12 of 12 February 2014

12 of 12 Basic Idea - 12 pictures from your life on the 12th of every month. This month, the 12th was on a Wednesday.

9:18am - This is what "Me, hard at work" often looks like. I am multi-tasking (working on the computer while taking a selfie).

11:53am - Trip to Foster Hardware

12:17pm - Freckles the gecko and her crickets for lunch

12:54pm - A little Daddy/Sully time at lunch.

1:49pm - Pastor Scott disrespecting the hat again (he likes to take it and hide it).

1:51pm - Pastor Scott changing the marquee in preparation for the New Orleans missions team fundraiser.

5:10pm - Me stopping in to say "hey" to my best friend.

5:42pm - Me and "some random guy off the street". Somehow the youth never got to see Pastor Scott dressed like this.

6:33pm - Studio Grill serving kiddos before Kidz Live and Rooted Student Ministries.

7:38pm - Just out of camera view is Barbara, who is watching the little ones on Wednesday night. The kids were obviously having a blast.

7:48pm - This is what the kids at Kidz Live came up with during Mrs. Brooke's Olympic Games series.

12 of 12 January 2014

12 of 12 Basic Idea - 12 pictures from your life on the 12th of every month. This month, the 12th was on a Sunday.

7:16am - Starting the day off right with some alone time in the Word. Studying James chapter 5 to discuss in men's Bible study tomorrow night.

7:25am - In 2013 I finished putting back on all the weight I lost in 2011. I tried a couple times to get back to my 30 Day Shred and Weight Watchers in 2013, but it was a failure to launch. Back at it in 2014. Hopefully Skinny Rob will be making a return by this summer.

8:00am - Fixing breakfast and lunch at the same time. On the right, Fit & Active meal replacement shake with a bit of crushed ice and a couple bananas (zero Weight Watcher points for bananas) added for flavor. On the left, frozen chicken breasts in the Crock Pot covered with marinade, cooked on high, ready for lunch after church.

8:20am - THIS is the reason I am back on the 30 Day Shred and Weight Watchers. Hoping by posting this each month on my 12 of 12 will motivate me to keep on track. Nope, not a proud moment.

8:40am - This is where Sully likes to lay while I take a shower. Sully loves his heater. The bathroom was an add-on after the house was built and has no heat or AC duct work...a little chilly in the winter without a space heater.

9:56am - It is my week to run Easy Worship at church. Getting everything set up for service.

10:44am - Daniel Hammersley is sharing briefly about getting back to Russia for his February wedding. Daniel was at the church when Brooke and I first started attending in 1991. He has been a missionary in Russia for 17 years now.

11:34am - A few folks lining up for pictures. Getting ready to put together our 2014 church directory.

3:35pm - It got up to 70 degrees today, so I thought I'd try to get outside for a bit and read. My phone said it was 70 degrees out, but I still needed a sweat shirt. It was windy and cool. Of course the dogs wanted to enjoy the nice weather, too.

4:18pm - Dinner time for Freckles, the Leopard Gecko I got right before Christmas. She is going after that cricket in the corner of the cage. Leopard Gecko tails usually come to a point. It seems at some time in the past, she lost/dropped her tail and this is how it grew back. Looks a little different, but it gives her personality.

8:21pm - Back from a not-so-successful trip. Tried two Dollar Tree stores to find storage containers for Amanda. First one didn't have the right kind. Second one closed just before we drove up. Guess it was not a total loss, though. Picked up some Super Glue and light bulbs. How can you go to Dollar Tree and not pick up something?

8:38pm - Little boys and their toys. I got this remote control helicopter for Christmas. It is a bit harder to fly that the other ones I have had. It is a hardy little thing, but it still is requiring a bit of super glue after just 5 or 6 flights. It seems zooming up to the ceiling followed by a sudden and speedy descent is not what's best for it.

Bulletin Cover 09-01-13

Dear Vine Family,

If you had to guess which one ministry touches the most families outside our church, which would you pick? Here are some numbers of individuals/families reached by the Vine so far in 2013. 14 = number of guests at Rooted Student Ministries. 28 = number of families who filled out a guest card on a Sunday morning. 58 = number of families who filled out a card at Operation Backpack. 248 = individuals registered through our food pantry.

When an individual comes to the food pantry, they fill out a form, get a bag of groceries and are asked if there is anything they need prayer for. If they share a request, we pray with them. Many of our guests are touched when they return to the pantry two weeks later and workers remember their names and ask about their prayer request. We have had a number of testimonies from these prayer times!

We are spotlighting our food pantry in September and we all have an opportunity to support this ministry. The staff worked hard to find creative and FUN ways for all of us to participate. Please see the Feed Our Pantry/Feed a Family insert in today’s bulletin .

I thank God for a church whose vision is to reach those outside our four walls and to be a part of a church family that runs with that vision! How much/how many spaghetti, six dollar offerings, sandwich stuff and sponsorships do you think we can supply in September (see insert)? Let’s see!      

Serving With You, 

Pastor Rob

Celebrating 20 Years

This June 12, I will be married to the love of my life for 20 years. It's hard to believe 20 years can fly by so fast. I am thankful for the life the Lord has given me and for the life partner I get to journey with. We went away Thursday-Saturday to celebrate.

Started packing on Tuesday night to leave Thursday morning. Could not wait to get away just Brooke and me.

Our first night, we stayed at the Bunkhouse at River Road Ranch. We (literally) had the property to ourselves...except for all the wonderful animals that kept us company! 

This was the view from our front porch of the Bunkhouse.

 

This was our room. The Bunkhouse had two full bedrooms and bathrooms, full kitchen and living room.

Us in the living room area on Friday morning wishing we could stay longer.

This was another part of the property where we stayed Thursday night. All of the buildings had been moved onto the property and restored.

Here's the friendly horse that came up into the car port to share the shade with our car.

The llamas were not particularly friendly. The darker one (you can only see its head here) put its ears back every time we got close, so we left them alone.

Here's the long horn that greeted us at the entrance of the property.

And perhaps the most fun animals (for me) were the turkeys. You can go here and see a video of us "talking" to the turkeys.

We went into Fredericksburg on Thursday afternoon and I think our favorite store was Rustlin Rob's.  They had every sort of sauce, salsa, jams, jellies, preserves, marmalades, rubs, seasonings...you name it. And what made it so fun was the cracker bins (seen here) so you could try samples. And we're not talking 10 or 20 samples. There had to be over 100 samples to try. We had to wait another hour for dinner after stopping in there.

I am thankful Thursday night was so great because THIS was our accommodations for Friday night. Before you think I am a terrible husband, trust me, there was NOTHING on the web site that looked like this. I knew we were going to have a "luxury tent" with carpet, beds, AC, etc, but none of the pictures looked like this!. I'm not even going to post a link for them...you can look it up if you really want to. Needless to say, this was a huge disappointment. If were were Spring Break camping, this would have been OK, but we were not. And even if we were, we would NEVER have paid that much for what we got.

But Friday was not a total loss. We had plenty of time, so we headed a little further south and visited the River Walk in San Antonio. Spent a couple hours there and had a great time.

Brooke and I on the River Walk. 

The weekend came and went WAY too quickly. River Road Ranch was better than we could have hoped and Serengeti was a big disappointment, but we still got to spend 2 1/2 days together and it was great. Brooke was already hinting that our 25th anniversary should be spent in Hawaii. I'm gonna start looking for that second job now!

Here's a link to all 70 pictures from the weekend. 

5-19-13 Bulletin Cover

    In youth on Wednesday night, we were talking about Jesus promise of the Holy Spirit to the disciples in John 16:5-7.  “But now I am going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I am going.6 Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you. 7 But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. “ (NLT)

    Jesus was trying to tell the disciples that his leaving and sending the Holy Spirit was a GOOD thing, but they were feeling the exact opposite. Why was that? We discovered that Jesus told the disciples in the previous four verses that they  would be persecuted, and then he told them he was leaving. Jesus was trying to tell them all the Holy Spirit would do through them,  but the disciples couldn't hear it. Often times, we respond the same way.  When we are CONSUMED with our  own problems, we cannot see anything else. The disciples completely missed Jesus good news!

   Another point we observed was the Holy Spirit was sent to help us. We seem to be better at understanding this part that God wants to help us...or do we? God definition of helping us, through the Holy Spirit, is to  take over and CONSUME us. Then the Holy Spirit is in charge and we are equipped to share the Gospel (as laid out in John 16:8-11)

   The fact that we have the Holy Spirit living inside us and His power is available to us every day is GOOD news. Lord, help us to be CONSUMED by you and not ourselves!

Blessings, Pastor Rob

05-12-13 Bulletin Cover

     One of the classic scenes from the 2000 movie “Miss Congeniality”:

                      Stan Fields: What is the one most important thing our society needs?

                      Gracie Hart: That would be harsher punishment for parole violators, Stan.

                      [crowd is silent]

                      Gracie Hart: And world peace!

                      [crowd cheers ecstatically]

     World peace...or just peace in general. A lot of people are in search of peace. As we looked to what the Apostle Paul said about peace last week (Philippians 4:6-9), we saw that the peace of God is not something that can pursued in and of itself. God’s peace is a response from our Heavenly Father as we are pursuing His purposes.  Regardless of what is going on around us or in our own lives, God’s plan for us involves our participation in the furthering of His Kingdom.  Sometimes we find that the storm in our life “blows us” into somebody else’s life whom we never would have come in contact with before. Coincidence? Or is it God, using our situation to give us an opportunity to minister to somebody? If we’re focused on our storm, how can we minister? God’s peace empowers us to pursue God’s purposes. As God’s peace stands guard over our hearts (Phil 4:7) we are able to focus on furthering His Kingdom and ministering to those he puts in our path. Saints, let’s continue to pray, think and act correctly so that we can be empowered by God’s peace to pursue His purposes.                             Blessings, Pastor Rob

Love the Kindle-Audible Partnership

I saw this book, The Second Ship, on sale at Amazon and although I have over 300 waiting-to-be-read books on my Kindle {mostly free}, I am always interested in a book that is part of a trilogy and draws my attention. I figure if I like the book, I know at least two others I am going to enjoy. So I paid the $3 sale price and got the book.

During our last trip to Alabama, I listed to my Kindle read a book to me. It was kinda rough listening to computer-generated voice try to figure out not only names, but punctuation as well, but it was still a nice option to have when driving. I planned on trying it again when I began reading about a partnership between Amazon and Audible. If you owned the Kindle book, you could get the Audible version for a GREATLY reduced price. And what was really neat was the fact that the Kindle book and the Audible boo were supposed to sync. I thought that would be awesome for the road trip to Alabama (have a professional read the book to you is WAY better than the Kindle computer-generated voice). So I started this book at home, listed to it on the road and finished the book while in Alabama.

As I had hoped, Second Ship was a good book and I was ready for the next two. Another GREAT thing about the Kindle is the ease of ordering a book.  I downloaded the second book, Immune, from the Rho Agenda trilogy and started it. Since the Audible version of the book was so reasonable ($4 instead of $14), I got it, too. So I started the book in Alabama, listened to in on the way back to Texas and finished it here last night.

I had planned on reading another book before reading Wormhole, the last installment of The Rho Agenda trilogy, but second book was so good, I could not wait. Downloaded this book last night and will start reading it tomorrow. Love my Kindle...and I'm loving this trilogy.

New Laptops

The conversation went something like this:

Brooke:  My laptop is SO SLOW!!!

Rob: I've been wanting a Windows 8 laptop. I'll get one and you have this one (my Dell Windows 7 laptop with 4 gig of RAM...still quit snappy).

Brooke: Yes, get it.

Rob: {pause as he has to make sure he heard correctly}

Rob: few days later orders Dell Inspiron 14r. 4Gb RAM, 500 Gb hard drive, Windows 8, touch screen

Brooke: What is all over your laptop (old, Windows 7 Dell). It looks like paint has been spilled all over it. {Translation: That computer is ugly and I do NOT want it}

Rob: {thinking: Where does this leave me? She wanted a new laptop. She was going to use mine. Now she is not going to use mine. MY new laptop is already ordered. Guess we all know what this means}. Had looked at Chromebooks before but did not have much interest. Considering what Brooke wanted a laptop for (almost 100% web browsing), I looked into it again. After showing Brooke, she wanted one.

Side note: Rob's Dell was ordered February 12th in hopes of having it in time to take it on Spring Break to learn Windows 8 and install software. Dell set delivery date at March 19! After Spring Break!!!  Brooke's Chromebook was ordered March 14 with a delivery date of March 19.

Due to the delay in getting my system, I asked Dell to throw in an extra power supply. Instead, they offered me a $50 voucher once my system arrived and was paid for and I could buy a power supply or whatever else I wanted from their shopping site. I asked for an email to confirm what they promised, and I had the email within 10 minutes. I must say, despite the long order time, Dell really impressed me with their customer service. EVERY time I called with a question or issue, Dell not only took care of me, but they also followed up with another phone call.  100% of the time I talked to someone overseas, but they were not hard to understand and they ALWAYS took very good care of me. A+ to Dell customer support. Computer was delivered on March 19.

Same day, Brooke's Chromebook was delivered. We considered the Samsung and the Acer C7. The selling point (for us) with the Samsung was the solid state drive which would make for lightening fast boot up. The Acer offered a 320 Gigabyte hard drive. Although Chromebooks do not Office documents, etc, storage for pictures and music seemed nice. In the end, considering what Brooke was going to do with the computer, we went with the Samsung. It does boot fast and Brooke absolutely loves it.

A couple weeks later, a friend gave me a couple laptop hard drives. I guess it was about a year ago, I did some computer work for a family and their daughter's Toshiba laptop died. The problem ended up being a dead hard drive. Since there has been major flooding in Taiwan, parts for hard drives were hard to come by and hard drive prices almost doubled. Between the cost of a new hard drive and getting it installed, the family decided it was not worth fixing. As payment for my time, they let me keep the laptop. Once I got the hard drives, another friend (brother of the hard drive gift-giving friend) gave me a (legal) copy of Windows 7. I put the new hard drive in, installed Windows 7 and copied Amanda's old files onto the new computer and Amanda was ready to go.

Everybody is upgraded and everybody is happy.

Spring Break in Review

I have not done so well keeping up with my blog. Spring Break (March 11-18) was a couple weeks ago and I hadn't blog for a month before that. Anyway, here's some picture highlights of Spring Break in Alabama.

Amanda's friend Ryanne went with us this year. This is how the girls spent the early (and mid) morning hours on the way there.

Day trip! We had planned to visit a drive-thru zoo, but as we checked online to get directions and head out, we discovered that one had closed in 2010. After some searching to find family activities in the Huntsville area, we chose to to Harmony Park Safari Drive-Thru zoo. The back seat was full!

These are the folks in the front seat...along with the photo bomber from the back!

Seems kinda silly to tell you this is a zebra...but there's not much else to say about this picture. Except that it was cool to get to feed and pet a zebra (Oh, no...I didn't pet it. That was not allowed)

This guy was my favorite. Don't know why. He just seemed friendly.

This guy was HUGE. When he got in front of the car and didn't want to move...we just waited!

Matching hers and hers turtles.

Best friends!

We stopped at the frozen yogurt place in Decatur. The girls were never far from their phones.

Amanda has a slight Nutella obsession!

I saved the best for last. I think this is my favorite picture from Spring Break 2013.