California Vacation ... Final stop...Home at last.

Here it is the final round of the California Vacation 2009. This last stop is the real reason that California was chosen as the Baker family vacation. You see to begin with, I did not want to go to the West Coast for vacation. I did not want all of the traveling from site to site. I wanted to go to the beach and sit on the balcony and drink coffee in the morning and then go read by the pool. Yes, I wanted to do nothing. I heavily considered the island of St. John because Jim and Allyson Campbell have been there and they highly, highly recommend it. You can rent a house for a reasonable amount and then I thought that we could use our airline miles to get us there. Great plan, right? Yes, it was, but Patty did not wholeheartedly endorse that plan. She said that you could use those same airline miles to get our entire family to California and we could use Hotwire and Priceline to keep the hotel expenses at bay. I knew she was right, but the real issue for Patty was that she had to be on the West Coast for a business conference whether we vacationed in St. John or in California. Patty’s logic won out. We decided to build the vacation around her conference / trade show and then work backwards.

As most of you know, Patty runs a business called SecureGive. She provides the technology for churches and non-profits to receive bank card donations through a giving kiosk in the lobby of the facility. It’s been interesting to see the business expand. She currently has close to 150 accounts that involve around 100 organizations. She has become a specialists in helping churches reach their stewardship potential. She never dreamed when she graduated with a sociology degree that she would be leading a software company, but today she serves several of the largest churches in America and notable non-profits like the Pearl Harbor Foundation. Yes, if you visit the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor you will see one of her units.

Patty travels to between five to ten trade shows a year. Within a twelve month period, SecureGive has been at shows or will be in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Jacksonville, Long Beach, Orlando, South Bend, and Charlotte. I don’t travel with her all the time, but there’s one conference that I don’t want to miss and that is the NACBA, the National Association of Church Business Administrators. This is the premier conference of the year because you have the decision makers from America’s largest churches. This year’s conference was in Long Beach, CA so now you know why we ended up in California on our vacation.

The NACBA conference started on Thursday. As we were walking over to the exhibit hall, I looked up and saw a familiar face, Ann Williams. Ann was sitting out on the veranda enjoying the 70 degree California weather. Ann attends the NACBA event every year as a part of her continuing education. The conference provides attendees with some of the most up-to-date information available.

After a short visit with Ann, we continued setting up the booth. People always say that in real estate it’s location, location, location. Well this year, unlike previous years, we were blessed with one of the best spots in the exhibit hall. We were on an end of the aisle one row over from Bank of the West near the entry way. That was great because I hung out with the Bank of the West team and could still be close to Stuart, Sarah and Patty at the SecureGive booth. I have to keep an eye on them to make sure that they stayed busy. Just kidding.

The SecureGive booth always gets a lot of traffic because the technology is new and Patty and Sarah are truly the best looking folks on the trade show floor. Seriously. Think about it. Most traveling sales teams are made up of middle aged men, especially if you are marketing software. To turn the corner and have two smiling women, with their freshly painted nails, to demonstrate a new software application, is a welcomed sight. Then you add a sweet Southern drawl people line up just to hear them talk and boy do they talk. Then you add Stuart into the mix. It's a combination for success. For most of the time, I am on the opposite aisle looking at a party that I was not invited too. Oh well. The conference went well. Trade shows are long and they are hard work. By the end of the day, you are ready for a good meal and a soft bed.

After the show closed, we ventured across the street to PF Changs. It was very, very good. I am not sure if the food was that good or that we were that hungry. You know that food always taste better when you are hungry.

When the sun rose on Friday, we were eager to take on the day. We had lunch that day with a couple from Canada, David and Blossom. They were very kind folks and we enjoyed getting to know them. I have to say that she is the first person that I have ever met with the name Blossom. Her middle name is Honey. She told us that her dad wanted to name her Honey Blossom, but her mom vetoed that and they settled on Blossom Honey. We can add her to the list of notable named people that we friends with. For instance, at The Creek, we have Jesse James (recently featured on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire notable name week) and Fig Newton. Fig is one of our greeters at the church. Needless to say, when you meet someone with a notable name, it’s an easy way to begin a conversation.

On Saturday, I covered the exhibit hall trying to find the latest and greatest stuff for local churches. It’s interesting for me to attend a show like this because you hear what other effective churches are doing to reach their community. I landed at the Fellowship Technologies booth and hung out with Steve and Jeff. F1 is an up and coming church management company that serves 33 of the top 100 churches in America.

In the church management market, there over three hundred players, but only a handful of companies that lead the church: F1, ACS, and Shelby are the leaders. Shelby Systems has a newer product called Arena and one of our church members, Christopher Rivers, is a sales representative for them. These three companies go head-to-head with each other with each one having their niche. All of them are loaded with kind and resourceful team members. Conferences like NACBA give me an opportunity to see the newest gadgets and gizmos.

The final day of the exhibit was Sunday. I let Bank of the West handle their booth and Patty, Stuart and Sarah handle SecureGive while Samuel and I went to church. People laugh at me but I seldom miss a Sunday whether I am in town or out of town. Kevin and Todd will often say, “Marty, you are on vacation. You can miss church.” Sunday is the Lord’s Day and I want to be with his people. Now, I am not saying that all those church administrators are not His people. I am just saying that I love to go to worship with fellow believers. Samuel and I logged onto the net and found a Church of God within driving distance. We actually went to the Living Waters Church of God in Fountain Valley, CA. Dan Moore is the pastor of this congregation. When Patty and I were first starting out, I preached at this church in the mid 1980s. It was located in the same spot so it was easy to find. Dan was on vacation and the Youth Pastor spoke. He did a fine job.

After church, we grabbed lunch in Fountain Valley and headed back to Long Beach. We helped them pack up and then dropped by FEDEX and we were done. Whew. We drove to Irvine, checked into the Hyatt, had dinner at On the Border and then to a movie. On Monday, we started the day at the pool. This was one of the only times that we had our swim suits on. During most of our trip, the weather was too cold for pools and beaches. We were finally south enough to enjoy some sunshine. We had lunch at the Claim Jumper, enjoyed a few moments at the South Coast Mall and then headed to John Wayne Airport to board a plane for Dallas. We spent the night in Dallas and then on to Atlanta. We arrived in Atlanta on July 21^st, nineteen days after we had departed.

This was the longest vacation that we have ever been on. It was memorable. When you have two kids in college and one in high school, you learn to treasure the moments that you have all of them together. We treasured these moments and are very thankful that they love one another and enjoy hanging out with their parents. Like I said, we arrived in Atlanta, but our luggage did not. It was still in Dallas. Oh well. It made getting through the airport a little easier. American Airlines flew our luggage to Columbia where Stuart picked it up later that day.

For those of you that have taken the time to read this blog, you have a little snap shot of our lives. We have been blessed by the Lord and consider it an honor to have each other and to have a wonderful church family at Stevens Creek.