Greg Murtha and his wife Tracey were in Tyler on Saturday picking up their nine year old son Jackson from his week at Pine Cove camp. They drove over from Nashville where Greg heads up Half-Time. Bob Buford and I were working together years ago when he wrote “Half-Time”. It was a great success and the response created the opportunity to form an organization to work with all the men and women who were working their way through the “success to significance” transition. 
That’s been quite a while ago and Greg has done an extraordinary job of growing it from a concept to an organization. I had lost touch with what they were doing and the chance to catch up was welcome. While they do a number of things one of the programs I liked hearing about is the Vacations With A Purpose for the members of Half-Time. These are week long experiences with other families visiting places like Rwanda or the Dominican Republic. They stay in very nice accommodations and the agenda is both pleasure and visits with ministries.  It’s really reasonable at $500 per adult and $300 per child. You also pick up lodging and airfare. 
Many of us who travel in the “developing” world have concerns about “poverty tours” for wealthy Americans who just want to see some impoverished kids, take some pictures and feel pity. One friend of mine calls it “poverty porn” because the pictures of starving children and worried parents plays on the emotions of the donors – and potential donors. From hearing Greg describe it this doesn’t sound like an upscale tour of a slum but several days with other families and some good visits to ministries working towards good missions such as clean water and microfinance.