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Movers and Shakers From Wiktionary:  Noun mover and shaker (plural movers and shakers) (idiomatic) Someone who has power and influence in a field or activity; one [who] accomplishes tasks, who gets things done. In Late May Karen and I had an opportunity to spend some time with two very different – and very similar – groups of “movers and shakers”. The first group attended Training Camp for the July launch of three Squads (roughly 150 people) on the World Race.  The World Race is a stretching journey into 11 countries in 11 months to serve “the least of these” while amongst real and raw community. This unique mission trip is a challenging adventure for young adults to abandon worldly possessions and a traditional lifestyle in exchange for an understanding…

My name is Dan Shogren and along with my wife Karen we are coaches for The World Race.  By way of quick background, by far and away our greatest accomplishment in life so far (in my humble opinion!) is that we’ve raised three great kids. Our oldest, Jonathan, and his wife Katya and our granddaughter Emilia recently moved back to Georgia from Chicago.  By the time you read this our daughter and her Army pilot husband, Capt. TJ Menn will have both completed their Master’s Degrees from Harvard and will be moving (moved?) to West Point where TJ will be an instructor for the next three years.  Over the past 7 years they have shared 18 foster children with us (No, not all at once, although they have had up to five at a time).  And our youngest son Bobby lives in Atlant…

I don’t know how to do that   My grandfather was a plumber.  My dad was a plumber.  One of my brothers followed in their footsteps and is about to retire after over 35 years in the business.  A cousin is a pipefitter.  A couple of in-laws are plumbers.  One niece married a plumber.  It’s always nice to have one in the family for times when the toilet backs up, or the water heater fails, or the ejector pump gets clogged. Or the skills (?) to handle those things yourself.     My grandfather on the left, and my dad, sitting at dad’s “office” – the family kitchen table.   I spent a few summers working with my dad digging ditches and running out to the truck to get things for him (step ‘n fetchit).  One of dad&rs…

I can’t compete.  Or perhaps better said, it’s not a competition I’ll ever have a chance to win.  There are currently 46 racers plus the two Squad Leaders on U Squad and most all of them are blogging like crazy.  I can’t keep up.  I can hardly keep up reading them all – but I do read them all!  Trying to keep up with my own blogs is a challenge to say the least.  Many of the racers have wonderful stories and profound insights to share.   You can get to the U Squad “main” blog page here:  http://www.worldrace.org/?tab=participants&group=13W0901 From there you can access any of the blogs for all of the U Squad racers.  Check them out. In the meantime – I’m going to “Plagiarize” a good portion of a recent post since it did a pretty good jo…

Some of my friends and colleagues have asked about my “mission” work.   My role is pretty simple – I get to love, support, guide, and teach a team of “Racers” as THEY travel around the world for nearly a year (11 countries in 11 months!).  Right now Karen and I are coaches for U Squad.  They’re the ones actually out in the field day after day doing real missionary work.  I just get to visit them – somewhere along their journey – a couple of times during their travels.  My latest (first field trip) visit was to meet with them just as they were preparing to leave China and head to Thailand.  So let me tell you what some of them were up to in Thailand. U Squad is composed of 7 teams (I think another blog is in order to expla…

Mention “Youth Hostel” and most people conjure up images of dorms and communal bathrooms.  And you’d be right most of the time.  In my younger days I could have/would have done that.  Given that I’ll camp out in a tent and sleep on the ground, a youth hostel doesn’t sound all that bad.  My better half though has other ideas. When we found out that U Squad would be staying in a hostel in Beijing, I volunteered (or perhaps better said, Karen acquiesced) to join them if we could get a private room.  It turns out many hostels have private rooms, with ensuite bathrooms!   We might have ended up in some big-name hotel, completely lacking in character, at some astronomical rate, blocks from the Squad.  Instead we stayed at a most…

Our journey to Harbin was to meet with the 49 World Racers and was not aimed at connecting with or ministering to the Chinese people. So our interactions with the locals were few and for the most part tied to getting around or eating.  (We did a LOT of both – GREAT FOOD.) The Chinese language is hardly a romantic one; even in “friendly” conversations it often sounds like they are angry.  So when the taxi driver seemed to wave us off we weren’t deterred.   After all he was sitting in front of our hotel with his “For Hire” sign on.  We showed him our train ticket and pointed to the name of the station but all he did was raise his voice more and make wilder gestures that were easy to understand as meaning “No”.  There being no other taxis around, and with a tra…

We arrived in Harbin China at about midnight, after a series of three flights covering about 24 hours.  The ride from the airport took about 45 minutes and at first I thought we were driving through a deserted countryside.  As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark it became evident that we were driving through a dense, dark forrest of high rise apartment and office buildings.  There were few street lights, and only occasional brightly lit signs for the few still-open stores, bars, or restaurants.  There were few other vehicles on the streets, although several construction trucks sped passed us, ignoring the red stop lights as if they didn’t apply to heavy trucks at all.      At first I thought the buildings were vacant or abandoned, and it turn…

3 .. 2 .. 1 .. LAUNCH Today four more squads of World Racers and one squad of Passport Immersion (nearly 250 people!) left the States to go around the world and spread the love of Jesus! They will live with the poorest of the poor and serve in as many ways as possible. Please pray for safe travel on this amazing journey they are embarking on. Please pray for their families who are trusting God to look after them. Pray for the staff at AIM that will serve them well while they serve for the next 11 months. Just before they left U Squad got news of another route change. God is sending them to some awesome places that need some serious love! I am sure they're all hoping this is the last change, but with World Race nothing is set in stone until it's over, so whoooo knows…

It Takes a Village to Train a Class (originally titled: “It takes an idiot to train a village”!) I’ve been acting on stage, making speeches, and facilitating small and large training workshops for years. And usually I’m not particularly nervous before taking the stage or the front of the room. But this time things were different. This time I’d be facing a group of Liberian business, community, and church leaders on their home turf. The course material relied heavily on their participation in small and large group discussions. As I told our team the night before the class, if the participants just sat there and expected me to do all the talking it was going to be a very short class. As we held our nightly debrief the day before, we prayed that the partic…