Fellowship and Fireworks

This week we decided to switch our meeting of the church to Saturday this week, naughty I know. Oh well, it was fun anyway.

Brian has been establishing a relationship with a co-worker for a while now. "E" lives pretty close to the Church at Farmington, so whenever we are going to be up there Brian invites him. He never comes, but doesn't act totally closed off to the idea. This week he decided to come check it out and hang out with us for the 4th.

When I asked Brian if E was a believer, Brian said, "Kind of." Doug and I got a kick out of that, saying things along the lines of, "Is that like being kind of pregnant?" Anyway, E may have made a decision at one point to follow Christ, but He is certainly not the Lord of his life...E doesn't exhibit any signs of being a true believer, except for the fact that he is convicted of his sin. So that's a start.

We had a great meal and were talking about mixed martial arts at dinner. After dinner the women retreated to the living room to discuss whether or not we were trying save our children...and if that's good or bad. The men stayed in the kitchen and discussed salvation with E. Interestingly enough they covered various subjects from the Bible to Oprah, and just as the conversation started to get good, E decided he needed to leave to go see the fireworks. Brian, not to be discouraged, gave him a parting gift of telling him that no matter what, Jesus is still the answer and no amount of psychobabble was going to change that.

So we will see what happens at work this week. Please pray for E and for Brian's conversations with him. Next week Brian and I will be in Vegas, and then the week after we will be camping with our kids. Anyone wanting to meet will need to put on their big kid pants and take care of that themselves ;) MR

I just realized it's Friday...5 days since I was supposed to post about our last meeting, oops! We met at Big Woods State Park again, that is so much fun. Something about being out in God's creation that just makes me feel good.

The Roberts, the Schiells and the Beltons (minus Justice, plus Maya's friend Avery) all met and we decided that if we want to meet and start cooking at 1 we should tell the Beltons 10, lol. They did show up eventually and we had a great time of food and fellowship.

Various things were discussed at the meeting, not the least of which was our (mine and Brian's) impending trip to Las Vegas. I surprised Brian with a trip out for UFC 100 - we are staying with family and going to all the hullabaloo, but not the fight because we can't afford tickets. We are in the process of looking for a church body to meet with while we are out there, and part of our discussion focused on this. We also talked about Revelation, Jesus' command to make disciples, the Parable of the Sower and politics...yes, we were there until about 7 pm.

Ryan felt led to suggest we celebrate the Lord's Supper together, and we had a great time of remembrance with each other. Avery was confused about what to do, being a believer but still shuffled off to children's "church" she of course had never been involved in Communion before. So we were able to teach her what it meant to remember the blood and body of Christ and celebrate that together.

Good times had by all! We will be meeting on the 4th for fireworks and church at the Belton's.