Playing catch-up!

Wow! The last month has been a blur. I stopped blogging because I worked for three Mondays (my normal day off - and my day to blog) leading up to our Easter musical. Not only did I work on my day off, but I calculated that I worked EVERY DAY from February 26 through the Easter musical on March 16th. Sometimes that was just a couple hours on those Saturdays, but I did not have a complete day off during that time period. It was exhausting, but the week before the musical turned out to be a very peaceful week. I had anticipated a lot of chaos and mayhem, but I was pleasantly surprised. Much of that had to do with the fact that the construction on the stage set was DONE by Tuesday the week of the musical. So I was left with just little details to work on and that made for a very enjoyable musical this year. It turned out that the musical went off very well and I heard several comments that it was the best Easter musical they have seen in our church. I think it had much to do with the fact that the music was live rather than "canned." There is something about a live music production, if it is done well, and I felt like our band really stepped up and met the challenge of this music. But we had also rehearsed at least a few songs each Sunday afternoon beginning in January and then we had rehearsal with the choir four nights straight before the actual performance.

The week after Palm Sunday (and the musical) was Spring Break for Holly and the boys and my mom came down that week and helped us spruce up our landscape by planting some new trees and creating a nice path to the front door.  I took off that Monday and Tuesday after the musical, but as I just said we worked in the yard. When I returned to work on Wednesday I began working on the Easter service (which had already been planned out the week before).  It turned out to be a great day as we had over 1500 attending one of four services (including our Spanish language service).  

I worked the Monday after Easter because I took Friday off to go to Amarillo with the boys. It was very nice to be back in the office without a major event looming over me. I could think about some of the other aspects of the ministry and relax a little.  Wednesday night the 26th was the last night of our Men's Fraternity study "The Quest for Authentic Manhood." We watched the last video and had a share time and the testimonies were awesome. This study really had a profound impact on more than a few of our men. Several of the men did not want to quit meeting so we made plans to meet again the following week to further discuss the impact of the study. Thursday the boys and I left at 5:30pm and drove to Ft. Worth to stay with Mom on our way to Amarillo. Gatlin Elms is a senior in our church and has recently released a CD of his own music. He grew up in Amarillo and had a concert/CD release on Friday March 28th in a church there. The boys and I arrived about 3pm and were able to help setup for the concert. It's been really fun for the boys to be in on the ground floor of what could potentially become an exciting career for Gatlin.  We spent the night at the home of a very sweet lady somehow connected to the Elms and she fixed us a wonderful breakfast Saturday morning before we left. We traveled back with the whole crew (Gatlin & family with the band and a couple friends). After about 2 hours in the car, David Elms (Gatlin's father and my best buddy) came to ride with me and Austin went to ride in the van, which he loved because he was with "THE BAND." David and I talked and talked while Tyler watched movies. We got out of Amarillo by about 8:45ish and got home by 6:30pm. It was a long day.

Sunday (March 26) was a pretty special day. Bro. Ed started a sermon series on Revelation 1-3 entitled "Churches of Yesterday and Today".  The worship team had been rehearsing a song called "Revelation Song" just for the occasion that is a very powerful song. Well it turned out to be very powerful for our church as well. We had one of those "presence of God" moments right after the song and our little Baptist church wasn't quite sure what to do with the moment. Our ladies had just completed a really awesome retreat, so they were already emotionally charged for the service and that song in particular. People are still talking about the song and Bro. Ed wants us to sing it every other week throughout the series.

Which finally brings us to the present...almost. I swapped days off again last week so that I could attend an airshow near Corpus Christi with the boys and some friends (pics here). So I worked a little on Monday last week and had pretty heavy days on Weds and Thurs (12 hour days). We left at 10:00ish Friday morning and got to Corpus about 2:30pm. We checked into our hotel and then headed for the beach. The kids saw a park that they wanted to play at, so we stopped there for about an hour while they played. The wind was blowing, it was overcast and sprinkling and I spent the time trying to get out of the wind and keep warm. After the kids tired of chasing each other around the playground we headed over to the beach where they spent almost an hour playing in the surf. We returned to the hotel, cleaned up and headed out for dinner. One of the friends that came had a headached and stomach ache, so I stayed in the room with him while the rest went out for dinner. They brought me back some yummy quesadillas and they watched tv in the other room while I stayed with the sleeping sick boy. We finally went to bed about 11pm, slept pretty good and got up about 8am to head out and eat breakfast. We got to the airshow in Kingsville about 10am and had a really good day watching the airshow and looking at old planes and Navy stuff. We left about 4pm and got home at almost 9pm. When we pulled up in the parking lot of the church two police officers were walking around the church building so we asked them what was going on and they told us someone had broken into the church and had damaged some stuff. We went inside and found that some kids had got in somehow and were joy riding on the golf carts that we keep inside. They hit almost every corner of the hallway that surrounds the sanctuary, doing damage to sheetrock and door jambs and completely knocked a water fountain off of the wall. They had apparently busted a pen and got ink all over one of the golf cart seats. Our maintenance guy had seen some kids earlier and recognized at least one of them, so they got his address and when the police went over to his house he still had ink all over his hands, so it was pretty much sealed up, but he confessed anyway. It turned out to be 3 kids (3rd, 5th and 8th graders).  Needless to say I had to stay at the church for awhile to help clean up (with Holly and the boys) and we didn't get home until almost 11pm.

Sunday was a long day: Worship services until 12:30, Meet the Pastor Lunch until almost 2pm, back at the church for rehearsal at 4pm and Tyler and I drove downtown at 6:30 to see Gatlin Elms sing at a church there. We got back to the church at 10pm to pick up Austin (he rode the bus with the youth) and when we got there, there were two police cars in the parking lot and I thought "Good grief! What now!". It turns out that one of the youth had ridden back with someone else (not in the bus) and was there by himself, climbed up in a tree and then fell out head first on to a deck below the tree.  A couple of parents were in the parking lot and saw it and were able to get the police there quickly, but he was unconcious for probably 15-20 min. They had to Life Flight him to a hospital downtown. Our youth minister called us at about 3am and told us that he had broken his neck (but had some movement) and arms and bruised a lung. As of this morning he was scheduled for spinal surgery and had possibly taken a turn for the worse. We're planning to go see him this afternoon because it's a family that we knew at Jersey Village (I had 3 out of 5 of their kids in my youth ministry and the mom, Sharon, was on staff with me there).  You can follow his progress at our church website