Backyard stroll along Lost Creek

Pictures of Crosspoint Church

Here are some photos of the construction of Crosspoint Church in Gulfport. We should be in the church on May 3, 2009. The first view is building the stage. The second shot is of the outside of the building. The third picture is the 6th grade classroom.

President's Day 2009

It's afternoon on President's Day. We didn't do a whole lot today. We finally got our Christmas tree put up into the attic. What a chore!!! Anyway, Vince and I went to the new Sam's Club. He hadn't had a chance to go yet. I think he really enjoyed exploring. We ran into our friends, the Longs, while we were there. We were talking about how much money we're all going to save by planting a garden. It made me start getting excited about getting ready to plant, esp. since we got a chance to go pick turnip greens out of another garden on Saturday. 

Bad news. Vince has to go on second shift tomorrow. NASA is not satisfied with the results of the test on the valve, so they have to test again. He is so dreading it because he does not do well when he is tired. Plus he knows this is going to mess him up big time. I dread it too because we're going to have to be quiet in the house while he sleeps, I won't want to go to the church while he's home, even though I need to, and I always end up going to bed later when he's not there.

Well, I guess I need to go find my ingredients for supper. Have a great rest of the day.

What's Up, Gustav?

Well it looks like we've got another hurricane in the Caribbean. Poor old Haiti is getting pounded right now with hurricane force winds. It looks like the track will have it in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday afternoon. We are talking about cleaning up around the church property this week (tying down buildings, getting rid of junk, etc.) so we can concentrate on our homes and possible evacuation should things start to deteriorate. I will keep you posted on that as soon as we know. As far as Fay goes, we just got this misty kind of rain and some wind out of that storm. I'm so glad it wasn't any worse. They were talking about major flooding of low-lying areas. Anyway, we were fortunate with that storm. Who knows what Gustav will do? Meanwhile, we begin looking at the trees around our house to decide which ones will have to go because they've gotten too tall and will end up falling on the house during a hurricane. We clean and prepare to pack up our belongings. This time I want to go to a place that has electricity and running water. A telephone would be nice, too or at least good cellphone reception. Definitely air conditioning. I about died for lack of cool air the last time. We're praying it'll dissipate. We're praying if it must make landfall, it will go into an unpopulated area. We just watch, wait, and act as necessary.

Slow Week in South Mississippi

There wasn't a whole lot going on this week. Vince was out of town from Wednesday until today, Friday. The kids and I weren't bored, however. We watched a movie on Wednesday night that arrived in our mail from Netflix. On Thursday, we ran errands and went to a CCHEA meeting for our homeschooling organization. Today Claudia, Bethany, and John came down from Wiggins to visit in the afternoon. Vince was home by 3:30, and we went out to dinner at Pizza Hut. Chad had bought Claudia an Italian Cream Cheese cake at Serendipity in Wiggins. Vince and the kids went to Winn-Dixie to get ice cream. We had cake and ice cream right there in Pizza Hut, and we gave Claudia a couple of "happies". That's about all for this week, but I will put a silly picture in here so you can at least not be totally bored.

New computer

I'm so excited. We got a new computer yesterday. It's an iMac. It's so neat. We like to play around with the pictures. It's going to be a lot of fun to play with. The old computer is our school computer. It's supposed to go up in the schoolroom, hopefully today, because otherwise the kids won't be able to do some of their work tomorrow. I'm sure they wouldn't mind.  LOL

Here you can see Anna Marie, Savannah, and I having a little fun with PhotoBooth. We've had lots of giggles over some of the funny pictures we've created.

Little Foxes

"Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom." Song of Solomon 2:15

Normally, we think of the Song of Solomon as a book in the Bible that is all about the marriage relationship. And it is, but it's also a picture of Christ and His bride, the Church. This verse teaches us about unity, not only in our marriages, but also in our church.

If you think about marriage, you know that it is a relationship that one must work on constantly-like a garden or a vineyard. Any relationship requires constant care, so what are we fighting in gardens? Weeds, insects, pests, disease. I understand from Aesop's Fables that foxes enjoy grapes. Remember the fox who couldn't get the grapes? He went away saying they were probably sour anyway. This tells me that foxes in the vineyard were not an uncommon occurrence. In fact, they are pests for the one who owns the vineyard.

Going back to our picture of marriage, the vineyard represents our marriages. The little foxes are our little problems we deal with each day. You know-the things that just bug you about your spouse. Like maybe the way they leave their clothes lying about or the way they put the toilet paper on the roll or the way they leave the lid off the toothpaste. These are little foxes that Satan uses to cause disunity in our marriages. The verse says to catch them. That implies we need to realize that these are little things we need to come up with a plan to deal with them. For instance, if the toothpaste is that big of a deal, then buy your spouse their own tube. If the toilet paper thing bothers you, it doesn't take that long to change it, does it? Why get all upset and preach about it? Just catch that little fox and deal with it without getting your blood pressure up. You get the picture. For the sake of your marriage, you must deal with these "little foxes" because they can ruin your "vineyard."

The book of Revelation in the Bible says much about the church being the bride of Christ. The Apostle Paul compares the church to a body and speaks a great deal on unity in the body, or the church. Remember, the Song of Solomon is a picture of Christ's relationship with the church. It is our responsibility as the church to eradicate the "little foxes" in our vineyard, or local church, so we can maintain a right relationship with Jesus, our Groom. What is our church's little foxes? Each church has its own. It may be the music. It may be location. It could be where you park, where you sit, what translation of the Bible to use, or what color to paint the walls. You see the potential for these little foxes to ruin the beautiful relationship of unity in our church and with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Is is worth it? I say no. Nothing is worth that. Let's catch these little foxes and deal with them. It may mean learning to like a new style of music. It may mean being glad our church is relocating to an area that's growing so we can reach even more people for Christ. It could mean parking farther away from the church building so new visitors can have a parking place close to the the building. Whatever the "problem", it all depends upon our attitude. If we change our attitude about these things and remember our target and get our focus off of "me" and "my needs," it becomes an act of love. This will chase those little foxes right out of our vineyard-those little foxes that Satan sends to ruin our fellowship with our Lover-Jesus Christ. How will you deal with your little foxes?

Too Much Time Has Passed

So much for writing once a week. A lot has happened since my last entry. The sad thing is that Vince's mom passed away on June 16. She had gone in for open heart surgery. She was having two heart valves replaced. She made it fine through the surgery, but during the recovery, she began to lose ground. So she passed peacefully and in no pain to which we are grateful. But we miss her terribly. When I see pictures of her, I always get a little blue. Praise God we do not grieve without hope. We know she is in a better place, but we were just not ready to lose her.

We had Camp Create the very next week. If it hadn't been for my friend and Camp Create guru, Deana Cox, I never would have made it. She just took over when I couldn't be there and everything went so well that week. We had a great team from Wisconsin that helped us with the camp. It was a great week for all involved, children and adults alike.

We also took some children to Student Life for Kids camp. It was an experience driving six hours to Shocco Springs in Talledega, AL with six kids in two vehicles. It was a great camp, though, and I know Anna Marie enjoyed learning more about God during her week there. They are all ready to go back next year and are already thinking about who they are going to invite. Nathan says he's not going, but maybe we can wear him down.

The other week, Vince and I went to Orlando, FL. He is a NASA Space Flight Awareness Honoree. This means they go on and on about how he helped them get the Space Shuttle up and running again. He was given a model of a space shuttle, they flew us to Orlando and put us in a nice hotel, they threw a big banquet for all 800 honorees, they gave him a nice framed certificate, and they gave us a tour of Kennedy Space Center. The only thing they couldn't do for us is let us stay for two weeks until the shuttle launched (nearly two weeks late). However, we can return (on our own dime), and they will take us to the site where we can watch another space shuttle launch. The next launch date is December, then sometime in February. Hmm, February in Orlando sounds pretty nice. What do you think?

At Crosspoint we are starting our building campaign to raise money toward building on our property. It is an exciting time. We are also growing by leaps and bounds. We had 86 people in the second service in the children's building! God is good! Now we've got to get creative with our space because we have precious little of it when we have that many bodies here.

Check out www.mycrosspoint.org for the latest sermon series. There is a video vault with some of the intro videos used to introduce the sermon of the day. They are really cool and great fun to watch. There is also a story about a young couple in our small group. Very good.

Well, I'm at work, so I'd better get to it. I want to get done some time today.