Brothers In the Word

Our Men's Retreat, "Brothers in the Word" went well.

RJ Mack was baptized on Friday night. He had emailed me a day or so earlier, and I had discussed it with Art Cancienne, who is his scout leader. Art called me about it on Friday, and I called to see if RJ wanted to come to camp to talk about being baptized. Art brought him, and I baptized him in the lake. Everyone thought it would be terribly cold, but it really wasn't bad.

Everrt Huffard was our speaker on Friday evening. He talked about humility.

George Welty was our first speaker on Saturday morning. He spoke about how suffering can become Christian witness, based on the passage where Paul says in Colossians 1:24: "I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." He talked about dealing with some crises in his life, and how that became a witness for Christianity.
I spoke next, on "We have this treasure in clay pots..." (2 Cor. 4:7). It went well, but when I watched the video tape, I thought I was pretty badly out of practice. I paced a lot more than I should have, and repeated myself more than I should have.

James took this picture. It was great having him at the retreat, and watching him interact with the guys, but since he was working, he had a hard time staying awake.

Eddie was the last speaker. He spoke about how God works with us as a potter works with clay. He had some interesting visual aids, including asking Ken Wells to come up and make a pot.

It was a very busy weekend for me... not at all what I intended. I took Friday off, so I could spend some quiet time thinking about my lesson, and then I spent all day running around. I actually made 5 round trips to-and-from the camp.
It was worth it, though.

James' New House

Well, we've finally done it.


We got the permit, and we've started working on James' new house. Right now we're digging the footings. We started out with a little (tiny) backhoe, but when it broke, we sort of decided to do it the cheap way. So, every day, we work a little on James' house.



We discovered that in Tennessee, it's not common to build forms for footings, as I'm accustomed to doing. Folks here just dig a trench, put in "grade stakes" to show how high to pour the concrete, and then they pour the trench full, up to the top of the grade stakes. It beats building forms!



In Shelby County, we have to treat for termites before we can pour footings, and we also have to put in various features to deal with earthquakes (since that's a huge risk here).

Swimming with Madeline

We try to go swimming every day... it's a highlight of Madeline's day. She has a little life jacke that she wears, and she loves paddling around in the deep end!



 

 

New Goldwing

We decided to go out and get another bike, and we've been shopping for a while. We found a beautiful pearl white Goldwing 1500, and we bought it and rode it to Little Rock. The next weekend, we headed to Florida on it. In Orlando, I got rear-ended, and the bike was totalled. Two weeks! Ouch....

Fortunately, I wasn't hurt, with insurance money coming, I've been shopping for a new bike (again). I found the one I want on Sunday.