Harmony and I were invited by a family at church to help them on Saturday with their cows. They have over 100 cows and needed to weigh and vaccinate the calves and spray all the cows with medicine to prevent ring worm and the like. My job was to open and shut a heavy gate that led from where the calves got their shots to the scale. Harmony operated the manuel scale and took down the weights. The gate I was lifting was on a pulley and the rope snapped three times, sending me almost tumbling backward once. It was a pretty cool day (50s) but at least there wasn't any wind. We had a good time getting to see first-hand what it looks like to be a rancher. If I remember I'll post a picture I took w/ my phone when I can download it.
That brings me to another problem Harmony and I have encountered living in a small town and some of you who've tried to contact us via our cell phones understand what I mean. We barely get any cell phone reception with Verizon and are actively thinking about switching to Alltel which others in the cummunity use and it seems to work just fine.
On Thursday I drove down to Beulah (50 miles southwest) and met up with another EFCA pastor there and then we drove another hour and a half south to Dickinson to meet up with a few other EFCA pastors for lunch and discussion of theology and church issues. It was a great opportunity to meet some of the other "local" Free Church pastors. Having to travel a good two and a half hours to get together with a group of pastors from your denomination is a big change for me. In Evanston, we could have gotten probably a dozen EFCA pastors together within a twenty miles radius. In ND, the next closest EFCA church to Underwood is 30 miles south with maybe three others within fifty miles! Even w/ the travel it was a good experience and I look forward to building those relationships more in future meetings. Also, driving to and from Beulah I crossed over the Missouri River which separates Central from Mountain time so that going there I arrived about when I left but coming back it took twice as long!
On Sunday after the worship service and Sunday School we had a fellowship dinner (lunch for those of you not living in a farming community) followed by Harmony and the ladies meeting and me meeting with the Elders. Harmony talked to the other ladies in the church about starting up an evangelistic women's Bible study in town and they seemed very supportive. Please keep Harmony and the church in your prayers about getting this going in the next few months (things around here move a bit slower). I had a very productive monthly meeting with the other Elders in which we discussed a number of imporant church-related issues and even on those that we did not come to a decision, certainly made headway. Please continue to pray for my leadership of the Elders and the church in general.
In addition to those prayer requests, please pray for the upcoming lauch of our youth ministry. I received some material in the mail yesterday that we're going to use and am very excited. I'm not sure whether we'll start up in the beginning of Nov. or wait until the new year but pray for wisdom w/r/t this either way. Also, I've been battling a slight cold over the past few days so please pray that I would not get anymore sick and that I would recover quickly. Thanks.
This week was the last sermon in the mini-series "Respecting Authority Glorifies God" in 1 Peter and dealt with authority w/in the household. It is a very challenging passage for both husbands and wives. If you'd like to listen to it the audio is posted here.
By God's Grace, Jeff Higbie.
2 comments:
I read this post a long while ago, but I just wanted to say that this story is my favorite, for obvious reasons. I'm really enjoying the blog, Jeff. We should talk soon.
Yeah I thought you might appreciate this one in particular. We definitely need to catch up.
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