This Little Light of Mine

This picture was taken today of some of the kids of our church practicing "This Little Light of Mine." We had good services today and an interesting service at the nursing home this afternoon. We had only 4 people to show up for the nursing home service. Only one of them sang along with the songs. The piano was incredibly out of tune. It would seem to most that such a service is a waste of time. But the one person who sang along seemed to really enjoy singing and God's word never returns unto Him void. All things considered time spent praising and worshiping God is always time well spent.

We visited via the Internet with our son in France. They are doing well and may be coming back to the states this summer depending on the status of their visa. Tomorrow we will visit the nursing home and I will try to get the oil changed in our car. I want to get the sermon ready for Sunday morning and Sunday night. I have the lesson ready for Wednesday and my part of the church bulletin is finished. We will be going to Henderson again on Thursday and will be back in Hillsboro on Friday. Saturday will be taken up by the District Ladies Auxiliary meeting in Gatesville, Texas. It is going to be another busy week. God bless you.

Cabelas

I was given a Cabelas gift card for Christmas and we went there today to shop. We arrived at lunch time and ate there. It was fun looking around and I picked up a few things. Janie drove us there while I got some work done with my laptop. The picture is one I took with my cell phone of Janie filling up the car with diesel. It was a beautiful day the temperature reached 72 this afternoon.

I made some progress on the jigsaw puzzle today. At this rate I should have it finished by Valentine's day. The other picture is of a fish in the aquarium at Cabelas. God bless you.

Read

This picture of my father-in-law is one I took with my cell phone at the hospital today. I took him to get some blood tests, CT scan, and bone scan done. We left the house about 7:45 this morning and got back about 1:30 or so this afternoon. As you can see I got him a cup of coffee to drink while he was waiting for the bone scan. Just after this picture he asked me to throw the cup away the coffee was just too strong. We had lunch at the Dairy Queen afterward and he seemed glad to get back to his chair at the house. Janie is with her mother at the eye doctor. I call this tag teaming. She takes one while I take the other. I thought I would blog before getting to work on my thesis.

While waiting at the hospital I got my cell phone out and hooked up to the Internet and read 14 chapters of the book of Deuteronomy. I forgot to get my Bible when we left the house so I had to find some way to catch up on my reading. I read the place where God instructed them to talk about His commandments when they went for a walk or when they were sitting in their homes. Janie and I do this a lot. She is reading through the Bible and also studies for her weekly ladies Bible study. With it on our minds every day we find a lot about which to talk. In the same text God instructed them to teach His word to their children. I am so proud of my children and their spouses. They all have a love for God's Holy Word and they all read it religiously. I invite those of you who have not read the entire Bible to do so this year.

I am not sure what we will do this evening. We may return to Hillsboro tonight or we may wait until the morning. It will be whatever Janie wants to do. I am planning another hike. I want to take my grandson and possibly my son-in-law on a trail in south east Texas. Probably do this during spring break. Yesterday I saw a wild pig crossing the road about 1/10 of mile from our house in Henderson. She had at least 10 little ones with her. It was quite a site. On our way to Henderson Wednesday night we saw the most incredible Moon rising we had ever seen. The picture here does not do it justice. It was very large and red as it broke over the horizon. God bless you.

Well House

The well house has a new door. The old door was rotten and needed to be replaced. The new one looks good and seals a lot better. It is suppose to be real cold tonight so I turned the water off and drained the water lines in the house. The new door should keep the well pump safe from freezing. I had a good visit with my mother this afternoon. She was burning leaves and seemed to be enjoying herself. She fixed hot tea and served some of her ice box fruitcake with it. I got some of the plumbing work done and need help with the rest of it so will try to connect with my brother the next time we are in Henderson.

The picture is one I took the other day at my daughter's place in Elkhart, Texas. Her turkey was showing out for us. I plan to work on my thesis tomorrow. God bless you.

Last End

This picture is of the flower bed at the front of our house in Hillsboro. The green you see in it are the flowers my mother set out while we were visiting at the nursing home. It takes about 15 minutes on average to compose a blog post and yesterday I did not have even 15 minutes to spare. We got the bus seat installed and we had 40 kids on the bus last night. We are in Henderson this morning and I plan to go and work with my brother Steve on the house.

I was reading in the book of Numbers yesterday and something that the prophet Balaam said caught my eye. He said "Let me die the death of the righteous, let my LAST END be like his." The words LAST END refered to his death. Death is our last end. We have a life full of endings. We end each day and each week and each year. We even end decades and centuries. We end school and jobs. But the last end is the most profound of them all. Balaam wanted the death of the righteous not because there is no pain in their death for Jesus was the most righteous of all and his death was full of pain and sorrow. He wanted the death of the righteous because of the place were the righteous go after they die. It is a paradise of no more pain, sorrow, death, or tears. You become righteous when you go to Jesus Christ in prayer and ask Him to forgive you of your sins and to have mercy on your soul and to save you from your sinful state. The apostle Paul said "Whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be saved." I have believed in Jesus Christ that He is my savior and I will die the death of the righteous and my last end will be like His. I pray that you too have such a relationship with Jesus Christ and that you know Him as your savior. God bless you.

Free Fish

I am working on a jigsaw puzzle (pictured) which was given to me for Christmas. It was a free gift as are all true gifts. I got a hair cut today and it was free, it was a gift. I read in the book of Numbers today about the Israelites being tired of the Manna. They said "We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely..." They had all the fish they could eat in Egypt. Fish was free and readily available. They had taken fish for granted it was so free. Now that they were in the desert there were no fish. A couple of points struck me from this remark by the Israelites. First Job said "Naked came I from my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Job was right we enter the world with nothing and everything we have until the day of our death is a gracious gift from God. He has provided us every meal we have ever eaten. The clothes we wear are a gift from God. True gifts are always free. All our food including the fish in Egypt is given freely by God. The next thing is our failure to be thankful for common things. When they were in bondage they cried unto the Lord with their minds completely focused on the negative aspects of their life in Egypt. When they were in the wilderness they did not remember the bondage just the positive things like free fish and onions. In hard times we should count our blessings. In good times we should do the same. We like to remember the good times in our lives and long to return to the good old days. Wisdom dictates that we remember every aspect of our life and thank God for the good times and the tough times. We ought to say as did Job "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

The other picture is of our Bible study with the Faith M. B. Church down in the Waco area. We had a good time of Bible study and fellowship tonight. Tomorrow I will be at the church all morning getting another bus seat installed and the lesson ready for tomorrow night. My mother made it home this morning without any problem and we sure enjoyed her visit. God bless you.

Nursing Home

The pictures are of me preaching at the nursing home today. My mother stayed at our house this morning while Janie and I were at the nursing home. Mother set out the flowers for us while we were gone. The flower bed looks realy nice. We had a big turn out for the service this morning. When we got back home Janie went to exercise and I took mother with me and we went to wash her car. After lunch we started a jigsaw puzzle and spent most of the afternoon working together on it. I had to run some address labels for our state association which caused me to have to run to town twice. I got them done and then we took mother out to eat. We came home and watched a movie and mother has now gone to bed. The weather was great today making it into the 60's. I hope it will be good tomorrow for I will be under the bus removing the next seat. I plan to preach about the burial of Jesus Sunday from John chapter 19. Looking forward to meeting with Faith MBC Tuesday night and picking up the kids on the bus Wednesday. God bless you.

Mother

My mother made it to church on time this morning. She drove 3 hours to get here and we had a good visit with her this afternoon and again this evening. She has gone to bed and we are still up. I did my Bible readings and did a little walking as well. I will complete this blog post and then head for bed myself. It has been a good day. We had a few visitors in our services today and several of our regular attenders were absent. Our new music director started today and did a fine job. I worked with the church treasurer this afternoon filling out tax forms. He was glad to get that all done. Next year will be much easier with only one 1099 form to fill out instead of W-3 and W-2 and 941 quarterly reports.

I will be preaching at the nursing home tomorrow morning and will spend the afternoon visiting with my mother. She brought us some flowers to set out in the front flower bed. It is suppose to be sunny tomorrow so we will try to get them set out. Tuesday morning she will return home and I will spend the day at the office working on the sermon for Sunday and the lesson for Wednesday night. If it is still good weather we will take another seat out of the bus and hopefully get that delivered and another finished seat installed on Wednesday. We are almost halfway done with the bus seats. One of the deacons is going to do some checking to see if we can get a good deal on having the bus painted. It would be nice if we could get that done. The picture of my mother is one I took this afternoon with my cell phone. God bless you.

I found this picture among some I had gotten from my father. I think it was taken the last time he was in New England. It is a picture of three of my aunts. Left to right they are Mary, Jeanette (dad's sister-in-law), and Muriel.

We talked to Jason, Lilia, and Caleb today. Caleb asked the Lord to save him and He did. That is so exciting to Janie and me to know our children are saved and that their children are also getting saved.

It was a cold and windy day today. The temperature was not that low but the wind made if feel like it was below freezing. We went to a funeral this afternoon and stood out in the cold wind with a fairly large crowd of people. My in-law's got a new flat screen HD tv today. My father-in-law spends a lot of time watcing tv and it is good for him to have a nice one. My mother called and is coming over to Hillsboro in the morning to visit with us for a couple of days. We are excited to have her come for a visit. I think it is great that she feels confident enough to make that nearly 3 hour trip by herself. She will attend services with us tomorrow and stay until Tuesday morning.

A few weeks ago I took a long walk out where my in-laws live and this is a picture of the road on which they live. The grand kids with Janie in tow were headed down the road to meet me. Out front is Joshua pushing his baby brother Jonathan.

God bless you.