I guess it is that time of year, I’m getting the itch to move on. Our ntm website is bigger and better than ever. So please migrate that-a-way. From now on I’ll be posting over there…hopefully it will be easier for my parents to look at our pictures then it was with flickr + the site here. Thanks. Happy reading. www.ntm.org/michael_hutteman

I am sorry to all of you who have a foot phobia, this next post may mention them from time to time.

One of the more tough things that I have had to do recently is to say many many goodbyes to people. There is always quite a few tears; but I am never the one crying. It’s not that I don’t care or that I don’t love, it’s simply that my heart has become calloused over the years. Wikipedia says: A callus (or callosity) is an especially toughened area of skin which has become relatively thick and hard as a response to repeated contact or pressure. I have decided that my heart has become calloused by constant “pressure”…the constant goodbyes have caused a thick layer to form over my heart, or at least the part that forms tears.

Callouses are a way to protect the tender toe or finger. But they aren’t pretty. And they aren’t natural. They aren’t the way things are supposed to be. Every once and awhile a good filing is really necessary. Maybe I need a heavenly Ped-Egg. I have recently been praying that God would soften my heart, praying that He would give me the strength to survive the goodbyes. I don’t want to just use my old techniques to keep myself from being too hurt. I don’t want to continue pulling away from people right at the end. I don’t want to skip out on goodbyes just so I don’t have to go through them. I don’t want to crack silly little jokes in my head to make it through.

And no I won’t post a scary picture of ugle calloused feet, how about a cute one of my g-man doing a happy dance instead?

For a small, simple, short 27 hour flight to Indonesia we will burn 4.9 tons of CO2. A three person family like ours normally burns about 25 tons per year of normal living (with two cars, some air travel, and the use of natural gas). So, we will be burning 1/5 of our yearly average. Sounds like quite a lot doesn’t it?

Before you start picketing outside our house, waving CFL’s, and wearing bamboo shirts…consider that we will be living off of the power grid for most of our lives. We spent some of our missionary training learning the basics of setting up a solar system. Even I can tell you a very little bit about breaker boxes, gell cell batteries, sun sink hours, on demand water heaters, AND I can do some of the soldering needed to set it up. Cool huh?

But the single most important thing that I can do before the Lord to protect the environment, and help other missionaries and ministries in the process is to not buy so many things, and not be such a consumer. This is actually really hard for me. I love new things. I know that God would have me dedicate my entire life, and all my things to him. The cool side benefit is that I can be a good steward of the environment by not buying more new stuff. BUT, I love new stuff…oh the struggle.

Go to MSNBC.com, FoxNews.com, CNN.com. What was the first thing you saw there? Polls, right?!

No matter where you look, what you read, or who you listen to, it seems that all our collective attention (which apparently has the same span as a hyperactive toddler…we would know) is poured into polls. At any given moment, someone, somewhere is guessing what everyone else everywhere wants. How accurate have they been? We’ll only know November 4.

But you don’t have to wait those gruelling 5 days to know the results of our own little election. We asked you, the people, to vote on the route we should take to reach Indonesia next month. The polls are closed and I’m happy to announce a landslide victory (leading by more than 50%) for DUBAI, UAE! We had no voter fraud, no hanging chads, no butterfly ballots, and no “we just lost” parties. So really, our VOTEO8 was in now way representative of the other VOTE08.

But, like the polls that we read about in every newspaper, everyday: there was a margin of error. While you overwhelmingly wanted us to go throught he Middle East, we in fact bought our tickets Tuesday to fly through Taipei, Taiwan. Thanks for participating. Maybe next time, we’ll be able to take your advice (and a little more time) to explore Dubai.

I hope that this has taught us an important lesson about putting your stock into polls: in the end, people will do whatever they want anyway!

 We had a great trip to Florida. We were able to meet with new people and connect with our old friends. And Michael did an amazing job speaking. I was so incredibly proud of him the whole time. I am praying that his words will be used in people’s lives. THE JOB IS HUGE, WE NEED HELP.

If you judge a trip by the food, we had an amazing time. What had:

• fried shrimp
• fried okra
• fried pork chops
• hush puppies
• Louisiana gumbo
• Homemade mac & cheese
• LOTS of sweet tea
• grits and eggs
• creamed corn and creamed spinach and creamed green beans
• and lots of other great things

Whenever we go down there we always get an education in Southern cooking. It’s fun.

Now I should probably go running.

We are in Florida getting ready to speak to First Baptist Church Callahan tomorrow. Michael is preparing to speak before the largest groups he has ever talked to–a 200 strong teen Sunday School, and an evening service in an auditorium that can seat over 1,000. I think he is a little nervous. Anyway, our wonderful host Wanda showed me this video…

My cardboard would say, “Selfish and still struggling, but with God’s love compelling me, I am becoming more selfless.”

What would yours say?

G’s in love! No. He hasn’t taken to any of your cute little girls (try as we have to arrange a marriage for him). Instead, he’s avoided our match making efforts and fallen head over handlebars for his PopPop’s motorcycle.

He’s been hooked on bikes in general for a long time, but living with one right outside his front door is just too much for G. Every waking moment he thinks about it. He stands for hours (relative to how long he’ll pay attention to any other single item or person) at the screen door pining for it. He runs across the parking lot to stand and gaze at it. And more annoyingly, he begs continually to ride it.

So the other day, when he heard the distinct VROOOOMumumum that he has come to associate with everything great in life, he bounded to the front door. His PopPop made his week when by decking our little biker out in “hat” and gloves and “aye tasses”. We’ll have to put those on our list of things to buy as soon as we set foot in Indonesia. Along, of course, with a bike of his own!

Proverbs 22:6 “TRAIN up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” 

We brought you into the world, and so we can take you wherever we want, right? Our approach to traveling with G has followed that principle. At 3 months we moved him 6 states away from his birthplace. The next month we turned south and drove him up and down the East Coast. Half a year later, we dragged him across the Pacific Ocean (and back) to visit his grandparents in Papua New Guinea. This summer we carted him from coast to coast and back.  

A wise man wrote that your grown children will follow the paths of behavior that you set them on when they are young. This basic principle reminds us that we are laying tracks into our son’s future. We’ve placed him on a road that will lead him in a life of wanderlusting. We are winding him up to hit the world running when we finally let him go. I suppose it could be worse. As we plan to drag him through our many more journeys ahead, it can’t hurt that he will soon come along happily.

He already enjoys trips more than he did (I’m not sure if he realized that the first few were trips). When we hopped the Amtrak to Boston last week, G had miles of fun. In fact, he found the train so enthralling that he easily passed the 6 hours just running up and down the aisle, in and out of the bathrooms, between the cars and back, over the seats, under the seats, between the seats…What happened to the docile backseat sleeper? The easily entertained seatmate? What have we created?