Ask For The Nations: June 2010

6/28/2010

Even though summer attendance at our small group is down, we continue to enjoy our time of fellowship and studying the Word. Yesterday was what we call "our Wing It Topic Night". So we chose to discuss Pastor's sermon on "Shaking it Off". Taken from the Holy Bible, Acts 28: 1 - 9. In these scriptures Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta and as he was gathering wood to build a fire, he was bite by a venomous snake. It was interesting as we all pulled out our notes and discussed the sermon. One point that I struck me was, "Even though I've not always like what I've been through, but it's made me who I am today." Another one was that "God calls with purpose, we have gifting and all the bad times and good times will work together for the fulfillment of God's purpose." Here is a question to ponder. "Why didn't Paul get upset when he was bite by the snake?" One of the reasons that was brought out in our discussion was that it was not his destination. It was a mere inconvenience. It was only a distraction. (You should have heard Pastor's sermon!)

During the fellowship time, we had a thunderstorm warning issued and we all went outside to see what the weather was doing. As there was no rain, the weather was perfect for a tornado, but soon the weather settled and two rainbows appeared. However, one soon faded and then we were able to see the beginning from the end of the rainbow that remained. I remarked that one end of the rainbow was over River Of Life and the other end of the rainbow ended at Wal Mart. What sweet fellowship we enjoyed with those that attended.

YOUTH CAMP

This is the gang that we drove to youth camp. As Ed parked one van and walked across the ball field to join me in the second van, he said for a few minutes he was thinking, "wow, this would be fun as he was enjoying the excitement and energy as the young campers were arriving." It reminded him of when we lead teams of youth into many nations. Then he was reminded he had to return to his area of ministry as many folks were counting on him. Reports were that camp was AWESOME. As we drove the kids home on Friday, there was hardly a peep from the behind the driver's seat. They were snoozing on the way! What an incredible experience for these youth!

6/25/2010

State Parks

We had the opportunity to get away a couple days and we were able to go to J P Coleman State Park. It is located on the Mississippi / Tennessee state line, next to the Tennessee River. What a beautiful place to relax. The terrain was quite hilly, and the Tennessee River is perfect for water sports, if you have the water sport toys. We tent camped and the days were hot and sultry, but the nights were cool enough that we slept under sleeping bags.

6/19/2010

3 Bald Men With Bellies

Today we had the opportunity to attend a reunion. It was a family reunion of sorts, but not a biological family reunion. This was a reunion of the old Bailey Ave Church of God (Cleveland Tenn) . Here my wonderful hubby had the opportunity to reconnect with some of his friends from past years. Oh, the stories they were telling on each other! Perhaps that would be a good blog for a future time

Gators, Tators & Peas and Corn

Proceed with caution! This post as most of my other post, are an English teachers nightmare!

Really the title of this post is a bit misleading. The only reason I used the word "tators" is because it rhymes with gators! We really rode a gator, 4 - wheeled gator....no silly, not the gator you are thinking about. See, since I'm the author of this post, I can write the story the way I want it to go, so here we go! Oh....what an adventure! Soon that adventure turned to work! But this urbanized country girl had forgotten the amount of work that is required to keep a farm up and running! I spent the day with my favorite sister, who come to think of it, is my only blood relative sister... (chuckle that's suppose to be funny) Let's just call her Sa Pud! Now Sara (oops I mean Sa Pud) is the only one in our family that we know that really has a brain. You see, she's had brain surgery! Praise The Lord, she is a-ok without any long term complications! We are blessed to have her as she also is a breast cancer survivor. Oops, back to my "Gators, Tators & Peas and Corn" post, because I'm not in a very serious mood to wax eloquent, I'd rather be waxing an elephant. (you can smile cause it takes less muscle than to frown) but needless to say, she's blessed and we too are blessed to have her around. While I not only got to spend the day with her on the farm, nestled deep in the beautiful green forest, I too had the opportunity to put some fresh veggies in my freezer! No, I didn't get a side of beef. I'll continue to purchase that at Kroger's and no, I didn't get any chickens. I'll take mine either grilled or fried and wait till they are served at the local KFC! (Thanks Pud for feeding the world). Another treat of the day was spending time with my beautiful Mother. As we (Sa Pud, Mom and myself) shelled two 5 gallon buckets of peas, Mom told us some pea shelling stories, one which I will share with you. Back when she was a snotty nose kid, the evangelist would often stay in tents while preaching a revival. Mother told us of how back in the 20's and 30's that they would put straw down on the ground and then stake the tent and end up living in the tent while they conducted revival services. She remembers that tents were pitched in her yard under the china berry tree. That was about the same time that linoleum was coming out. They often referred to the pine straw floor as "pineoleum". Anyway, she told how that one morning that there was something sticky in at the edge of the tent and it was running under the tent. Under further investigation, someone had given the preacher syrup and someone else had shot into the syrup bucket trying to shoot into the tent to harm the evangelist. We talked about how that also this was in the era when the ministers had to wear white shirts and ties and there was no such thing as "iron free" shirts and every thing had to be ironed with a black cast iron, iron that had to be heated in the fire. While we worked, laughed, talked and enjoyed our time together, I was thinking that I must blog this "pineoleum" story. It's stories like this that will die and go to the grave of our love one's. This one was far to good, not to document. So as my sweet Mother would say, "that is the end of my story."