ABOUT OUR FAMILY
Hi! We're Mark and Nancy, and we're very glad to welcome you to our little corner of the internet.
I live in North Texas, love to plan vacations, travel on actual trips (near and far!), write with lots of parentheses, adore my patient husband and my ready-for-anything daughter, consider myself crunchy-lite (we drink organic milk, use essential oils and stay away from most antibiotics, but eat junk food and use regular deodorant most of the time), judge restaurants (and countries) by their coffee, read lots of books, and love to go with girlfriends to Chinese Foot Massage.
An amazing local church actually employees me to lead their compassion ministry, which means I get paid to do some of my very favorite things–serve others in the community, plan trips to love on people far away, get to know people and then help them get connected to serve others, and work with the best teams you could ever hope to work with.
Among my fiercest loves are my family, any opportunity to travel, and a chance to be a blessing to others.
I especially love it when any of those are combined, making the experience truly extraordinary.
“Have Heart Will Travel” is a double entendre, combining my favorite things.
I enjoy being with my family (hint: they are my heart) and traveling to both expose and share my heart while wandering from home. I expect that at some point on a journey I will get to share the love inside my heart and that, in turn, my very being (hint: also my heart) will also be affected by what I see, hear and learn.
In some trips the heart connection is more obvious than others. But the potential for a compassionate encounter or learning experience is always there, if you have eyes to see.
Some things I often hear that, in part, inspired me to start writing this blog:
- “I can’t wait to start traveling when my kids are older.”
- “I wish I could teach my kids compassion.”
If nothing else, I would like to offer others who are looking for it some encouragement that we don’t have to wait to do either of those things. In fact, the two may even be combined beautifully. Travel does not have to be costly, exotic, or even far from home to be impactful. For any of us, just slipping outside our normal is enough. Join me with a cup of coffee and read on. I am no expert at all, but am happy to share a few things I have learned that may be a value to someone else.