Catching Up

Been out of the blog world a few days. Time to catch up.

Set up a big tent and some kiddo inflatables in our yard

It didn't rain on Saturday when we had the party so that was good. I only have pictures of when it was set up and a couple when it first started - switched cameras so don't have any good crowd pics or pictures of Elvis (yeah, you read that right). All told, it was a good day even if we didn't see quite as many as we were hoping for. Had about 100 people come by so not bad.

We had people register and gave away a couple iPods

Davey and Janelle sang (until Elvis came)

Then Sunday we had another capacity crowd. Filled up the parking lot and had to pull chairs out again. Good stuff. Almost 180 people there this week. That gives us a great average over the last 4 weeks - 168. Something's going right. It musta been God, because early on Sunday I did NOT feel like speaking AT ALL. I was frustrated and not focused. It helped a lot to go to the "upper room" and spend some time praying. God reminded me about who he is and how much he cares - not to mention what I'm serving for, so I felt refreshed when I did finally go out and speak.

Got an email from one of our guests that said this...

We just wanted to say thank you for ministering to our son while he is in college at ECU. We visited your church this past weekend while visiting our son. We were very impressed all the way from the red carpet, to the friendly people and to the delivery of God's Word. We felt at home even though we had never been there before. Maybe that is because we are all a part of God's family. Your church is very different from ours here at home. We are more traditional with a little contemporary thrown in. But we all serve the same God and preach the same message of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, and that is what is most important. We were hoping our son would find a good church to attend while in college, and we feel that he has found one. You seem to have a lot of things going on and a ministry that reaches out to the community. Thank you again and we hope to visit again over the next four years.

Yep, it's why we do all the stuff we do each week. Why we have a party all day Saturday and then spend hours setting up for Sunday on Saturday night. Because it matters. Sure, this particular email isn't from someone far from God, but it is from someone who's concerned about their family being far from home. Glad we can be "home" for a few years.

My son Tanner at the plate

The other thing occupying most of my time is baseball. Had a full week last week and no different this week. Good news is I can play in our flag football game on Wed. because nobody has a game then this week. At least I'm assuming I can play. I've still got knots in my muscles because I'm officially old now. Now if we could just get the rest of the guys who signed up to show up - I think some thought this was a casual "whenever you feel like it" kinda league. We discovered that it's not when we scrimmaged last week. I don't like losing, but I don't like apathy even more. Doesn't represent well.

Alright, this is plenty long, but I'm caught up. Out.