Rain Reigns

Rain has reigned over my day today.  I wanted to get the yard mowed but the rain said no.  I wanted to watch Clint, the young man who was burned so badly just a year ago, operating his tractor but the rain said no.  I wanted to get the church bus ready to go for camp but the batteries were a problem and so that is going to have to wait for a day of two.  I needed to get the oil changed in our car but there was no time for that today.  I did manage to go to the bank, post office, court house, and office supply store.  We needed the rain so I am not complaining.
One of our church members stopped by and left us some tomatoes and they sure are good.  We were given some peaches by a couple down in Lorena and they are real good.  I am going to make some peach cobbler for the grandkids.  I like to let the grandkids cook.  It gives us quality time together.  We will make some fudge and some homemade ice cream while they are here.  I wish I had one of those old fashioned hand crank ice cream freezers.  When I was a kid we took turns sitting on the freezer and cranking that handle.  The ice cream just tastes better when you have to work for it. 

In the morning we are going to head over to Henderson.  Janie's dad has a doctor's appointment and we will need to take him.  Friday I need to help my mother with her TV unless my brother takes care of it first.  Mother got a good report from the doctor today.  She says everything was just fine. Janie will carry her mother to the beauty shop Friday then we will head back to Hillsboro. 

Stacie is about 45 minutes away from here as I am writing this.  She plans to stay with us until we go off to camp and then she is going to try to drive to Michigan to see her mother-in-law. 
The picture is one I took during the afternoon session of the National Ladies Auxiliary meeting when we were at the ABA meeting in Charleston, WV.

2B Or Not Be 2B

It would seem that I am too busy (2B).  When someone calls and asks me if I am busy I try not to lie but the truth is I am always busy.  I always have something I need to do or need to be doing.  I took off Monday afternoon from my busy schedule and went to visit with sister Davis over in Tyler.  It was a two hour drive over and three hours there with another two hour drive back to the house.  Before we left I thought that I really needed to water the flowers and mow the yard.  I chose to let these chores go so that I might comfort and help a widow, a thing that I felt very strongly the Spirit of God was leading me to do.  When I returned home I praised the Lord for while I put His will ahead of my flowers He took care of watering the flowers by giving us an inch of rain. My day is always going to be filled with something.  It is my prayer that each day will be filled with that which pleases God.  The first picture is of one of the Moss Rose that Janie set out in the flower beds. The second picture is of Justin and Sarah looking at them.
Sister Davis has an email address now.  If you would like to have her email address then email me and I will give it to you.  I don't want to post it here for the whole world to see.  On our next visit to see her I will give her a few more pointers about email and the internet.  She seemed happy to have learned a new skill. 
I have been very busy working on camp.  I am the registrar for camp 4 and I was on the phone today with our camp director checking on things.  Our numbers are low right now but I am hopeful we will make the minumum of 250 required for the discount rate.  We have a good camp but it seems to be going down in attendance.  I teach the Adult class at camp and I need to put the finishing touches on the lessons.  I have a sermon ready to go if called upon to preach.  I also have a cabin devotional ready. 

I worked on the sermon for Sunday and have it ready to go.  The Bulletin is ready also.  I did a special bulletin just for the fourth of July.  I still have to get a sermon ready for Sunday night.  I need to get back to my thesis but it is just not going to happen this week.  Stacie and her kids will be here tomorrow night and will stay with us through the end of next week.  I would love to take the week off and spend the whole time with the grandkids but that is not going to be possible, I am just 2B to do that.  I will have to go to the office to get some work done while they are here and hopefully I will be able to make some serious progress on the Thesis next week.  I have to admit that I have considered giving up on the thesis.  It seems my life is 2B right now.  When my mind considers giving up I think "I should not be 2B to study God's word."  God bless you.

When It Rains

The old saying goes "When it rains it pours."  When I left for the ABA meeting one of our church members was in the hospital.  We returned today to find 3 of our church members in the hospital.  Tomorrow afternoon we will make a hospital run. We will need to go down to Waco to see one there and the other 2 are here in Hillsboro.
We had a good visit with Janie's sister and brother-in-law.  We started right off getting a Bible out and having a deep Bible discussion.  Later after Janie's niece arrived with her new baby, which was an unexpected thrill for us, we went out to eat.  The ladies went shopping while me and my brother-in-law went back to the house.  We talked Bible the whole time and I also preached him the short version of the sermon I have planned for this Sunday.  We had a really good time. 
We made it back to Hillsboro and after unloading the car we went to see 2 in the Hospital.  We ate supper when we got back home and then during supper we watched a movie.  Janie is going over the songs for Sunday and I have been unpacking.  Just thought I would stop and blog before heading for bed.  The picture is of Janie with her sister, brother-in-law, and great niece.  God bless you.

ABA, Done

The Sunday School literature is going up in price by 5%.  That was one of the actions taken by the messenger body in yesterdays meeting.  The Wednesday night service was excellent.  Bro. Alvin Dickerson preached the sermon and it was good.  It is the only sermon that after being printed in the minute book I will actually go and read it.  It contains a poem he wrote that was very moving. 

We took the booth down at 10:00 pm Wednesday night.  This morning we finished the session 45 minutes early so they voted to set aside the rule that we had to have an afternoon session and we went ahead and finished all the business early.  We checked out of the room and headed toward home.  We are spending tonight in Nashville, TN and should be home on Saturday.  The first picture is of the building where our meetings were held.  The second is of the missionaries and their families and their sponsoring pastors during the missions presentation. The third is a picture Janie took while we were setting at a traffic light this afternoon.  Thanks to the generosity and kindness of my Sunday School class we have eaten out three times, once yesterday and twice today.  I will have to admit it was better than Spam.  God bless you.

A Walk in the Rain

Our morning started with a walk in the rain over to the meeting. The session this morning was good. Bro. Brooks made a comment of caution which was voted to be put into the minutes. He felt that the standing missionary committee had over stepped their bounds when they wrote a letter to a church telling them in effect their missionary should not be recommended due to his having a divorce in his background. A church split left 9 missionaries in Honduras off of this years list. 3 churches took them up as sponsors and they were added to the list making the total of missionaries this year 174. We broke for lunch and had chicken salad and crackers in our room then rushed over to man the booth. I had a good time talking about old times with a preacher who has pastored in NY since 1972. He knew my father and the man who took over the work in Ayer, Mass. It was sad to hear that the church in Ayer is not doing well. I have enjoyed the fellowship and conversations. We are now in the afternoon session. The picture is of Janie manning the booth. God bless you.

Day 1.5

The second half of our day has gone very well.  The ladies meeting was real good. The third picture here is of Janie at the meeting this afternoon. We manned the booth this afternoon and had a lot of people stop by to ask about the France Mission work. The first picture is of me at the booth.  We went out to eat for supper and had soup and salad which was very good.  The two sermons we heard tonight were really good.  There were several missionaries who got their request for support in late so we had to go through quiet a bit of motions to set aside the mission policy.  I am bringing back to our church a video about mission work in Scotland.  The second picture is of me and Bro. Alvin Dickerson the missionary to Scotland.  Tomorrow will be our longest day.  We go to the meeting at 9 and return to our room at 11 PM.  We got a message today from our oldest daughter that our son-in-law totaled his car in a car wreck.  He is not hurt nor was anyone else hurt seriously.  His car and the truck he hit were both totaled.  Well it's off to bed, God bless you.

Peace and Piece at Last

I made scrambled eggs with bacon for breakfast this morning.  It was good.  Janie does not do breakfast so she had a glass of milk.  We went to our respective meetings.  I walked Janie to her ladies meeting and then went over to the Missionary Committee meeting.  Each church at this meeting has one vote.  We go through all the list of requests for support from churches for the various missionaries and vote whether to recommend them to the main messenger assembly or not. There were 162 request and there was no opposition to any of them.  You might say for the first time I that I have been attending these meeting there was PEACE AT LAST.  For the first time ever we will not have an afternoon session.  It is good to see our brethren in harmony.  The Ladies will have an afternoon session and I plan to attend that with Janie.  

We are taking a lunch break right now and you guessed it we had Spam (pictured).  It has been over a week since I have had Spam so I have had a PIECE AT LAST. 

Made it to the ABA

At church Sunday my Sunday School class voted to give Janie and me $100.00 to be spent on something to eat while we are at the meeting.  After church another member gave me $20.00 and told me to take Janie out to eat so she would not have to eat Spam all the time while on our trip.  Well I must report that, as you can see from the picture, we have indeed eaten out per their request. 

We made it to Jackson, TN. last night where we got about 5 hours sleep before getting up at 4:00 this morning to complete our journey.  I drove 9 hours yesterday and three hours today.  Janie took over for me and drove while I slept.  We have the booth all set up and ready to go.  We went shopping at the Mall that is right across the street from the convention center.  It is a three story tall Mall and it was good to take a long walk after such a long drive.  I plan to get to bed early this evening and get a good nights rest.  I will be posting blogs during the meeting to keep you informed as to how things are going.  Our room is nice though this is the first time we have not had a desk in our room.  We have a small round table and that will have to serve as our desk.  God bless you. 

Packing up

My mother-in-law was in a cooking mood the past couple of days.  When we arrived at her house Wednesday night she had made a lemon cake (pictured) and some brownies, both were excellent.  She also made chicken spaghetti.  She just loves that new kitchen.  Justin and Sarah came over and ate supper with us Friday night and the spaghetti was really good.  After they left we headed off as well getting back to Hillsboro about 1:30 this morning. 

We are spending this day getting ready for our trip to West Virginia.  Janie was tired so while she took a nap I went to the church and then to Wal-Mart.  We had made a list of some things we needed for our trip, so I picked those things up.  Planning is one of my favorite activities.  I planned, organized and packed our food for the trip.  We will not eat out much even though we will be gone for nearly seven days.  We have an electric tea pot, that looks kind of like a coffee pot, that will boil 10 cups of water in just a few minutes.  I am going to bring it along on our trip.  I have several dehydrated meals that I use when hiking.  They taste good and it will give us one hot meal a day which will give us a break from sandwiches.  I expect that we will spend Sunday night in Jackson, Tennessee. That is about half way and we will have to get up extra early Monday morning to make it to Charleston on time.  We have to be there no later than 2:30 so we can set up the booth.  The exhibit hall is open from noon to 4:00 so we have to get there, find the place, and get setup. It would probably have been better for us to have left today and arrived there Sunday night, but that would mean an extra night in a hotel room and I would miss preaching on Sunday morning. 

Things are shaping up well. Janie is almost finished washing clothes and so we should be all packed and loaded up when we leave for church in the morning.  We will return to the house to change into more comfortable traveling clothes and then hit the road. 

I took a walk this morning and meditated on the text and sermon for Sunday.  It will be a short sermon since we will be taking the time to recognize and honor the father's on Father's Day.  It is very rare for me to preach less than half an hour on Sunday Mornings.  I expect this sermon to be about 20 minutes long. 
The second picture is of one of our tomato plants.  I think they may be ready by the end of next week.  God bless you. 

Keeps Me Singing As I Go

The title of this blog post is a quote from a song in our hymnal.  The song expresses the constant joy that true, walking by faith not by sight, children of God have every day. As I go through life there comes my way troubles and some of these are big and very disturbing.  But when I consider the one in whom I have believed my troubles seem so small.  I truly can say HE keeps me singing as I go.  

We noticed as we arrived here last night that the night sounds here in the country are very loud.  There are a whole host of insects, birds, frogs, and toads making a great symphony of sound.  It reminds me of my childhood when we would stay the night with our grandparents on their farm.  They had no A/C so we slept with the windows open.  I don't much remember the heat just the sounds of the night.  

We went over to Sarah's and Justin's house this afternoon to work on  a computer problem.  We made good progress with the problem but won't know until tomorrow if it is fixed completely.  We went out to eat with them and as always we enjoyed the visit.

I am going to visit with Janie's uncle in the morning and then take my mother-in-law for her appointment in Tyler.  While there I should get a lot of reading done on the Song of Songs.  The picture is of Janie's family when she was little. She is the one on the right.  God bless you.

We are on our way to Henderson as I write this blog. I drove the first half of the way and Janie is driving the second. We slept late this morning and after a late breakfast I went for a four mile walk. I worked on the sermon for Sunday and did some computer work.  My daughter, Sarah, is having some computer problems and I may have to go over to her house tomorrow to see if I can help fix the problem.  Sarah's is very good with computers and she may have done all that can be done we will see.  Sunday is Father's day and that is one of the reasons we are going to Henderson.  We have a gift for Janie's dad and she needs to spend some time with him.  I will most likely take my mother-in-law for her appointment on Friday and let Janie stay with her dad.  We will be back home Friday night so we can spend Saturday packing for our trip.  I stayed up late last night finishing up 2 Sunday bulletins, one for this Sunday and the other for next.  I figure I will not have time to work on it while we are at the ABA messenger meeting. 

We had exceptionally good services tonight.  I preached from 2 Timothy chapter 3 on the subject of "Dangerous Times."  I started working on a new sermon yesterday for Father's Day.  I will not preach it this Sunday but will have it ready to go for next Father's Day.  I am going to use the text where Solomon called for a sword to cut the baby in half.  The title of the sermon is "Absent Fathers."  The sermon needs a lot of work yet so it will have to wait until next year.  I plan to preach Sunday from the story of the prodigal son. 

We have a whole lot of kids signed up for camp.  I like to take kids to camp and have always enjoyed camp.  It is the perfect environment for drawing close to God.  You spend your day from 6:00 AM to 10:30 PM with no radios, tv's, Internet, video games, and phones.  You get away from the world and its bad influence and focus on the things of God.  I am like some of the kids at camp when it comes to the last day.  They want to live at camp.  It would be good for people to start every day with prayer and Bible reading even before breakfast.  It would be good for people to not watch TV but to worship instead.  Camp is a wonderful place.
The picture is of lunch at VBS last Saturday. God bless you.

Monday, Meeting, Mowed, Mexican

The meeting at the nursing home this morning was good and the visit to the hospital went well.  I got home and mowed the yard and watered the plants.  It took some doing but the dinning room is back to normal. I got all the VBS craft clippings vacuumed up.  The toys will take a while to find their way back to the toy closet because they have a way of hiding from our sight.
Janie was sleeping when I had fried Spam and eggs for breakfast.  Janie was busy working when lunch rolled around so I went to the Mexican food restaurant and got us a couple of  taco salads.  Supper consisted of peanut butter and crackers, mmmm good.
Tomorrow we will have Bible study and services in Lorena.  In between these two events I will work on the sermon for Sunday and the bulletin. The picture is of 2 of our grandkids at VBS getting a much needed drink after recess. God bless you.

Nap

Took a 2 hour nap between services today.  Needed to catch up on some sleep.  The nursing home and the hospital will see me tomorrow morning. The afternoon should find our yard and house looking a whole lot better than they do now.
Our services today were good and we are off to a good start on a good week. I will be back to my thesis after a week off with VBS prep and the grandkids visit.  I plan to finish that book by Marvin Pope on the Song of Songs by the end of next week.  If you pass our Jetta on your way to West Virginia you might see Janie driving and me reading. If you come by our booth at the ABA meeting in West Virginia you might find Janie manning the booth and me reading. If you are at the ABA meeting during that long afternoon session where they give various reports you might see me reading and Janie doing the listening.
The picture is of  our granddaughter, Ruth during the closing program at VBS.  She is the one nearest the only boy in the class. We are very proud of our grandchildren.  They are smart and very well behaved.  I don't know whether Joshua, our grandson, will be called to preach but I sure am praying in that direction.  He gave a speach at the closing program and it was really good.  At one of the meals here at the house we had sandwiches and Joshua made Hannah a sandwich first and gave her the heal of the loaf.  The heal is the most coveted piece of bread in the whole loaf.  Not only did he put her first but he gave her the best slice. Such thoughtfulness seems almost supernatural. He will drop what he is doing to go and help his 2 year old brother go to the bathroom and he does so without complaint.  He amazes me.  God bless you.

VBS, Shine Janie Shine

I went to bed at midnight but Janie did not come to bed until after 3:00 this morning.  She is taking a nap while I blog.  VBS went very well today.  We had an attendance of 30.  We stayed up late last night working on VBS.  Scott and I were assigned the task of cutting long rolls of ribbon into 24 inch lengths and cutting each in half long ways.  We thought we would do it faster by trying to cut the entire roll in half at one time.  This did not work so well. A butcher knife and a band saw were no match for Janie.  Janie had me to hold the next roll while she cut it with a pair of scissors.  She cut that roll in less than 2 minutes.  I was very impressed.  Scott came up with a jig for cutting them into 24 inch lengths and it worked fairly well.  I thought it was a real smart idea until Janie again came up with a better way.  She had me to stretch the ribbon out to the length of my arm and she cut the ribbon and in less than 90 seconds we had the whole roll done. Even with only a few hours sleep she taught the class today with great energy.  When it comes to VBS Janie shines. 

Tomorrow I will be preaching a sermon that I have preached at Walnut Street before.  About three years ago I preached a sermon on giving to the Lord.  I felt like it was time to cover that subject again.  I am sure the sermon tomorrow will only be slightly similar to the last time.  What I like about this sermon is that it covers all the major texts on the subject of giving.  I start it with a list of scriptures that I did not choose for the purpose of bringing a message on giving.  In this way I cover a lot of scripture on the subject then get to the one on which I want them to focus.

The first picture is of Janie teaching at VBS today.  I was her assistant. The second picture is of our class holding the fish that they caught when we went fishing during recess.  The horses that we rode to the lake are tied up under the apple tree where we fed the horses some hay.  When you have a good imagination there is no limit to the fun you can have at VBS.  God bless you.

Rain

I got up early this morning to the sound of grandchildren and rain. I got dressed and gathered up the grandkids and headed off for McDonald's.  It was raining to hard to get the kids out so we went through the drive through.  Only my arm got wet.  We went over to the church and ate breakfast and the kids are playing in the nursery while I try to get some studying done.  They keep coming back down here to my office to see what I am doing.  It thundered loudly when 2 yr old Jonathan was in the dark hall headed for my office.  He let out a loud cry and ran to my lap seeking comfort.  The rain is about gone now and I am going to take them over to the gym to let them play there.  Janie called and said the lights are out at the house. 

Yesterday Janie and I went down to Waco to pick up some VBS supplies.  We are going to babysit while Scott, Stacie, and Elijah go to Cabelas.  The first picture is of Joshua holding his brother Elijah.  The second is of Elijah waiting for his next meal.  God bless you.

Aquarium

Sunday was a great day.  Our attendance was really low due to vacations.  It was very hot Sunday and Monday.  We had the Lord's Supper observance Sunday night and that was an especially good service.  Janie and I went with Sarah and Justin to the aquarium in Dallas.  The picture is one I took of them there.  We went shopping at the Grapevine mall which was an amazing place.  We had lunch there and it was really good.  The mall was very busy.  A man from one of the booths stopped me as I was going by and asked if I had ever tried the thing that he was holding in his hand.  It looked like a computer mouse and so I asked him what it was.  It was a "tens unit", I am sure that is not the correct spelling.  He put two patches on my back and started making my shoulders draw up uncontrollable.  It was in effect an electronic message.  I did not care for it.  He offered to let Janie try it but she wisely said "no,"  After making the rounds we waited for Justin and Sarah to finish shopping.  We waited in a book store and they had nice chairs so I sat down and fell asleep while Janie shopped for some books.  She found some, bought them and sat beside me while I slept.  Justin drove us home through the Dallas rush hour traffic and I demonstrated my trust in his driving by falling to sleep in the back seat.  It was great to have someone else do the driving for a change. 

Stacie and Scott arrived Monday night and we stayed up talking till 2:00 Tuesday morning.  Janie and I left before lunch to get our hair cut.  We returned to have lunch with the Manesses and the squash casserole which the two oldest grandchildren made under my close supervision came out great.  I left after lunch to come to the office at the church to do some work.  The lady who does our bulletin is gone this week so I had to do the whole bulletin myself.  I have it all copied and folded ready to put out on Sunday morning.  I am going to look at my sermon for Sunday then head back to the house. The second picture is of Janie taking a picture of Sarah and Justin.  God bless you.

Hey, Paul

Hey, Paul.  How was your day? Well, let me tell you. It went like this.

Phone rang, hand-me-down slacks.

Phone rang, ring nothing lacks.

Plants out, dig in the soil.

In house, treat Janie royal.

In car, get ready church house

Saint John's, see a new spouse.

In car, off to see Sam's

To church, singing with lambs

To store, goodies to buy

On net, blog for you guys.

I got a phone call from our friends in Lorena and they have some pants they thought I could use.  Sarah called and she got her wedding ring back from the jeweler's having it resized. We set out some Moss Rose in the flowerbeds and they look good. We cleaned up and went over to the church to turn on the A/C for the concert we had tonight. We also helped set up the tables for the fellowship tomorrow.  We attended the wedding of a friend of ours at St. John's Baptist Church here in Hillsboro.  The pastor of that church was the groom and the bride was our friend.  It was a good wedding.  We had to run to Waco to get some supplies at Sam's and then we went to the concert.  It was really good.  We went to Wal-Mart afterward to pick up some groceries for our fellowship tomorrow.  I wanted to blog before heading for bed.  The first picture I took at the wedding and the second at the concert.  God bless you.

When I Don't Blog

When I don't blog you know that I am busy, busy.  I had to help Janie with some work the past few days.  Janie and I went to Canton yesterday, the 3rd, and now we are in Henderson.  I had to take our car to the dealer for repairs.  A penny fell into the 12V power outlet and blew a fuse, which, of course, the VW engineers, in their infinite wisdom, hid up under the dash instead of placing it in, oh I don't know maybe, the fuse box!!  Anyway, $19.30 and 2 hours later it is fixed.  We will head back to Hillsboro this afternoon. 

I got 25 pages read in that book I am reading on the Song of Songs.  I have just gotten to what I consider the good part after 100 pages of reading.  I do not agree thus far with this man's interpretation but it is a good read.  
The picture is of my father-in-law back in WWII.  God bless you.l

Computer

Why do they call them computers when they do so much more than compute? After the Bible study this morning I spent some time reading for my thesis.  I heated up some of home made chili for lunch and then went for a one hour walk.  I spent some more time reading and then cooked some fish for supper with some fried squash and fried dill pickles.  They were mmm mmm good. After supper I watched the news and then did some work on the computer.  I am suppose to stay up until mid-night and then take down three links from a web-site.  I would probably have gone to bed about 11 anyway so another hour won't make that much difference. I have some work I need to do so the time will go by quickly.  Actually I am taking a break from my work to write this blog. 

Tomorrow will be a busy one and on Thursday we are planning to go to Canton, Texas for trades day.  Justin and Sarah are going to meet us there.  We will go on to Henderson for Friday and then back here on Saturday in time for the Blackwood Gospel Quartet concert at our Church at 7:00.  We are having lunch at the church Sunday after the services and I always love that.  Monday we are going to Dallas for the day and then a week from this Saturday is our Vacation Bible School. 

Well its back to work.  I have written computer programs in "C", "FORTRAN", "Perl", "Basic", and "HTML".  I am now learning SQL and MySQL database.  I probably should wait until I finish my thesis before taking on new software and languages.  French will be next then Spanish and Hebrew.  Maybe the LORD will return before then.  The picture is of Sarah with Ruth and Lilia. God bless you.