Wow, what a weekend!

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We have had a crazy busy and productive weekend so far!? Tucker and Jenny went to Springfield on Friday so Jenny could do an inservice training for the Elementary music teachers in Springfield Public Schools–she’s so stinking talented and smart it’s pretty amazing she hangs out with a schmuck like me!! While they were gone, I took the opportunity to fix the brakes on my car that were about 3 weeks overdue and the rotors showed!? Thanks to my friend Devin Bobbett for helping me change my first set of brakes probably about 7 years ago.? I have always tried to repair them since then after I found out how “easy” it is.? There is always something that goes wrong when I try to do anything it seems.? This time, I stripped out some screws and had to go get some screw extrators from the store to finally get the brakes repaired.? Of course, I had to put the old brakes back on, go to O’Reilly’s and then come back and finish them.? I finally got them fixed at about midnight last night. Henry (our new puggle) and I went to pick up Taylor after school and decided to go to the pet store to get some stuff for the dog.? The pet store has another puggle for sale and the girl was really pushing hard for us to get another to keep Henry company.? Funny thing happens–Henry poops right in the store–while Taylor is supposed to be watching him on the leash!? I told the girl, “see I’ve got one that poops all over the place, I don’t need another!” Jenny and Tucker got home and we went to eat at the Ranch House.? We walked in and saw our good friend Kent Doyle and the Ozark High School varsity girls softball team that was in a tournament here in Carthage.? It was awesome getting to hang out with him for a bit.? Sweet people!? Taylor got to talk to Kaleb on the phone and Morgan got to talk to Jenny.? Pretty cool deal for everyone. Had our first CONVERGE this morning.? It went pretty well.? The next CONVERGE will be in January.? I am really excited about what God is going to do this fall through Forest Park Carthage! Went to Crosswalk tonight to hear John’s message “Dirty Jerseys.”? We are starting a spiritual growth campaign tomorrow called Generations.? It was an awesome message and I am really excited to see the response from our people tomorrow morning.? We have the potential to really reach a TON of people for Christ in the next decade or so through this campaign. The key verse is, “Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the LORD.” Psalm 102:18.? Stratton, McBride and I went out on Thursday and shot some videos for our children’s ministry classes.? It was a lot of fun!? The best part is related to this verse. . . we have an opportunity in this campaign to reach people of the future generations by our faithfulness to get involved with God in this generation!? I am excited that we are helping Taylor and Tucker’s generation to have a great facility here in Carthage.? My hope and prayer is that they will in turn, because of our example, build His Church for their future generations!? I can’t wait to see what God is going to do through this campaign!? Fasten your seatbelts.

Friday is for…

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Friday is for friends, family, and football! Our Friday’s many times constitutes of Chick-fill-a Chicken Minis with just Tucker with mommy and daddy in the mornings. We also then like to go to football games with friends.

Tonight, we are headed to a game with Kevin Stratton, our new associate campus pastor. Here are some pics of this morning and last week at Nixa.

Monday Night Reflections

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  • Mythbusters was AWESOME!!! It is really great to be a part of a church that is willing to be creative to share the Gospel with a hurting world.? Yesterday’s message was one of the clearest Gospel presentations I have heard in a long, long time.? I am really excited about this series at Forest Park!
  • We had a really good staff meeting this morning!? Our staff is really coming together as a team and I am pumped about this group of people!
  • We have a new staff member coming on board September 2nd!!? I am TOTALLY pumped about that deal!!? I will save that for a post of its own an announcement of that magnitude!
  • We had over 300 people at church yesterday!!? WOW!? There were a TON of kiddos running around.? I love that!
  • I am praying for some dear friends that lost a baby last weekend.? Jenny and I lost a baby in between Taylor and Tucker.? We really feel for them in this time of grief, anger, helplessness.
  • I am praying for Ronnie Sanders dad.? He is having open heart surgery tomorrow (Tuesday) at 6:00 a.m.
  • Tucker goes to the doctor tomorrow.? Hopefully he will be released completely from the doctor and won’t have to wear that silly brace anymore.
  • I thought I put on the belts correctly on our new (to us) lawn mower on Saturday.? Boy, was I wrong.? I wondered what that smell of burning rubber was on Saturday!
  • The boys finally got to jump into the pool this evening–bugs and nastiness included.? It is really not that bad, mom!? WAY BETTER than the pea green nastiness that I started with!? Just in time to winterize the thing!
  • Wow, Michelle Obama is a great communicator.? That is difficult to do that and pull it off.? Two very talented communicators in that family.? No matter your politics, that was an amazing speech.
  • The Olympics just called–they said I can have my life back until the Winter Games!

Tuesdays with Landon

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Went over to the Jones’ tonight. Landon is getting really big! Here are some pics.

Friday is for . . . Friends and Family

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A buddy of mine said today, “You know a true friend when they help you move.”? My thoughts exactly!!? We had some of our dear friends and family help us move the “easy” stuff of boxes.? There was nothing “easy” about unloading our storage unit and filling the biggest Penske truck we could get with stuff–lots of it should have been let go of years ago, but you know how hard it is for pack rats to give up their stuff.? It is amazing how much stuff you seem to accumulate over the years.? We had a step smaller Ryder truck when we moved from seminary to Ozark–packed yes, but we made it in one load.? We probably won’t have a totally full truck tomorrow, but full enough to think about cutting out some things.

My friend, Eric Barb wrote a little about this need to have way too much stuff in his “Barb Wire” in the CFC Current. He is a really good writer. I miss the guys.? The were always a lot of fun.

Better get to sleep . . . huge day tomorrow.? Still can’t believe this is our last night in our house.? Tomorrow we will officially be home in Carthage!? WOW.

Little League “Champs”

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The Blue Bombers won their end of the season tournament tonight with two last inning come-from-behind games.? The first game, they won with a walk off base hit.? The second game, they beat the Mudcats, by far one of the best teams in the league, by holding on to a 3 run lead in the last inning.? The guys played awesome defense to win first place in their post season tournament!? It really has been a lot of fun helping coach with my friends (and making several new ones in the process!)? Here are some pics of the team with the trophy and their medals.

We are thinking the trophy ought to be like a traveling trophy like the Stanley Cup.? It could go on family vacations, children’s camps, school trips, etc.

Youth Camp–Day 2

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We spent most of the afternoon driving in the car!! We left camp after the morning celebration time and had to go all the way back to Ozark to pick up some papers for the banker. We are changing loan “programs” and are getting at “Rural Development” loan and this particular loan has manual underwriting instead of the web-based underwriting that we had already completed several weeks ago. We had to have a lot more documentation than the other loan had that we had already packed up and put in storage–nice. So, it was off to the storage unit and then to the house to get some more documents. While we were there, the Doyle’s came home, so the boys wanted to play, so we were later getting to Carthage than planned.

We did finally get to Carthage and back to camp just in time for dinner–not back in time to swim during free time. So after promising to stay and swim on Wednesday, we prepared for night two at camp.

I talked about one of my favorite stories in the Bible . . . John 11 and the story of Lazarus. We talked about why tragedy happens and that everything in life is for God’s glory–the good and the bad. The worship band has done an AWESOME job this week and did an excellent job tonight as well! They are called Broken Outside Beautiful. They are all from around Joplin and Cartersville (right next to Carthage.) So basically this is a week as they said, “to welcome me to the neighborhood.”

There was a lot of good discussion in church group times and I think the Lord really moved tonight!

Taylor and I went to the “Late, Late Night” and watched the “Don’t Forget the Lyrics.” Pretty cheesy indeed!!

Going to bed . . . Taylor and I are sharing a bed tonight and Jenny and Tucker sharing . . . we’ll see how that works for us tonight! Exhausted from all the driving and searching through the storage for files! More tomorrow. No showings today I don’t think–bummer.

Beach Disaster–June 25

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We decided to give the beach another try and headed out to the St. Andrews State Park (which is really awesome, by the way) to get some beach time. The boys didn’t think the “our” beach was clean enough, especially after going to the Shell Island beach the other day, so we were going to try to go to a cleaner beach. I find it funny that Taylor says “that is the cleanest/dirtiest beach I have ever seen.” Oh yeah, how many beaches have you seen buddy?

We had made our lunch, packed the chairs (thanks Gary and Fran) and a canopy shelter (thanks mom and dad). I realize that the picture on the front of the canopy is a beach scene, but they definitely didn’t have the beach scene we have had the entire time here–pretty brisk wind. So basically our canopy deal didn’t work because it was too flimsy for the large winds on the beach.

Secondly, what is always at the beach and tends to multiply?? Everybody? SAND! When God promised Abram that he would make his children as many as the grains of sand on the seashore, he wasn’t messing around!! I think the boys like the idea of the beach and the sand, but they get sand on their hands, then head to their faces to scratch an itch or whatever and the get sand in their eyes. Then add an anger management issues and throwing sand at each other and you have a disaster on your hands. That is what we had on our anniversary morning and early afternoon–a full on beach disappointment.

We left the beach just in time to head to Happy Hour at Sonic (wish is was something else, quite frankly–just kidding). It is “anti-customer service week at the beac”h for us, so even something as simple as some drinks turns into an almost 45 minute ordeal. The first hint was that the girl came over the speaker and said there was a 15 minute wait, would we still want to order. Well, we had just gotten done with an absolute beating with a two year old, so we needed some self-medication for sure. We ordered our drinks and watched all of the cars on our side come and go. . . 25 minutes go by and Jenny walks up to the door. She is not alone. There is a pretty upset senior adult who wants names and telephone numbers of district managers. The beauty of the deal was that the manager and assistant manager are both sitting down eating while the short staff is drowning. They didn’t even come out to face the angered public, they sent this poor teenage boy out to try to calm down the masses. Forty-five minutes and free drinks later, we were off to take a nap at the condo.

We had some really good hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner and ventured out to get those awesome vacation pictures next to the sea oats and the sunsets. Did I mention that Tucker doesn’t really like the sand and waves? I think I did.

Overall, we had a really good time and we think we got some good pictures to capture the memories of this week. We had to go to the pool before bed and really had a good time at the pool.

Here is Taylor’s entry for the day . . .

We went to the ocean. It was a lot of fun. Then we went to the pool.

Here are a few of the pics from that photo shoot . . .

Monday is for . . . Missions

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Our friends, Charles and Pat Boyd are coming home soon from their extended trip to England to be an interim pastor. I just got an email with the last newsletter concerning the extent of their ministry there as well as the plans for the next couple to take their place. The next couple are the Spurgeon’s from Springfield, MO. They are actually in my mom and dad’s Sunday School class. They arrive in England on the 26th and the Boyds will leave on the the 30th to return back to the states.

Pray for a missionary today! If you don’t know of one (shame on you if you don’t!), please be in prayer for the McMillan’s. Valarie McMillan is fighting an awful cancer that has come back after a five year remission. She is so weak that it is difficult for her to even take the chemotherapy and Kent has to carry her everywhere she goes as she has no energy. Please pray for them today!

Davis Gray McKenzie Pics

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One good gallery of pics deserves another!!? Here is Davis Gray McKenzie, Mom & Dad (Daniel and Deanne) and big brothers (Clayton & Carter)!? Enjoy!