorrow: Boating on the lake

Day 4 – The Pilgrimmage to Clintonville (Little Rock on Independence Day)

David, Mike, Adam, and Ian took a road trip to Little Rock, leaving at 7:05 am. More about that in a minute, but here’s what happened with Sandy, Dezi, and the little kids. There was a local parade for the Fourth of July, so the girls and little ones loaded up for the local celebration of Independence Day. Sandy said it was a small parade with more candy than she had ever seen before. The kids were at the end of the parade, so they received most of the leftovers. Anna got her hair all twisted up in a handheld fan.

The kids swam in the outside pool until rain showers came, forcing them to move to the indoor pool. It’s nice to have choices. Besides that, everyone ate a lot of candy and watched cartoons.

Now, to the highlight of the day: A trip to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum (aka Clinton Library or Bubba’s Books, Bait, and Tackle) in Little Rock. For some strange reason (which no one in our traveling party can understand), I have had a desire to go visit the Clinton presidential library. Maybe it’s because I regretted not going to Reagan’s library last summer while we were in California. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much time in my life talking about Bill Clinton, I really just have a fixation on him. Ostensibly, the reason was “We’re too close not to go” (oddly, the same reason I had last week for driving three hours to Niagara Falls). So I convinced Mike, and we dragged along our two oldest boys in an effort to help the wives have a little less work while we were gone, as well as teaching them some history.

On the way down, we stopped in the Batesville McDonald’s for breakfast. Mike and I had McGriddles, and we agreed that the entire trip was worth it just for the opportunity to eat one of those. Thanks to Glenn Beck for inspiring me to first try one several years ago. They are the perfect breakfast food. I thought of Tracy Roach while I ate mine.

Two hours and twenty minutes after leaving, we rolled into Little Rock. Crossing the Arkansas River, we saw the CPC jutting out over the river. I had heard someone say it looks like a single-wide house trailer, and I can see the resemblance. But after looking at it longer, I now think it looks more like a semi trailer parked down by the river. Weaving through the streets leading there, we quickly found a parking lot already filled at 9:30, just 30 minutes after it opened. Admission was free in honor of July 4th, which might explain why the crowds were so large. Normal admission price is $7, a portion of which goes to benefit the Clinton Foundation. I’m itching to say something smart-alecky, but I’ll just say “no comment”. I’ll probably have to say that several times in this blog.

Mike immediately noticed the people leaving their cars were almost all Oriental or African-American. Clinton is immensely popular with both, as he was seen as pro-Chinese and pro-black. The first thing I noticed was that parked right in front of the CPC were several porta-potties. Here’s Mike and the boys posed in front of them.


Adam decided to use one just to make sure it would work. If you’re ever in Arkansas and need to rent one, here’s the contact information:


The reason for the porta-potties was that they were having a family picnic on the lawn in front of the CPC. There was croquet, large inflatable balls, food for sale, and lots of music playing. Someone was selling slices of watermelon from Hope, Arkansas (Bill Clinton’s birthplace). There were several families with kids there. Adam picked up a ball long enough to pose.



There wasn’t much of a line to get in, but we did have to go through security. Mike got busted for bringing in a water bottle, which they confiscated. Ian smuggled his in his shorts, but we confessed and they confiscated it, too. They had a huge tub full of soda bottles and cans. Mike speculates that they probably use them to stock the vending machines down in the cafeteria.

It was sort of overwhelming at first, but it turned out that there really wasn’t that much there to look at. The first floor had Clinton’s presidential limousine, which was retired when Bush took office. The second floor had a collection of all the Clinton campaign pins. Most of them were plain, but here are a few creative ones:



The highlight of Adam’s day was finding out that the Clintons had a cat named Socks. He was thrilled when we got a free picture of Socks the Cat later at the gift store.

There was also a large collection of pictures from the 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Here’s my favorite:

This picture was taken during happier days, back when the Clintons and Gores were still friends and Bill and Hillary actually lived in the same house (or bus).

There was a nice replica of the Oval Office during Clinton’s years, which I included in the video. (For video highlights of our trip, check out the site finchers.podomatic.com.) It was actually pretty cool to get a sense of the size, shape, and layout of the oval office. I even got a couple of ideas for outfitting my new office, but we’ll see if Corey says it’s too late to change it to an oval shape.

Adam wandered off and found a new exhibit in which cowboy heroes of the silver screen were featured. Apparently, President Clinton was a huge fan of Westerns Movies as a kid and there were lots of pictures of him dressed up as a junior cowboy. Here was his artwork from early in school:


The next section displayed tons of things that the Clintons were given as gifts during his presidency. (No sign of things that may or may not have been removed from the White House.) This was quite a collection of stuff, as Mike said, that you would never want to keep for yourself after someone gave it to you. There were tons of paintings people had done of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea. Would you want those in your house? Neither would I, so they wound up on display behind glass for people to pay $7 to come see. I only took a picture of one such “gift horse,” a collection of porcelain eggs with different presidents painted on one side and their first ladies painted on the other side:


I’m not sure in the case of Bill and Hillary which was intended to be which.

Finally, the last exhibit we saw was a recreation of the President’s Cabinet Room. It’s a huge table with built in video touch screens (although I’m not sure if the original one has that or not). Adam is sitting here in the Vice-President’s chair.


We wrapped up our time in Little Rock with a quick visit to the gift store, part of which is described in the video. I added to my magnet collection and bought a presidential mouse pad. Other than that, everything looked too expensive to me. Mike couldn't find any Monica Lewinsky bobble-head dolls, so we gave up and left.

After a quick stop at Arby’s for lunch, we went to Harding University at Searcy, Arkansas on the way home. It is a church of Christ college, and has a very impressive campus. One of our 2006 graduates, Brock Gandy, is transferring there and the good news was that they accepted every one of his credits from Central and transferred his associate’s degree in to make him a Central. We’ve been looking for colleges like this to work with, so I want to explore future possibilities with them. We drove around the HUGE campus until we found the Bible and Missions building, a very impressive three story brick building. The highlight for Mike was the mural of the globe made in tile on the floor. Here he is standing on (you guessed it) Taiwan.


Driving home, we stopped in Cave City to buy a good Arkansas watermelon and stop at Dollar General. We made it back to the condo in time to miss the rain that had come through, leaving things cooled down and a little wet. The kids went down to the beach to try catching fish with the butterfly nets we had bought them at DG. It was fairly frustrating, but there was some success. One kid (not one of ours) used our net and caught a turtle. That was pretty exciting.

Dezi made steak for supper and then we watched The Princess Bride, a classic eighties movie. We finished just in time to go see the town’s fairly impressive display of fireworks. It was every bit as long as the one in Moberly. It finished about 9:45, after which we got everyone home and to bed.

And amazingly enough, I spent the entire 4th of July without connecting to the Internet one time! Now that is a vacation!

[Signing out for now to check my 50 e-mails.]

Day 3 – Recreation and Karaoke

This blog is being written from the recreation center during the big karaoke night. The room is full of American Idol wannabees. At the top of the list are my wife and daughter, both of whom can’t wait to sing. The rest of us aren’t quite as excited about it, but it should be fun anyway. I’ll narrate the day's event on the blog with live updates from the interesting occurrences at the karaoke.

Warming up during my prayer time this morning at 7:45 am were two girls and their mom. They were singing country songs, waiting for the recreation center open. Do you know how hard it is to pray when three girls are singing country music acapella and off-tune? Fortunately, they left after 8 minutes. I guess prayer does work!

We try to have themed devotions on vacation. In the past we’ve done Ocean Devotions (Galveston), Mountain Devotions (Gatlinburg), and Desert Devotions (Palm Springs). This year we took a good look around and decided the most appropriate topic was bugs. They are everywhere here in the Ozarks. So here are this year’s Bug Devotions, one for each day of the week:
1. Ants are small creatures, but smart. They work hard when it’s warm so they can have a vacation when it’s cold. All the small kids in the family can pitch in to help out with the work and be a big help. One of the reasons we work hard during the school year is so that we can take a break in the summer when school is out. (Proverbs 6:6; 30:25)
2. Hornets/wasps are frightening, but they can be controlled by God. He used them to scare his enemies so that the Israelites could defeat them. (Exodus 23:28; Deuteronomy 7:20; Joshua 24:12)
3. Gnats show us that we shouldn’t worry about little things when we have big problems. In Matthew 23:24, Jesus pointed out the error of the Pharisees in straining out a small harmless thing from the water you drink when you are about to swallow something far more dangerous (a camel).
4. Moths destroy clothes and fabric as the eggs hatch and the babies eat whatever they can find. Something we have that looks pretty can easily be ruined, so we shouldn’t get too attached to stuff (Matt 6:19; Luke 12:33; James 5:2).
5. Spiders make webs that take a lot of time and effort for them to build. While they look neat and are amazing, they aren’t very strong and certainly wouldn’t hold anyone up. People who don’t follow God think they are building a life for themselves, but it’s not strong enough to hold them up when they lean on it (Job 8:13-15).
6. Locusts in Revelation are used by the Devil to torment people that don’t follow God (Revelation 9:3-6). Just like God allowed the locusts to plague the Egyptians to get their attention, the Devil will use the biting pain of earthly things to discourage and torment people who don’t follow God.
7. Bees provide us a very special treat, honey. It is one of God’s sweetest gifts to us, but we have to work to enjoy it. Samson got honey, but only when he fought through the bees to scrape out the honey (Judges 14:8-9). Many of God’s blessings to us are like that, requiring us to make an effort to take full advantage of them.

Our kids enjoy the daily devotions from a same theme and it’s amazing all the stuff they can remember!

This has been a slow day in the Ozarks. They’re calling for rain Tuesday and Wednesday, so we decided to hang around here and do outside stuff. We played a little badminton in the morning and the kids enjoyed the playground. The indoor pool and hot tub were the location of most of the fun from 10:30 – 12:00, while I played basketball. After almost losing the resort’s basketball in the lake, I decided I had better get in the pool instead. It was a nice, medium sized pool, with nice, cool water and not too crowded. Everyone was there except for Adam. He preferred to stay in the room and play his new Sim Theme Park game.

Ian, Adam, and Talon have created a neat theme park of their own on that game. It’s pretty humorous to hear them talk about going into debt, changing their admission costs, costs of employment, and other business terms. I think they’re really learning a lot about business.

Well the karaoke is starting. They began with thanking God and now we’re starting with a very high rendition of God Bless the U.S.A. It was a nice gesture. The lady up front is wearing a flag around her neck like a scarf. I thought that was a breach of flag etiquette. Oh well. As long as you’re singing a patriotic song, I guess it’s ok.

Now she’s singing Crazy by Patsy Cline. Maybe more appropriate than she intended.

After lunch in Dezi’s kitchen (chicken alfredo, breadsticks, and salad), there were differences of opinion on what to do for the afternoon. The wives and little kids went to the beach to play, while Mike, Ian, and I stayed behind and played game cube. We played a classic Eighties game called “Rampart”, and Ian torched Mike and me.

After awhile, we joined the rest of the family out on the beach, where the highlight of the day was Mike seeing a snake in the water. Sandy, Dezi, and I vacated the lake and went back to the beach. Mike and Ian went out in search of the snake with a paddle, but weren’t able to find it.

I sat on the beach for another hour reading a book I checked out from Central’s library last week: “The Jesus Crisis”. It’s an examination of historical criticism from a Biblical perspective, explaining the philosophical underpinnings that make it an inappropriate method for understanding Scripture. Thanks to Mr. Reese for suggesting it to me. The authors are both professors at John MacArthur’s The Master’s Seminary, which made it even more interesting to me. It is very well documented and highly recommended.

The karaoke is turning into a strange concert by a couple of ladies here. I’m looking forward to getting Anna up there soon. However, the kids are having fun. Devin and Alex are putting together a puzzle. Adam and Talon are playing Jenga.

[This is Mike writing as David is up taking a picture of Anna singing her Karaoke song. There is finally some real talent up front. So far, it has been more like Croak-e singing. Well, David’s back.]

Anna’s singing one of her favorite Zoegirl songs, “Beautiful Name”. She really has enjoyed all of vacation this week, and this was something she was really looking forward to.
Here’s a picture of her.

The lady in yellow is the host and the sound man is back there.

Sandy and I are trying to find something to sing. Just listened to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and I actually heard Mike and Dezi singing.

So Sandy has decided that we will sing I’ll Fly Away. Sounds like fun to me right now. Here's a shot of us doing it.


Well, we only have one or two more songs to wait for. I think it's time for bed, but Alex and Anna are going to sing the Brady Bunch theme song and Dezi and Sandy are trying to find a song. As soon as the Fincher kids sing, we're out of here, although Mike and Dezi are looking for something right now.

Sandy made Mexican food for supper and we had a great time together. A special treat was a chocolate milk brand that Mike has a hard time finding, but he saw it in Mountain Home. Promised Land Chocolate Milk

Ok, the kids just sang the Brady Bunch, and it was a real crowd pleaser. I thought we would have a video clip, but technical difficulties came up. Oh well, you can take our word for it.

I'm going to let you go for now. Tomorrow, we have a very special road trip and a celebration of Independence Day. And hopefully it will rain and cool off some.

Day 2 – Worship and Relaxation

What a joyful time we had at Memorial Christian Church for their Sunday services. Gene McCoy, chairman of the board at Central Christian College, has been the preaching minister there since 1993. The congregation has done well under his leadership and they have a real spirit of friendliness and encouragement there. At first I regretted the one hour drive when there was a non-instrumental church of Christ just 10 miles away. But we were glad we made the trip after we got there. It also gave us a good chance to eat out for lunch one more time, since there aren't any fast-food restaurants here in Horseshoe Bend.

Quick observations on the church service. The preaching service came first, starting at 9:30. The auditorium was fairly full and everyone seemed very friendly. We started with a promotional video for the National Missionary Convention. The missions theme returned at the end of the service, as the congregation joins in what they call a "Harvest Prayer," where they recite Jesus' command to ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into the harvest field.

Worship was led by Gene and Becky McCoy, as well as another lady singing. It was a nice blend of choruses and hymns, all done very upbeat and in a smoothly transitioned medley. Lots of different people were involved in the service, from the husband-wife team reading Scripture and praying, to the communion meditation and closing prayer.

I got one neat idea from the church service: they play announcements on the powerpoint during the offertory (no special music). People actually pay attention to the announcements that way, and some of them are actually entertaining or cute. Someone in the church spends time creating attractive slides with all the information spelled out on the slide in an easy to read format. The best response came from a picture of a newborn baby from the congregation with all the pertinent information listed right there.

Gene preached from 1 Corinthians 10:14-11:1 about fellowshipping with the Lord or with the idol’s temples. It was a nice blend of exposition and exhortation.

After preaching came Sunday school, and all the kids split up to different rooms. We adults went to a Bible study of Exodus, where they were discussing the 10th plague from Exodus 11. Hubert Pickett was the teacher. I found out that Hubert and his wife Janet (Lusby) both were Central graduates, so it was nice to see the College's influence through both the preacher and his wife (McCoys) and the Sunday school teacher.

Since today is Mike and Colan's birthdays, we let them pick the restaurant. Mike was hungry for fried chicken, even though we had it last night at Karen's Kitchen. (He thinks he could eat it every day!). He picked Popeye's chicken and biscuits, a chain that is more in the south than where we live. Ordering for a huge family at a new restaurant is a bit of a challenge, but we pulled it off.



We spent another hour in Mountain Home (aka civilization) at the Christian Bible Outlet and Wal-mart before driving the hour back.

By the way, here’s the quote of the day. We’re looking at stuff in the Christian Bible Outlet and Alex is talking about how much money he needs to buy something he wants. So he tells Colan, “My Grandpa gives me a dollar every time he comes to see me. I wish he would come a thousand times.” Looks like he understands multiplication.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the beach again. We canoed, played in the sand, and jumped around in the water.

Dezi and Sandy made supper for us to share in the condo.

It was by far the best meal we had all weekend thus far. The kids are wrestling out in the sunroom while the adults get a little game time in the living room. Mike and Dezi taught us a new game (to us) called “Blockus”. Pretty fun and interesting.

Now we’re on the Internet in the recreation center listening to a guy named Dave Sharp play old country songs on his guitar. I heard him sing “On the Road Again” and Mike said he needed to hit the road again. Now he’s playing old Johnny Cash Songs. He started with Folsom Prison Blues and now he’s playing the Ring of Fire. Now he’s imitating June Carter. Not a pretty sight (or sound).

I’m about to finish up here. It’s getting too wild for us in the rec room. Most of the people here are retired, but there are a few children around who are stuck here with their grandparents. I’m sure glad my grandparents took us camping instead of a place like this. They’re currently listening to Dave Sharp imitate Dolly Parton singing “I will always love you.” My guess is that they’ll be warped for life from that. Before I could get this posted and leave, he asked everyone to sing along as well. It’s just getting better every minute.

Right before I posted this, Big Dave Sharp started singing the Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton, and to my amazement, Mike was singing along with everyone. We've been here too long.

Signing out for now.