Doing God's work in wind-swept places.

As my wife and I sat by the pool of our Southern California apartment, she reminisced about how much she enjoyed the tiny town where her grandparents lived-some place in Eastern Colorado.

"Bethune, Colorado!" I said. "Come on, honey, you've got to be kidding."

Something in my gut told me poking fun of such "out-of-the-way places" was dangerous. After all, God seems to have a special place in his heart for the tiny and the so-called unimportant.

I had grown up in the heart of Southern California. On perfect summer days at college, my buddies and I used to sit outside the school library and laugh at the possibility of being called to some windswept place like Kansas or North Dakota-the old "I'll go anywhere you want me to, Lord, just not Africa" syndrome.

Yes, the cool spray of the waves crashing beneath Newport Pier and the endless Southern California summer allowed no room for thoughts of ministering in Podunk. Those who ended up in such places were there ...