January 27-Feb 3

Last week started at home helping the boys with the homeschool tasks. Holly had a "Girlfriends Unlimited" meeting at the church Monday morning and so I cracked the whip at home to keep the boys "on task" as Holly likes to say.  Once they were finished with school work and I finished a few chores around the house we (the boys and I) left for a meeting at a Houston church for a new ministry called "Men at the Cross". It was begun by Joe White who started Kanakuk Sports Kamps many years ago. His vision is to see men discipling others in a multiplying way. One man would disciple a "Timothy" for six months; then that Timothy would find his own Timothy to disciple (while the first man finds another Timothy) and so on and so on. If this could truly happen, we could reach the entire population of the world in about 16 years (do the math - 1 x 1 x 2 x 16 years = 7 billion).  This wasn't the first time to hear about multiplication discipleship, but it reminded me of the reason we're here!

Tuesday was a day to get everything lined up for my absence at church on Sunday. I had to get music copied and into notebooks for musicians and for our Assistant Worship Pastor who was leading worship in my absence. We ran through the entire set of songs Sunday afternoon (1/27) during rehearsal and I felt good about them handling everything while I was gone. Around lunch time I videotaped one our of part-time counselors talking about our LifeTouch Counseling Ministry. We try to show a video once a month of an individual testimony or a highlight video of one of the church's ministries.

Wednesday morning was staff meeting, which was shorter than usual because the pastor had a luncheon somewhere (which meant no free lunch for us!), but it was a good meeting because everyone was there this week - two of our guys were out the week before.  Actually, now that I think about it I did get a free lunch. I went to a meeting with our youth minister and my buddy David Elms and his son Gatlin and they had Subway sandwiches! The meeting was about an area-wide event that they want to have for students and their parents in April. They didn't have a location yet and no budget to work with. It didn't appear to be very well organized, but such is the case when you have youth guys involved...I know, cuz I were one!

The rest of Wednesday afternoon was spent tying up loose ends for my absence on Sunday and getting ready for Men's Fraternity at 7pm.

I took Thursday and Friday off (as well as Sunday) to go camping with my family in the Hill Country (pictures here). Thursday morning the boys and I drove over to Spring to pick up a nineteen foot bumper pull trailer RV for our little excursion. While I signed papers and got schooled on our RV, the boys explored all the other RV's on the lot. We left the house about 5pm and drove about 2 hours to Bastrop State Park to spend our first night (I think it got down into the 30's, but we stayed warm inside). The next day we drove to Pedernales Falls State Park where we spent the next two nights. Everything was great - the park (no "city" sounds at night, like traffic or sirens), the weather (70's with lots of sunshine), the food (anything tastes good in the outdoors!) and all the outdoor activity. We even climbed to the "peak" of Enchanted Rock as a family.  We had a leisurely breakfast Sunday morning and then packed up and headed home. It was a wonderful break before I put my nose to the grindstone for the Easter musical coming March 16th.

I haven't heard how Sunday went without me, but I'm confident everything was fine.