Night Walking

My wife and I just got back from taking a walk by flashlight. We walked about a mile and a half down the country road on which my in-law's live. It was cool outside and we talked just about all the way. I remember when we first dated struggling to come up with something about which to talk. Now 36 years later that does not seem to be a problem at all.

We went to see the movie "2012" this afternoon. There were a total of four bad words that I noticed and one obscene gesture all of which could have been left out of the movie and it would have been just as good. The movie was good and had incredible graphics. The end of the world is portrayed and the seventh vial of the wrath of God may look something like the scenes from this movie. When 2012 comes and goes without incident like Y2K people will go back to marrying and giving in marriage, IE business as usual. I did notice that in the movie no mosques were shown being destroyed only Christian and Buddhist sites. I am not a movie critic but I will say I am not disappointed that I went. By the way, I ate half a bag of popcorn while the movie was going, this is a thing I have not done in over 20 years due to food allergies. It was so good. I took Janie out to eat when we got to Henderson and I enjoyed our little date.

This picture is of the officers of State Ladies Auxiliary of the Missionary Baptist Association of Texas. My wife is the one on the far right side of the photo. She is the Second Vice President which means she will have to do a "Workshop" for next year. Usually this is a skit or a speech on some much needed topic related to Christian service. In my opinion Janie is very gifted at doing these and I am anxious to see what she will come up with for next year.

Next Saturday we will be picking up our grandchildren and keeping them through Wednesday. Wednesday night we will take them to Henderson where we will have Thanksgiving with Janie's parents and then return to Hillsboro Thursday night, at least that is the plan right now. I like Thanksgiving. The food and company are always good. I have much for which to be thankful. I responded to a comment left on my last blog post that I am truly blessed. God has done so much for me and I have done so little for HIM. Tomorrow we are off to take in the Henderson Syrup Festival. God bless you.

Christmas in November

We left Denison and went home by way of Gainsville. There is an outlet mall just north of Gainsville which is bigger than the one in Hillsboro and we wanted to do some shopping there. The mall was almost a ghost town. It looked about 70% empty. The economy is bad and I don't know how those few stores are surviving. We stopped in Fort Worth for lunch and got home about 2:30.

Janie went right to work and I Skyped with Jason for a little more than an hour. They are doing well and the temperature and weather there are about the same as here.

After my chat with Jason I did some work for Sullivan Supply. I decorated their Online store with a Christmas wreath, tree (pictured), and lights. I also sent out a promotional email for them. I need to work on Tribman next. We are going to go over to Henderson Friday night to attend the Syrup festival on Saturday. I am going to check to see if the movie "2012" is showing and if it is we may go to the movies. God bless you.

Clerking

I am not sure that clerking is a real word. I am one of the two clerks who keep the minutes of our State Association meeting. I am sitting at a table facing about 250 people. They are watching a video so I thought I would blog. The meeting has gone well. Two requests for support were turned down much to my surprise. We will take down the booth tonight after the evening service is over. I should be all through clerking by 9:15 this evening. We are a little bit behind schedule so it might run a little later than that. The pastor who is hosting the meeting looked at his watch this morning at 8:45 and said to me "Twelve and a half hours to go." I knew exactly how he felt.

No one came prepared to invite the 2011 meeting so I spoke up and invited it to Hillsboro. This will be the third time it has met at our church since I have been pastoring there. We have two years to get ready for it so when I get back home I will make a trip to the Chamber of Commerce. We are hosting our local association meeting in October next year. I am hopeful that the church will not tire of hosting meetings.

We will head home in the morning. I have a lot of work to do as does Janie. We plan to go over to Henderson Thursday night and stay for the Syrup festival in Henderson on Saturday. The first picture is of Janie manning Jason's booth at this years meeting. The second is of me at work as the clerk of the MBA of Texas. God bless you.

MBA of TEXAS

We made it to the meeting in Denison, Texas. I left my cell phone at home but Janie has hers. We had a really good Texas style BBQ at the TBI Alumni banquet. The program afterward consisted of three former students sharing their thoughts about TBI. It was good. They elected me as the assistant moderator for next year. We will set up Jason's booth in the morning before the meeting gets started. We do not expect any problems so the meeting should go well. Janie and I will be back in our room for lunch to let her work on her orders a little before returning to the afternoon session. Janie is the parliamentarian for the State Ladies Auxiliary and I will be anxious to here if she had to make any rulings during their meeting. I will keep you posted as to how the meeting is going. The picture is of Janie manning the booth at last years MBA of TEXAS meeting. God bless you.

It has been about four days since my last blog post. Thursday last week we went over to Henderson and I left Janie with her parents while I met up with my older brother. We visited for a few minutes with mother and then headed for Tyler State Park. My youngest brother met us there and already had his tent setup. We soon had a campfire going and were enjoying our supper. I had chili and crackers, Steve had chicken and noodles, Ralph had beef stew. The food was good and conversation was stimulating. The topics of our conversations varied greatly. We talked about our memories of Dad and of our childhood days. We talked about the bride and the second coming of Christ. Ralph walked us through the years of his life and answered questions about life on an aircraft carrier. When the fire died down we went to our tents for a rough nights sleep. Friday morning we had oatmeal and bananas for breakfast and then hit the trail. The temperature was perfect and my new hiking shoes gave me no problems at all. I really like them. When we got back to camp after walking 8.6 miles we sat down in our lawn chairs and propped our feet up. We had lunch then took a short nap. Before dark we took a two mile walk around the lake and then returned to the camp site where Steve cooked our supper of rice and chow mien. While he cooked, Ralph and I started the campfire. We agreed to break camp in the morning and head for IHOP. Breakfast was wonderful and we all wanted to do this again soon.

Janie had somewhat of an ordeal with her parents on Friday but they got through it. I felt bad for her and wished I had been there to help. We headed back to Hillsboro about noon and it was good to sleep on a bed after two nights on the ground.

Our services today were very good. Jack Story, the travel and logistics expert for the American Baptist Association visited our services to thank us for our support. We took him and his wife out to lunch and got to visit a little more before parting ways. We have worked most of the afternoon on Jason's booth for the State meeting which we will be attending this week. I am going to run over to the Church to pick up something for her and then will head for bed after packing a box of goodies for Jason and his family. I will be helping in the services at the nursing home in the morning and afterward we will pack and head off to the meeting.

The first picture is of me taking a break right before I got stung by a bumble bee. The second is of Steve standing amid our tents, the closest is Ralph's, Steve's is next, and mine is in the distance. The third is of my brothers leading the way to the trail. The fourth is a creek we crossed and followed along the way. The last is of my brothers taking a break along side the trail. God bless you.

New shoes

We made a quick trip over to Mount Pleasant, Texas and then down to Henderson on Tuesday. This morning we went by TBI and paid for our tickets to the alumni banquet. We got home this afternoon after stopping by Sam's Club for a few things and by a sporting goods store to pick up a pair of hiking shoes. My hiking shoes have about 500 miles on them now and they were starting to bother my feet. Its hard to grasp the fact I have walked over 500 miles in less than a year but when you consider I walk about 15 miles a week the miles start to add up. My old shoes were actually running shoes but worked very well for hiking. The pair that I bought today look a lot like the ones I had except for 2 things. These have a hiking boot sole and a wider toe box. I expect to put about 10 miles on them when I hike with my brothers on Friday. I'll try to remember to let you know how they worked out. I have loaded my day Pack (pictured here with my new hiking shoes) for Friday's hike. I have my tent and sleeping bag ready to go and all I lack is gathering what I will need to bring for supper Thursday and Friday night.

Janie will spend Friday taking her parents to Tyler. Her dad has a cancer treatment and her mother a beauty shop appointment. I suppose she will drop her mother off first and then go with her dad to the cancer center. She talked with them this evening. They had an exterminator come and spray their house for bugs. While he was doing that they sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful day. Tuesday night right after we went to bed Janie sat up in a panic saying there was something on her. It turned out to be a lizard. It got away and the exterminator said the spray would not harm him. So if he finds his way into my in-law's bedroom they might have an exciting night. Well, I am going to go load up the car with some of my camping gear. God bless you.

Mowing

Well it finally stopped raining enough to mow the yard. Janie is outside mowing right now. The lawnmower would not crank so I worked on it a bit and finally got it started.

The services at the nursing home went very well this morning. I got to preach to over 50 people and that is always a great blessing. I am blogging from Janie's computer because mine is tied up with a lengthy download from the Internet. Tomorrow is voting day and after the ladies Bible study we will go and vote then head for Mt. Pleasant, Texas for a meeting. It will be late in the day by the time I am through with that meeting so we plan to drive down to Henderson and spend the night there. The picture is of Janie holding our grandson Caleb (I think). God bless you.

Fall Back

I have not yet turned the clocks back one hour. I will do that after this blog post. We left Henderson this morning after getting some work done for Janie's mother. We went to see the parade in which our daughter was taking part. It was a rather disorganized parade but we did get to see the part we went there to see. We had lunch with Justin and Sarah afterward and after stopping by their new house to pick up a few things we headed home. Janie decided to massively re-arrange the living room furniture. Only one piece of furniture, a corner cabinet, stayed in its original spot. Everything else got moved. The TV cabinet which my dad and I made was the most difficult to move. I had to take the doors off of it and, of course, empty everything out of it. It moved very easily to the southeast corner of the room. We found a whole host of toys under the two couches and returned them to their rightful place. I like the new arrangement very much. I think it will serve us well. I will take some pictures and place them on a future blog post.

The picture is one I took Friday of my lunch at Canton's first Monday trades day. It was a really good baked potato. I ate way more of it than I should have. We had a good time and bought a couple of small items. We must have walked five miles at least.

Well its off to set the clocks and then to bed. God bless you.