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.