Six weeks into the new year

Things have settled down considerably here at the beginning of '09 especially after the last couple of months of '08. Since I didn't blog much then, I'll give a brief summary.

On the homefront, the last few months of the year were filled with two boys practicing and playing football in addition to their school and church activities. Tyler was playing for a youth team in Magnolia and most of his games were in Magnolia. Austin was playing for a homeschool team that practiced in Conroe (45 min drive) 3 times a week and played ALL OVER the Houston area once a week.

On the church front, I committed our band to playing the Christmas music for our choir. Which meant we had to learn 9 songs in just about 6-7 weeks. I was also overseeing the planning for our Christmas outreach called "Miracle on 6th Street" (which included 8 scenes of the life of Christ, a hayride, food/drinks, the choir music and a children's play area). We also had a special month-long emphasis called the November Worship Experience. Which meant that I went from planning one church service to planning two services. We also changed from having 3 services (1 traditional and 2 contemporary) to having 2 services (1 traditional, 1 contemporary) and this caused some problems with our Sunday School classes. Some people who had been in a contemporary service and then a late Sunday School, now were forced to attend a traditional service. We had to do some rearranging of classes, but we got it done. All of these things converged to create the "perfect storm" for stress and I felt it. By the time our "Miracle on 6th Street" event was over the first weekend of December, I was DONE!
I took off 5 days and went to Ruidoso, NM with a couple of buddies to unwind. And then because of the way Christmas and New Years fell, the church office was closed for essentially two weeks. And I stayed at home and did NOTHING. It was glorious.

So, here we are with a new year and it has been pretty quiet, but things are about to heat up again for Easter. We just started our Spring Discipleship semester (in most places it would be the "Winter" semester, but I just can't bring myself to call it that) and we have 5 courses that our people can choose from:
The Truth Project, DivorceCare, Deep Thoughts, Catholic Connection and a Ladies Bible Study called "Lord, I Want to Know You".
This Sunday we have the African Children's Choir singing in both services. It should be exciting.