Sunday, November 8, 2009

Sunday Surprise

Don is preaching with such loving boldness and I love it.  He started the "I AM" series this morning.  Today, his text was "the woman at the well" as Jesus ended his conversation with her with, "I AM the Messiah."  Did you know that after the woman met Jesus, she forgot all about the water she had gone after and went back into town telling everyone that she had met the Messiah who gave her "living water?"  It's just something that happens when we meet Jesus... we want to share Him with everyone.

We were up to 154 in church this morning and twenty in the choir.  It's great to see the folks coming back to church as they return from their summer homes and vacations.

We had a wonderful surprise today!  Kathy and Tom Burge showed up at the end of church today.  They drove up from Tucson, as they're visiting Tom's brother there, and didn't realize our church services are so early, 8:50.  I have to do a flashback and give you a little background story.  About 7:45, my cell phone rang and I grabbed it and answered without looking if I recognized the number.  A feeble voice said, "I hear you have a church service there."  I replied, thinking it was my cousin, Frieda, playing a joke on me, "Yes'mam, we sure do," in my deepest southern, hick voice.  For a few seconds, I didn't hear anyone on the other end and thought our connection was bad..  "I can't hear you."  The feeble voice said, "What time does church start?"  Now, I'm beginning the think, "this isn't Frieda and this poor lady must think I'm a freak," so I say, "8:50" in my normal voice.  She said, "well, I don't get around so good."  To which I replied, "well, you come if you can," and she thanked me and said goodbye.  While I still thought it was probably someone from within the park, Don had figured out that it was probably someone who was going to surprise us.  He was right.  When I hugged Kathy, she was still laughing and told me that she was laughing so hard at me on the phone that she couldn't talk for a few seconds.  Stinker.

We invited Rick and Wendy to join Tom and Kathy and us at the Olive Garden for lunch.  We were enjoying catching up on what Tom and Kathy have been doing and eating our lunch when suddenly Tom said to Kathy that he was really dizzy and didn't know why.  He thought maybe it was because he hadn't eaten anything, but eating didn't seem to help his dizziness.  After lunch, we took Tom to urgent care and they checked him over real good: EKG and blood work and everything was perfect.  The only thing they found was a slight heart murmur which he's had probably most of his life.  After a while, his dizziness stopped and he felt back to normal.  We sure hope and pray that Tom will be just fine and we sure enjoyed seeing this sweet couple again.  Oh yes, I guess I didn't tell you that we met them in Coffeyville, Kansas, last fall, while they were workamping at Amazon.com.  Kathy Burge, Don, Tom Burge

Went over to visit with Toma this afternoon, late.  Found this stalk of local cotton she had "planted" in the cactus garden.  Jim killed a rattlesnake in the garden the other day, so I am being very careful when I go over there.  The snake in this picture, lower right, is not real.  Still gives me the creeps. Toma and Jim picked some cotton

We are so blessed.

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