Pastor, Pastor, Building 429

Today's Family Rewards Early Bird Word, Morning Show Challenge Word, and Artist of the Day comprise our title, all of which Martha heard on the radio and told me about. Other than that, it's got nothing to do with the rest of this post -- I just like how it sounded. It was a cool weekend, and is proving to even an even cooler fall as we have officially entered it here where I live!

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. That is Ephesians 4:29 from the New Testament, the inspiration behind the artists' name. And I must admit, that's something I could use improvement in, especially at home. Besides, changing Sarah and Jeffrey's names to "Mean" and "Sarcastic" is just not a viable option. I'm sorry I said that, even when I was mad.

Yesterday (Sunday the twenty-eighth, for those who just got here) we were all at church where a four-month-old girl was baptized during the worship service, and afterward for Sunday School hour we had set up a Prayer Partners event where adults are paired off with any one of the first through fifth graders -- until this year, when sixth graders were moved to Confirmation making theirs the first four-year confirmation class at Bethany -- and proceed through various faith-strengthening activities.

My prayer partner Parker is now in sixth grade, so I was assigned a first-grader named Levi whose family has started coming here. Somehow I thought I'd get paired with him. Anyway, I sat down at one of the tables with Levi's mom Tanya, his fourth-grade sister Solana (who drinks coffee heavy cream and sugar, kind of like Martha does), and my own Sarah because her prayer partner couldn't be there. We started with a tell-about-yourself sheet and then went around to various stations.

Levi and Sarah and I first stopped at a station where you used Play-Doh -- yes, the real stuff! -- to make an image of something that bothers you which the power of God can overcome. That's EVERYTHING, but I particularly made the image of someone who's been bothering me. Levi made one of the creeper adversaries from Minecraft. And then when we were done making the object of our fear, smoosh it! Don't worry, there will be no bloodletting involved!

Other stations included making a Scrabble word of something that describes God for you, drawing a picture or writing something you're thankful to God for, forming a link in a chain, picking up something in chapel (a piece of paper with a word written on it) that you need which you took with you -- I took courage,filling in the blank of "Love your _______ neighbor." -- I wrote in depressed, and at last filling out a Post-it note with a prayer for someone and attaching it to a giant world map.

A friend of mine in Nova Scotia got my request, Levi chose his grandma and grandpa in Minneapolis, and Sarah and Jeffrey both posted a note for my parents in Kentucky. (My mom was in Kentucky when we last visited her before she died two years ago; I was touched. Dad was in Florida when he died eight years ago, but I wasn't going to break the mood.) Afterward Josceline was with us for a while, I took Jeffrey out to the park with me because I'd promised to, and we finished up.

The kids gave me no trouble with their reading -- Sarah's been reading from a set of Bible trivia cards I own and the kids have traded a FoxTrot comic strip collection I have back and forth too. I picked up another one at our local Boys and Girls Ranch thrift store this morning, so now they will each have one. Also this weekend they watched Revenge of the Sith with me ... and even though it's the best story of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, this time I found it underwhelming.

Saturday while I was at work (after Breakfast with the Boys where fifteen of us assembled for a filling meal) Sarah started to cough and breathe hard. They couldn't find her inhaler at home so Martha, Josceline -- really, we ought to adopt her sometimes I think -- had to go to the weekend clinic where a pediatrician happened to be on duty and with our insurance we were able to get Sarah another inhaler as well as a nebulizer which we normally have to go to the hospital for.

Glory to God!

David