Going for a Walk in Early March

Now, some of you may think being able to go for a nice stroll in the afternoon in early March is no big deal. If so, you've never lived in North Dakota! Our weather here has still mainly been in the low to mid thirties and apparently you can frequently still get some cold weather and a good bit of snow even this late into the year. But, this past Monday it was near 60 degrees out and with more sunlight in the afternoons due to Day Light Savings, we were able to go for a walk after Harmony got home from the library. The other nice things about going for a walk in a small town is that it's pretty easy to cover most of, if not all of town during your walk and you don't have to worry about traffic. We are looking forward to taking more regular walks soon.

On Saturday I spent 6 hours in front of the computer during a fantasy baseball draft. I guess now the proverbial cat is out of the bag when it comes to one of my pedadillos. I have been participating in fantasy baseball leagues ever since high school. For those who may not be familiar with this endeavor, basically, a bunch of guys sit around before the baseball season begins and draft their own teams of players and then track their stats throughout the season to see whose team does better (though there are a number of variants to this). A group of friends in college started a league back in 1998 and we've kept it going ever since (though all of us have been out of school now for a number of years). In fact, this was the first year that I wasn't able to draft in person but had to participate via the Internet. This made for a long and less fun 6 hours! However, I think if I wasn't involved in this, I probably wouldn't follow MLB much.

This passed Sunday I finished preaching through Ezra. Although I found this book to be chaulked full of insight and application, one aspect that I am glad to be done with is reading the numerous lists of names in Ezra. The one at the end of chapter ten was especially challenging mainly because it came at the end of the passage instead of the beginning. With that said, I am glad to have taken the church through this great OT historical book. If you'd like to listen to the sermon from this last week entitled "Dealing with Sin," click here. I am going to be preaching on Psalm One this week, an Easter sermon next week and Psalm Two the following Sunday. After that we will be taking a week of vacation and then beginning what will probably be a year-long series, through the Gospel of Matthew.

I am going to begin coaching the 4th-6th grade basketball team next week so please pray for wisdom for me in leading these kids and being a witness of the gospel and love of Christ to them and their parents. Please also pray for wisdom for myself and the elders as we meet this Sunday to discuss upcoming outreach and discipleship events and programming.

By God's Grace, Jeff.