Chillin'

Whoa.

This week has been amazing / exhausting - let me elaborate:

SonWorld Adventure Park VBS at First Protestant was the stinkin' bomb! We switched a few things around this year, and all together, I think they added up to a wonderful week. For instance:

1. We adjusted the days so that we began on Sunday night instead of Monday. We did this because our Friday attendance was always in the tank, and we hoped to avoid that low-point at the end of the week. We did - our attendance on Thursday was 2nd highest behind Tuesday, so that was good. Sunday's attendance was lower than we expected - about 10 lower than our average.

Grade: B
As far as attendance, all we did was move our low day to the beginning of the week - the good part of this adjustment was that we ended on Thursday.

2. We decided not to charge registration fees this year, giving ourselves the opportunity to take an offering, and get the children involved in a missions project throughout the week. Last year our registration fee was $5 for the week and we probably collected around 80 (=$400). This year, we collected pennies on Monday, nickels on Tuesday, dimes on Wednesday and quarters on Thursday (with all proceeds benefitting the Knight family of Port Arthur, TX) and we raised $1400.

Grade: A+
This could not have gone better! The kids were excited and we were able to celebrate every night and think about how our spare change was going to impact our sponsored family for the good. It was wonderful (and totally worth the 4 whipped cream pies in the face)!

3. Instead of splitting the children into classes by grade level completed, we just took our list of registered students, lined them up by their birthdate and divided by 6. This was supposed to give us an even number of students in each class and create. In theory, this was a great idea, the problem was attendance: we had several children registered and did not attend, and a bunch of children who attended but did not register in advance. This caused the oldest class to grow significantly and throw off our ratios.

Grade: C+
We made this change to avoid having classes of more than 20-22 students, which would ease the load on our teachers, especially in the younger grades (where there are generally the most children). Our younger classes were smaller than last year (between 15-18 compared with 24-28), which was good, but our oldest class was almost always over 25.

4. Because of the "adventure park" theme, we arranged a "family outing" at Six Flags Fiesta Texas on Friday. We sold a lot of tickets at the group rate, but only a few families took advantage of the day together.

Grade: C-
We arrived at the park around 9:45am and left the park 12 hours later. It was a fun day, the kids enjoyed the log-ride, carousel and a few other carnival-type rides. The attendance was much lower than I expected - I was hoping more families would spend the day. On the positive, the families who did go seemed to enjoy themselves and have a good day.

5. At least one child prayed to receive Christ this week! Obviously, this was the point of our efforts, the reason we planned, prayed and painted.

Grade: A+

Overall grade: A
I'm sure there were things that we could have done better, things to improve, but this was a great week, and one that will be remembered / celebrated for a long time. Praise God!

So...after all that, we used today as a relax / recuperate. Like I said before: chillin'.

Tomorrow is Phillip's birthday, so we've got big plans for presents, Schlitterbahn, Dad's Delicious Dinner and cake and ice cream. With that in mind, I'd better get to bed!

Until next time -

RevPhil

The Lord's Table

Communion.

During my time at First Protestant Church, I've thought a lot about communion. I've shared it with folks in the Traditional service in the sanctuary, the Contemporary service in Schumann Hall, a bunch of guys gathered by the river / in a friend's house, with each of my Confirmation classes, and other places I'm sure.

You may have heard me say this before, but every time I participate in communion, I wonder what Jesus' original disciples would think about how we handle it. Most of the time it's so...institutional / organized. I don't know if they would even recognize what we're doing.

I mean, think about it. Jesus introduced this whole thing in a very intimate setting. He was sitting around with his best friends / fiercest / most faithful followers and He gave them a way to remember Him and the sacrifice He was about to make for them and all who would believe.

I can't imagine them doing it like we do: "OK, everybody get in line and I'll pass the plate of wafers and the tray of tiny cups!"

I really think they just got together with some food and drink and talked about Jesus...remembered Him...you know? I bet they laughed, I bet they cried, and I bet that for them it was as close as they could get to actually being with Jesus again.

You know what it's like when you get together with old friends and talk about the old times you shared. You laugh until your stomach hurts at the memories of that road trip. You cry together when you talk about the friend you lost. You just talk and reminisce and remember - and you honor those times and the people you shared them with.

That's communing. That's how I wish communion could be for us - every time.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the time issue and the relationship aspect required to really commune that way. But you can't blame a guy for wishing, can you?

Along these lines, a friend forwarded me an unpublished poem she found relating to communion. I'm going to give you a link to the page I think she found it on. The thoughts the author of the blog shares are much like mine here.

http://pleasepassthecheese.blogspot.com/2007/04/scots-form-in-suburbs.html

Peace - RevPhil

Terrible and Awesome

Here's a story I got from my dad a few weeks ago:

From horror, a child's loving gift
By Rod Dreher
www.jewishworldreview.com

Every day we pick up the newspaper and read stories of suffering and inhumanity that make you want to draw the curtains and sit quietly in the dark.

Though it easily could have been, this tale is not one of them.

On the afternoon of May 4, Jessica Johnson Palmer took her three children to a park to meet her former boyfriend. According to the East Baton Rouge Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff's Office, the boyfriend and his current girlfriend lured the family into the woods, beat Mrs. Palmer to death with a baseball bat, slit the throats of 4-year-old Lindsay and 3-year-old Juan. They left Robbyn, a 7-month-old, to die alone.

But the baby didn't die. And she didn't die because Lindsay didn't die.

In their haste, the killers' blade missed Lindsay's jugular. After the murderers left, the wounded girl huddled with her baby sister under a bush through the Louisiana night.

The next morning, park groundskeepers saw Lindsay stumbling out of the woods holding the baby. She collapsed. The children were bitten so badly by insects that sheriff's deputies thought they had been burned. In the hospital that night, a sheriff's spokeswoman told me, Lindsay refused to sleep until nurses brought her baby sister to cradle in her arms.

The information Lindsay gave police led to the arrest of two people, one of them allegedly her biological father. "God, you left the prophetess alive to tell the story," the family's pastor said at the funeral.

The Baton Rouge Advocate reported that Lindsay came to the funeral with a white scarf hiding her neck wound. Erin Manning, a Fort Worth writer, observed on my blog that the scarf conceals a profound mystery: "We can't bear to look at the sacrificial cost of love — a wound so bravely borne because at some level, this child's love for her tiny sister outweighed her terror and her pain."

This is why the lives of the saints are so much more important than moral exhortation. We need to see and to feel what goodness, especially heroic goodness, is like. Evil, even great evil, usually can be explained, but true goodness? That's more of a mystery. Mysteries, by definition, can never be fully explained, only revealed.

This is a revelation.

How must that child have felt that night, so tiny and abandoned, facing the crushing enormity of what she had seen and the blackness of the night in the swampy woods? I come from the next town over. I have been in those woods. They're infested with poisonous snakes, wildcats and other killers that prowl at night. All children growing up in south Louisiana know that.

She could have run deeper into the woods to flee the gruesome scene never to be seen again. She could have sat quietly, paralyzed by fear and trauma, until she and the baby perished from exposure or worse. Either would have been tragic, God knows, but unsurprising.

After all, she was only 4.

That's not what Lindsay did. After keeping vigil with the baby in the savage ruins of their family's life, that little girl picked up her sister and walked straight out of hell.

Witness the power of love. It was love, surely, that gave that child the courage and presence of mind to face down unimaginable terror. All the darkness in the hearts of the diabolical killers, and the darkness of a thousand million evil nights like that one, cannot overcome the light that young child kindled in her heart, hiding under the bush near the body of her dead mother and brother.

Long after the despicable deeds of the killers are forgotten, people will tell stories about what she did. How many of us face long odds and struggle with hardship, sickness and despair? Who hasn't been tempted to surrender to the thought that the hate and pain and sorrow of this life are too great to endure?

Let them think of Lindsay, who refused despair. For the rest of her life, the scar on her neck will be a luminous sign to the world: Love conquers all.

When Lindsay Paige Johnson, age 4, staggered bloody out of the darkness and into the light, she carried her baby sister. Baby Robbyn's life is Lindsay's gift to her.

But she also carried hope. This is her gift to us.

Cool videos I've been collecting

I've been saving some good videos in my email, thinking, "Hey, I should post link on my blog..." So, I'm cleaning out my inbox and these have to go. Enjoy!

I'm going to list these with the title from the email.

Short but breathtaking - http://www.youtube.com/v/SmLhyPjHVes
Wow - http://www.wretch.cc/video/ritahsia&func=single&vid=2282608&rpage=2&p=0

Cardboard testimonies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDDc5RB6FQ

From a doctor - http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=152b5103d741aca61093

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Until next time - RevPhil

This was what I was worried about...

OK, OK...it's been a while since my last post.

One of the reasons I put off starting this blog was that I was concerned that life would get hectic and I wouldn't be able to keep up as well as I want to. So here we are...

Here's a quick breakdown of my last couple of weeks:

May 29 - work in the am, home with E and Katy in the pm while Anna was at Phillip's school party, parents arrive at SA airport at 11:00pm
May 30 - volunteer at NBHS project graduation from 1:00am-3:00am, last day of school, vacation begins, parents visiting
May 31 - vacation, parents visiting
June 1 - preach FPC Contemporary service, Time Warner taping, river tubing incident
June 2 - vacation, parents visiting, Anna has a job interview, Schlitterbahn day, Anna turns 33
June 3 - vacation, parents visiting
June 4 - vacation, parents visiting
June 5 - vacation, parents depart SA airport at 6:45am
June 6 - vacation
June 7 - vacation, Ross Salge graduation party, drop Flash at Coulombe's, pack for youth Port A trip
June 8 - teach Kids' Connection at 9:00, preach FPC Contemporary service, leave for Port A right after church
June 9 - youth Port A trip, tile job begins
June 10 - youth Port A trip, back in NB at 4:00pm, tile job continues, can't return home until after 8:00pm, worst restaurant experience ever
June 11 - back to work for the first time in 12 days, Slumber Falls meeting, tile job continues, VBS decorating
June 12 - tile job continues, work day, Schlitterbahn in the pm, pray with Port Arthur mission team before departure, water leak at FPC
June 13 - day off, tile job almost completed, clean the garage in the am, anniversary celebratory dinner and movie with wife in the evening
June 14 - 11th anniversary, at grocery store by 8:00am with Elijah, hot dog handout at river from 1:00-3:00pm
June 15 - Father's Day, preach FPC 8:00 Traditional service, preach FPC 10:30 Traditional service, Father's Day lunch with Adams' and Coulombe's, nap, watch US Open, watching NBA Finals as I blog this

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

Here's the thing. I've got quite a few things to blog about, but my life is hectic right now. I'm going to try to put my best effort in here, but I'm not making any promises. VBS is next week, the youth Colorado trip is right around the corner, and a thousand other things.

Please don't give up on me!

Until next time - RevPhil

By the way...

I'm married to an older woman. As of Monday (June 2), she's officially 33 - and I'm a spry 32.

Visit Prep

Well...today is the last day of my parents' visit. I'm getting up before the sun tomorrow to take them to the airport to catch their 6:45am plane back to Cleveland.

We've had a good visit! Despite the "incident" on the river and subsequent tube issues at Schlitterbahn, I think we've all enjoyed ourselves. I'm pretty sure my folks are going to enjoy the relative peace and quiet of the airplane after 6 straight days with the "boisterous" Brown kids.

So, since the visit is almost at an end, I thought I'd share some pics of the "pre-visit prep" that we were working on.

This is a douglas fir picnic set that belonged to my Grandpa and Grandma Clements (Mom's parents). Dad and I decided that it's probably about 40-50 years old. It had quite a bit of weather damage, etc. I took it over to my friend's wood shop, where he helped me plane all the boards down, then I added a couple coats of combination stain / poly. I'm hoping it lasts another 40-50 years because I really don't want to do it again.

This is the flowerbed in front of the house. It had a few out of control bushes and some grass-type mess at the front. We ripped all that garb out and added some Japanese Sky Pencil (along the wall), Silverado Sage (along the railing) and Lantana (in front). This was a major project because we couldn't decide what to do and because we had a water drainage issue to deal with (see picture below).

This is a picture of our new gutters. When we ripped everything out of the bed, we also took out the rocks that were dispersing the water. So we had to find a new way to deal with that water, or our fancy new plants would be washed out everytime it rained. So we got new gutters.

All in all - good visit! My mom even played "catch" in the pool - definitely out of her comfort zone.

Until next time - RevPhil

A Leisurely Tube Ride...

Yeah - not so much.

It was rough from the beginning. I dropped everyone (Anna, the kids and my parents) at Prince Solms Park and then drove the van over to a friends house by the last public exit. I jogged back over to the park and we made our way (with our 7 tubes and appropriately sized cooler) down to the river.

Mishap #1
My mom was going to be the first into the water.

Before I go on, let me say this: I'm impressed that Mom was even going. She's not exactly what you would call a great swimmer. As a kid, I remember swimming a LOT - I can't ever remember seeing Mom with her head under water (or even getting her hair wet intentionally). I remember her yelling at us (and other kids) for splashing in her vicinity in the pool. Just to set the stage. :)

I got down on the step and put her tube in position for her to sit. She put one foot down onto the step and WHAM! - she landed on her keester. She was OK, I got her and everyone else into their tubes, tied off our shoes and cooler and off we went.

The water was great! It was cool and we were floating calmly - it was nice. Anna and my mom decided that they (along with Phillip and Elijah) would skip the first tube chute and walk around - as it turned out, this was an error in strategy - more on this in just a moment.

We got them out, and Katy, Dad and I proceeded down the chute - woooooooooooo! Good stuff! At one point, Katy got a faceful of water, but all in all, we did well. Everyone was happy.

Mishap #2
Once we got clear of the chute, I got out of my tube and pulled Dad and Katy back to where Anna, Mom and the boys were getting ready to get back in (which, upon further review, was not the correct entry point).

They were getting in right at the mouth of the chute. Anna got in her tube and joined the group. Next was Elijah, then Phillip, then Mom. All were in, all was good.

Then all Heck broke loose at once. Keep in mind that everything I'm going to mention next happened in the span of about 3 seconds.

Mom drifted too close to the end of the chute. The current flipped her out and took her across the river. She was connected to the group by Phillip (either he was holding her tube or vice versa). When she flipped and entered the current, so did he.

So now the two of them are on their way across (under water). At this point, adrenaline takes charge of Dad and he leaps out of his tube (reminiscent of being shot from a cannon) after Mom and Phillip. I'm with Anna, Katy and Elijah now, watching Phillip and Dad's heads (I couldn't locate Mom's immediately).

I see Phillip with Dad, so I know they're OK. I leave my tube with Anna and jump into the current to get over to where the others are. About halfway across I see everyone. Phillip is being hauled out of the river by his arm by a kind stranger, Mom is clinging to a lifeguard's buoy, and Dad is trying to hang on to the wall. So I locate one of our tubes, and swim it over to Dad and tell him to start heading down to the next entry point. Then I go and get Phillip, retrieve his tube from where another kind stranger tossed it onto the bank, and then I help Mom get out of the water and get her tube.

So now I'm walking Mom and Phillip down to the next entry point (all the while making sure everyone's OK, and trying to calm Phillip down and convince him that the only way back to our van is to get back in the tube and follow the river).

Everyone's back in their tube now, except me. Dad, Mom and Phillip are together, and Anna has Elijah and Katy (and my tube). So I'm working my way back to where Anna is and I thrash my knee against a rock.

Finally, I get everyone situated. Just in time for the 2nd chute.

Happily, our journey down the second chute was less dramatic. No one left their tube and everyone was fine (except for the emotional reactions to what just happened). There was shaking, crying and general nervousness all around.

I know what you're thinking...why get back in the water? Trot your cheeks back to your van, pick everyone up and chuck the whole concept of a float.

Well, here's why I rushed everyone back in: I knew that if Phillip didn't get right back in the water, he would NEVER get in it again. He is the most cautious child alive and if I would have let him stay out after being scared, that would have been the end.

So...we floated. We talked. We named animals through the alphabet (I think we only made it to C). And nobody flipped anymore. It ended much better than it began.

So now we're all recuperating. I'm rehabbing my knee (a little mentholatum and ice), and everyone else is rehabbing frayed nerves. I don't think anyone's going to have trouble sleeping.

Thank you, Father, for keeping us all safe and reminding us of our Your strength in our weakness.

Tomorrow, we take our act to Schlitterbahn!

Until next time - RevPhil