Youth Camp–Day 4

Another really busy day of travel.? Mark Dinwiddie, from Forest Park, brought my new computer down yesterday along with a bunch of paperwork to get my employment stuff setup.? We headed to Forest Park Joplin to turn that stuff in after I met with the camp staff reporting and praying for the week.

I went by the Lowe’s in Carthage to buy some dowel rods to use as takeaways for tonight’s sermon.? They are going to be “wooden pegs” that are used in building–thanks to my student pastor friends.? (They also helped me flesh out the rock takeaway last night–I love sitting around in a room with creative people and seeing how the Lord will work out all of the details!

I really feel like I “brought it” tonight!? I don’t know if I could preach much better or harder than tonight.? I talked about Isaiah 6 and Haggai.? Basically that we all have some “building” and “rebuilding” to do for the Kingdom.? Again, the spirit of expectancy in the room before and during worship was really evident.? Lots of kids praying for one another at the altar.? They took home a wooden peg to remind themselves about the story in Haggai where the people of God obeyed Him and went up the hill, chopped down trees, and rebuilt the temple.? I love the promise from God–“I am with you!”

I am actually sitting right now in the ER waiting room at St. John’s hospital . . . don’t freak out grandparents . . . we are all OK!? We were all walking back down to the worship center after the service and Tucker had on his brother’s flip-flops and was running and fell and cracked his head open on the asphalt.? Right next to his almost healed spot where he ran into the coffee table.? He bled like crazy . . . and immediately went to see the camp nurse.? She bandaged him up and recommended that we come to St. John’s to “make sure” everything is alright.? I hoping that they will just Durmabond him up and we can head home.? I will let you all know how things turned out, but think everything is fine–Tucker is busy playing here in the pediatric ER waiting room.? They must be really busy with the holiday or something, but we have been waiting over an hour after they took our vitals.? I sure hope this is not as long as my horrible 6 hour ER visit this January!!!? Pray for us!? We have a long night ahead and a final message tomorrow morning. Yikes!

On a good note, there was a showing of our house tonight at around 7 p.m.!? With this new Rural Development loan, we can re-do the amortization schedule again after we apply the proceeds from the sale of our Ozark house, so we can move forward and close on our house in Carthage.? So we signed papers today and took the contingency off of our contract on our house in Carthage, so we are hopefully going to close on that house on July 24th.? It would be AWESOME to have a contract on our house before we close in Carthage!? Keep praying!