Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Late Night and Early Morning Wake-up Calls

Twice this week the tornado siren went off. And not at convenient times either - Wednesday night, just after we'd gone to bed, and early Sunday morning (before the alarm!). No tornados actually materialized during either of the storms but when either the wind associated with a thunderstorm reaches a certain level or if it seems that the clouds are forming into a funnel, the alarm sounds. Our house is only one story but has a large fully finished basement that include a bedroom, bathroom and den. So when the alarm sounded, we crawled out of bed and went downstairs into the basement, turned on the news and waited for the all-clear.


We had a very busy Saturday. We got down to Bismarck at about nine and went to a monthly flee market in Mandan (just across the river). It was smaller than we had hoped and didn't really have much we were interested in. Then we went to the Bismarck AKC dog show at the convention center. Again, it was smaller than what we were used to having been to the Chicago dog show a number of times and there were no PBGVs being shown so the question arises if it can truly be called a dog show without arguably the best dog being present! We had a good time walking around and seeing some different breeds being shown. After that we went to the Bismarck capitol grounds for a nice sized art fair. They had an area for food vendors so we grabbed lunch and then spent an hour or so waking around the fair. By the time we got home late Saturday afternoon, we were spent!

Sunday I preached on Matthew 10:16-42 and the sermon was entitled "Discipleship is Costly but Priceless". If you'd like to listen to the sermon audio, click here. Sunday night I thought it would be a good idea to participate in the open gym with the high school basketball team. The last two days my legs have been regretting my decision. It was good to reconnect with the kids and show them that their coach still has some moves.

Please pray for our church this Saturday as we host a booth at the town harvest fest. We'll be passing out free waterbottles and freeze pops. Pray for our conversations with people. Also, pray for our Bible study this week as we are changing from studying a separate book of the Bible to studying the passage from the previous week's sermon. Finally, pray for my leadership of the church, that I would grow esepcially in leading older Christians and in particular for our monthly Elder meeting this Sunday evening.

By God's Grace, Jeff.

No comments: